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Why does blocking ICMP cause constant Orbi reboots?
OK, I'll start this by saying please do not respond if you are only going to comment, "why do you care about ICMP, why are you blocking it, etc.". This is just an academic question from my own curio...
I appreciate all the input, it's nice to see a forum where people actually help one another. While it is annoying to have 30k unnecessary pings a day in my firewall logs, I can just filter them out in the future. I did notice during some packet inspection that all of the Orbi satellites are also pinging the router, however blocking these doesn't seem to cause the Orbi to reboot for some reason, so I'll just leave those blocked.
Thanks everyone, see you all next time I have an obscure networking question.
So just to follow up, I signed up for the beta firmware, but there's no indication anywhere of when/if I'll get a download, where it would be located, etc. Anyone know?
F_V wrote:So just to follow up, I signed up for the beta firmware, but there's no indication anywhere of when/if I'll get a download, where it would be located, etc. Anyone know?
I signed up as well, but never heard anything, but I thought it might be because my issue got picked up by an open support case and they gave me the beta.
Last week Xfinity started upgrading the network in our area which is causing all sorts of disruptions. The new firmware seems to be tolerating it well enough, but it makes any consistent testing all but impossible. And I dropped back into AP mode because dealing with Xfinity support with their modem in Bridge mode just confuses them to the point that it's better to run the thing as a router until they get through this upgrade. Most of their front-line support have no idea how things work and they just follow a "support script" - pretty sad, but this is pervasive now in the support realm in almost any industry. I tip my hat to the surprisingly excellent support I got from Netgear once it got escalated beyond the "script person". 🙂
At any rate, I have just blocked ICMP on both IPv4 and IPv6 on the xFi Router. No indication the Orbi rebooted, but several IoT devices went offline for a sec but came right back up. I'll let you know how it goes over the next few hours.
FYI, I have not experienced any issues or random 960 reboots after having blocked ICMP for over 24 hours. I am going to restore the xFi firewall now to the defaults. I don't know if this is conclusive or not, but at least in my setup and the beta firmware I'm running, ICMP isn't causing an obvious problem.
For you all that tried blocking ICMP to the Orbi in AP Mode and haven't had it reboot, are you on the new beta firmware? I'm on V6.3.7.10_3.3.3 and just tried it again, blocked ICMP to the Orbi and the Orbi and all satellite connctions drop offline within 10 seconds, then it reboots (I assume it's rebooting as the ssid, guest ssid, and IoT ssid all show up for a bit then it applies my config of only ssid active), connects, then disconnects again and starts over the cycle. I think it's strange that others with the same firmware are getting different results. Also kinda curious why the Orbi is CONSTANTLY pinging the downstream router., like on the order of 50+ per minute.
Did you get the beta FW?
