NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
RBR750 Not Reconnecting To Internet
This week I was away on holidays and was hoping I could rely on my HomeAssistant based security system with motion sensors / cameras etc. Many of these rely on WiFi / Internet.
However two days before I came back I noticed I couldn't connect to my home network from away, and I was notified that my google nest devices were offline so they were no longer reporting back to Google that they were alive. When I got home I found that the WiFi in the house was gone offline and all of my Orbis, 1 RBR750 + 2 Satellites with latest firmware V7.2.6.21_5.0.20 had turned solid purple.
After plugging each one out and back in, they all connected up to the internet just fine and everything came back online again.
My questions are
1) How can I debug what happened here. After I rebooted them, and now a few hours later I find no Admin logs going back far enough to see what happened. Is the solid purple color enough to indicate it was just that the Orbis somehow lost internet connectivity or should some logs exist somewhere other than the Administration->Log in the UI that go back a few days to help debug this?
2) Why when a physical power off/on fixes the issue immediately, why can't the Orbis internally do something similar, either reboot themselves, or try to simply reconnect to the internet if the link goes down. My assumption can only be that they do try to reconnect but some firmware bug causes this retry/reconnection to not work. If they had some sort of option to reboot after x minutes of no internet it could mitigate this issue, if it can't be fixed with a firmware update. Better yet if it can be fixed, that would remove the need for such a reboot option.
All inputs are welcome. I can share any logs with the developers if interested to look to fix this. Or if any options that I'm not aware of are available to reboot under such conditions I will definitely turn them on.
29 Replies
mark0077 wrote:
After plugging each one out and back in, they all connected up to the internet just fine and everything came back online again.
"Plugging" refers to the electrical power? (not any of the Ethernet cables)
Was the ISP device (cable modem or fiber ONT) power cycled as well?
As you have noticed, rebooting the Orbi router clears the Log file. It would have been interesting to see if the log contained anything prior to pulling the plug, but with the entire network down most of us would be more interested in getting the networking again than in investigating things.
Is there any way to determine if there was an electrical power outage during that time? (My UPS, for example, reports the data/time/duration of power interruptions.)
Very frustrating situation since the system is already supposed to react to disruptions:
- If the power goes out and then resumes, the router should reconnect to the internet.
- If the ISP connection fails and then resumes, the router should then reconnect.
CrimpOn wrote:
mark0077 wrote:After plugging each one out and back in, they all connected up to the internet just fine and everything came back online again.
"Plugging" refers to the electrical power? (not any of the Ethernet cables)
Was the ISP device (cable modem or fiber ONT) power cycled as well?
As you have noticed, rebooting the Orbi router clears the Log file. It would have been interesting to see if the log contained anything prior to pulling the plug, but with the entire network down most of us would be more interested in getting the networking again than in investigating things.
Is there any way to determine if there was an electrical power outage during that time? (My UPS, for example, reports the data/time/duration of power interruptions.)
Very frustrating situation since the system is already supposed to react to disruptions:
- If the power goes out and then resumes, the router should reconnect to the internet.
- If the ISP connection fails and then resumes, the router should then reconnect.
Yes plugging in this case means electrically powering the system on and off. I didn't power cycle anything else, just the three orbis. So to me something within the Orbi firmware or options could/should have gotten around this in my opinion. What do you think?
I have some strange feeling the underlying linux kernel or something is affecting these devices in general. My ISP router (which I no longer use) would last about 1 week before going into this state and need a reboot. My google wifi used to last maybe 2 to 4 weeks before needing a reboot. The Orbi in fairness has lasted much longer but it does seem perhaps roughly (very roughly) every few months needs a reboot. I would love if it was even more robust and in circumstances like this is also having some feature to reboot itself assuming theres some weird underlying kernel issue.
I'm thinking back to my days in SunOS where there was the concept of a watchdog that could in exceptional circumstances, reboot a process when it wasn't behaving well. I think in this case it might remove the human from the equation and maybe have a concept like backing up some admin log as part of its reboot process to eventually help fix the underlying issue but essentially reduce the downtime on the user.
Edit: I can tell from my Home Assistant VM that it wasn't a full power outage at least as it stayed powered on during the Orbi outage.
My ancient RBR50 Orbi has gone six months without losing service (until Edison favored us with a power outage to "upgrade equipment")
You are correct that for a long time it was generally accepted that rebooting computer devices every so often was a good idea. (My security cameras have an automatic reboot option of once a week or every day.) Older Netgear routers may have had a reboot option as well (much as they defaulted to different SSIDs for 2.4G and 5G WiFi channels) None of the Orbi products have such a feature. In my case, enabling such a feature would wreak havoc on things. So many things in my house rely on constant internet that deliberately pausing the connection would result in chaos.
If this happens again, it might be worth taking a few minutes to determine:
- Whether the internal LAN is still functional.
- If anything appears in the Orbi log.
