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Forum Discussion
Device flipping to celllular/disconnecting when on WiFi? Read this for possible solution!
Technical Analysis and Repeatable Evidence of DHCP/Routing Bug in Netgear Orbi 971 (Router Mode)
Summary of Issue
In environments using the Orbi 971 system in router mode, certain iOS/iPadOS ...
Has your issue above continued to be resolved with the modifications to the config as detailed in your first post? I believe I have the same issue with my iPhone 16 Pro Max when connected to my Orbi 963. I wondered if getting the 970 series would resolve it, and it seems not, or maybe, now?
Hi WilliamGr I had to make one slight mod to the solution in my post. Instead of the manual DNS being the router at 192.168.1.1, I made it an external server - I used Cloudfare, 1.1.1.3, 1.0.0.3. You could use Google or any DNS servers of your choice. I still had flips to 5G, and I realized DHCP/DNS was still in play until I stopped using the router entirely.
Now that being said, I do still see about 1 flip to 5G a week. It's only on my iPhone 16 Pro that supports MLO/5GHz+6GHz connections; it's a problem with managing the simultaneous connections of the 5GHz and 6GHz bands. But it's a lot less now.
Unfortunately there is not a reliable way to turn off 6E on the iPhone 16, it favors that band so even if you change the setting WiFi 6E from automatic to Off, it will flip it back on at times. I also tried moving the iPhone to a dedicated IoT network, nothing else on it, since that only supports WiFi 5 - but again, the device favors 6E connections, so even if the main 6E network is 'forgotten', with the SSID/password in the Apple password keychain, it will grab it and connect there! I could have deleted the password from the keychain, but it's not worth the trouble.
On the 960 series, it does not support this WiFi 7 MLO technology, so I would not go to a 970 without trying this solution on your phone first. Here are my updated instructions, try it on your 963 and report back!
- Disable IPv6 on the router
- Go to your router admin web page, Advanced tab, LAN Setup, and change your DHCP range to something like 192.168.1.2 starting, 192.168.1.150 ending. This is to make room to create some manual address(es) outside the DHCP range, to avoid collisions; one for each device experiencing dropouts. The assumes your router IP address is 192.168.1.1.
- Go into settings for your iPhone WIFI connection, and for each device set a MANUAL IP address to something like 192.168.1.152 (or later; anything above your DHCP pool range set in #2), subnet 255.255.255.0, router 192.168.1.1.
- On the same page on your iPhone WiFi connection, set a MANUAL DNS address - add two routers there. Choose Google (8.8.8.8, 4.4.4.4), Cloudfare (1.1.1.3, 1.0.0.3), or another external DNS server of your choice. DO NOT point it to the router at 192.168.1.1. By steps 3 and 4 we are eliminating DNS/DHCP conversation between the phone and router.
- Do these steps on any other device seeing connection drops/flips to cellular. But start with your phone as a test case.
- Wait to see the WiFi connection icon at the top right of your phone, then test the connection via Speediest or browser to ensure all is set up and working ok!
See how that works. By ensuring there is no DNS/DHCP messaging with the router on either IPv4 or IPv6, for me the drops have 95% gone away.