I installed 9.13.1.2 on two 971s and a 970 Orbi router tonight. I am looking to test 6 basic issues I have seen on the 970 series; some of these may take days or even weeks to surface. But my test list is: Do late model devices (iPhones, iPads, Macs) maintain IPv6 connectivity? iPhone flipping to 5G cellular where it should have a strong WiFi signal in the house Memory creep on router or satellites, resulting eventually in a crash Router/satellite crashes unrelated to memory creep Phantom devices showing up in router and Orbi app device list - devices that were in the house in the past, showing up as "connected" until a reboot clears them. Weird reporting in router device list - showing every device as Wired, connected to the wrong Orbi, etc. The first 4 points are the most serious. I turned IPv6 back on, on the router, to test #1. Hopefully this is part of the "connectivity" issues fixed in this release. If the Orbis prove to be stable re: restart/crashes, I will turn logging back on and see if that causes crashes. It usually did within 3-7 days. So far after my initial update to this version of FW: IPv6 working on 4 devices (2 Mac, iPhone, iPad) Speeds, wired and wireless, are fine Packet loss/latency, Jitter report fine - nothing odd showing in the modem log I did about a 5 minute walk-around the house with my iPhone, no flips to 5G - yet I could never make it happen in the past, so time will tell. I'll update here over the days ahead as testing continues...

This FW has improved behavior with my iPhone 16, but not completely fixed it. It still drops occasionally when I'm between nodes, but the drops are less frequent. When I turn off and turn back on Wifi it connects and usually stays connected. Improved, yes, completely fixed, no.

It's early to declare victory, but in 3 days I have not had any memory creep situation on the 970s (which ends up in a crash/restart), or restarts independent of memory creep (which I have seen). I only had 1 flip to cellular 5G less than about 4 hours after upgrading to 9.13.1.2, but that was when I was testing IPv6, which is NOT ready for prime time (Netgear knows and is working on this) - so I disabled it. I did a power-cycle after disabling IPv6, and no flips to 5G cellular in 2 days. Memory creep can take up to 2-3 weeks to show up, but if I go 2 weeks with no flips to cellular/loss of WiFi in the house I would say they nailed it. This FW is solid otherwise for me - streaming, speed, latency, packet loss all perfect. Here is a mid-afternoon workday zoom call latency/pkt loss tracking result:

BedfordHome I am just checking it on the router and satellite debug pages once a day to get a basic trend. We have a utility that signs in, scrapes the debug page, and outputs the result - but I didn't want to introduce anything external to the monitoring process with new firmware. As for the restart - I ran a debug log from the router debug page - you get a zip file - expand it, there is a reason file in text along with a ton of other cryptic info. The reason file said "Kernel Panic crash" or something similar. While I do not know if that crash is due to memory creep, I have seen ones where, monitoring daily, the memory slowly grows from 600MB used to almost 800MB, and then I see a restart the next morning. It could be unrelated, it could just be some buffer being overwritten; that's why I report the memory creep and crashes separately for now.

I've had my 970 series (router + 2 satellites) up on 9.13.1.2 for 15 days now. No sign of memory creep on the router nor either satellite. No crashes/unexpected restarts. Please note that I am running with both satellites connected wirelessly, IPv6 disabled, and I have no Apple devices. CPU Usage on router remains under 5%, with CPU usage on Sat 1 sits between 11.3 - 11.5%, while Sat 2 sits between 8.7% to 8.9%. Both sats are connected using 5GHz+6GHz (WiFi7 MLO) bands.

Almost at 30 days (tomorrow will be 30) under 9.13.1.2 Pretty consistent - no memory creep, no drops, no reboots. No IPv6, no Apple devices, satellites are connected via WiFi. *********************************************************************************************************************************Router Debug Screen InformationDevice: RBE971 WiFi Access PointFirmware Version: V9.13.1.2_1.3.24Boot Loader Version: 2016.01_rtm-9.6.0.2seal: v2.2.6-0-g7fde0b86armor-bd: v2.2.214.4spc-circle: v3.32.0.4guster: v1.0.0.2049CPU Load: 4.80%Available Memory/Total Memory: 1052 MB/1743 MBSystem Uptime: 29 days 00:47:14*********************************************************************************************************************************Satellite Debug Screen Information for Satellite # 1IP Address is: 192.168.1.101Device: RBE970Firmware Version :V9.13.1.2CPU Load :11.24%Memory Usage(Used/Total) :605 MB/1743 MBSystem Uptime :29 days 0:47:48Hop Count :1Bootloader Version :U-Boot 2016.01_rtm-9.6.0.2 (May 27 2023 - 00:22:49 +0000)*********************************************************************************************************************************Satellite Debug Screen Information for Satellite # 2IP Address is: 192.168.1.102Device: RBE970Firmware Version :V9.13.1.2CPU Load :9.14%Memory Usage(Used/Total) :600 MB/1743 MBSystem Uptime :29 days 0:48:8Hop Count :1Bootloader Version :U-Boot 2016.01_rtm-9.6.0.2 (May 27 2023 - 00:22:49 +0000)*********************************************************************************************************************************

donawalt

Mentor - Experienced User

Jun 24, 2025

Installed 9.13.1.2 - initial results (positive)

I installed 9.13.1.2 on two 971s and a 970 Orbi router tonight. I am looking to test 6 basic issues I have seen on the 970 series; some of these may take days or even weeks to surface. But my test list is:

Do late model devices (iPhones, iPads, Macs) maintain IPv6 connectivity?
iPhone flipping to 5G cellular where it should have a strong WiFi signal in the house
Memory creep on router or satellites, resulting eventually in a crash
Router/satellite crashes unrelated to memory creep
Phantom devices showing up in router and Orbi app device list - devices that were in the house in the past, showing up as "connected" until a reboot clears them.
Weird reporting in router device list - showing every device as Wired, connected to the wrong Orbi, etc.

The first 4 points are the most serious.

I turned IPv6 back on, on the router, to test #1. Hopefully this is part of the "connectivity" issues fixed in this release.

If the Orbis prove to be stable re: restart/crashes, I will turn logging back on and see if that causes crashes. It usually did within 3-7 days.

So far after my initial update to this version of FW:

IPv6 working on 4 devices (2 Mac, iPhone, iPad)
Speeds, wired and wireless, are fine
Packet loss/latency, Jitter report fine - nothing odd showing in the modem log
I did about a 5 minute walk-around the house with my iPhone, no flips to 5G - yet I could never make it happen in the past, so time will tell.

I'll update here over the days ahead as testing continues...

orbi 970 series

26 Replies

donawalt
Mentor - Experienced User
Jul 17, 2025
Interesting TC_in_Montana - of course you are missing 3 big trouble spots with no Apple devices, Iv6, and no hard-wired satellites 😁
- FURRYe38
  Guru - Experienced User
  Jul 17, 2025
  I saw now issues with my Older Apple devices and ethernet connected RBS. Ya, no IPv6 here. System went 19+ days uptime.
Mooose
Luminary
Jul 27, 2025
Cool. Jumping in, hoping not to brick yet another Orbi system. Fingers crossed.
- Mooose
  Luminary
  Jul 31, 2025
  So far so good, iPhone 16 Pro connection does seem more stable, no new issues as far as I can tell. 👍
donawalt
Mentor - Experienced User
Jul 27, 2025
Hi Mooose welcome to the thread! I forgot about this thread, let us know how it goes. I have been on this release 34 days now, and I am going on 18 since I had to restart anything. This is a better FW release than the prior one, but it's not perfect yet. I'll update my "6 issues" to help if you have trouble with any of these issues. Netgear is continuing to work on this firmware, hopefully we see something sooner vs. later!

My issues status:

1) Do late model devices (iPhones, iPads, Macs) maintain IPv6 connectivity? NO - IPv6 has "issues". Acknowledged by Netgear. I have disabled it until they say it's working, as I have nothing that specifically needs it right now. I think having IPv6 disabled has contributed to overall stability(especially being a contributor to issue #2) too!

2) iPhone flipping to 5G cellular where it should have a strong WiFi signal in the house - still an issue. I have had over 2 weeks of use with no disconnects by setting any late model (Wifi 6, 6E or 7) devices to use a 'manual' ip address and manual dns server address. (Note - this is NOT the same as creating reservations on the router - that still uses dhcp, and the solution appears to be eliminating dhcp from being used by these devices). This requires IPv6 to be disabled, since with Apple devices I cannot change IPv6/DNS addressing to manual.

3) Memory creep on router or satellites, resulting eventually in a crash - So far so good; I am monitoring this one, no significant growth in memory used by the satellites in the last 9 days.

4) Router/satellite crashes unrelated to memory creep -had 1 of these crashes early on, there didn't seem to be any memory creep going on prior. It was a panic crash per the log.

5) Phantom devices showing up in router and Orbi app device list - devices that were in the house in the past, showing up as "connected" until a reboot clears them. - None - monitoring

6) Weird reporting in router device list - showing every device as Wired, connected to the wrong Orbi, etc. - I have not seen all devices reported as wired, but I did discover a bug that if you take a device using automatic IP/DNS and change it to manual per #2 above, after its lease expires, or the devices drops connectivity due to leaving the house then coming back etc., it will be reported as 'wired' from then on.

So all in all much better - #2, #3, #4 are the three most serious issues that are very disruptive to WiFi use in the house, and they are either working fine or there is a suitable workaround. #1 can be eliminated by disabling it. #5 and #6 are cosmetic once you know what's going on.

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Installed 9.13.1.2 - initial results (positive)