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Forum Discussion
[BUG REPORT] RBRE960 Stops Responding to ARP Requests from WiFi Clients
**Device:** Netgear Orbi RBRE960 **Firmware:** V7.2.8.2 **Mode:** Router Mode (no satellites) --- **Summary** The RBRE960 intermittently stops responding to ARP requests from associated...
It is indeed frustrating for many users that the Orbi Firmware Update process often fails to find updated firmware. As Netgear has not documented the process, we are left to speculate what may cause this situation. One proposal is that Netgear deliberately postpones systems recognizing new firmware while waiting for "early adopters" to discover and install it. If users discover issues with the new firmware, Netgear can simply pull it without affecting thousands of customers. (There could be other reasons. Maybe some one simply "forgot" to make an entry in a database? No one knows.)
Please report how the new firmware performs. My limited understanding of ARP protocol is that:
- The ARP request is a broadcast which should go to every device on the IP subnet.
- The device holding the target IP address is supposed to respond with an ARP response.
- The router has no part in the ARP protocol.
Thus, it would be helpful to monitor the network in two places:
- At the device making ARP requests, and
- At devices which are expected to respond to ARP requests.
The ARP request is a broadcast which should go to every device on the IP subnet.
The device holding the target IP address is supposed to respond with an ARP response.
The router has no part in the ARP protocol.ARP is used to find the MAC address of the device that is using a specific (known) IP address. The ARP request is broadcast on layer 2 , not layer 3 (IP). On layer 3, the destination IP address is the IP address of the device for which the sender needs the MAC address.
The layer 2 broadcast domain is not the same as the IP subnet.
The router does have a role here, since it can/will route the ARP packet to the destination device when it knows that device's IP address. That is needed when the device is on a different layer-2 connection (for instance a wifi-connected device wanting to send to an ethernet-connected device on the same subnet). The router can also make its own ARP requests.
The router also needs to respond to ARP requests directed to one of its own interfaces (in this case 192.168.1.1). Otherwise, the clients can't discover the MAC address of the router, so they can't send unicast messages to it. That is essential for internet connectivity (since all internet traffic is sent to the router), and is what is going wrong with SkylerPeterson's system.
