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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...
26 Replies
2 hours in, my iPad Pro 2024 has dropped IPv6. First bug.
Yeah this is a fail. I can’t get the iPad to reconnect on IPv6. I have tried stopping and starting Wi-Fi, hard reset of the iPad, and even a forget and rejoin at the network. In settings, it shows no router for IPv6.
I am disabling IPv6 on the router again. One of six tests is a fail.
I just went in and tested my iPhone, which has just been sitting on my desk. It has no IPv6 connection now either. This is no better, it may even be worse than before. It didn’t usually fail this quickly.
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:
Looking good. Fingers crossed.
I am seeing something weird with this new firmware. Tonight, I keep getting the red light on my router, app showing router offline, but my Roku continues to stream, my computer continues to stream, but on that same computer I cannot go to websites, even though I am streaming Spectrum on it. Certain devices offline. Red light of router on/off on/off and various intervals. I submitted a bug report to Ssu-Tuan via email. Error page on Edge says it can't find DNS.
Didn't have this behavior on previous firmware.
I am 9 days in. Things seem better with this version of firmware, but there is work to do on the four major issues I have suffered from. I have power cycled but have not done a full factory reset.
Summary so far:
- IPv6 - as noted above - had to disable, not working on Apple iPhone and iPad;
- Flips to cellular when on WiFi - I have had 2 occurrences of this, the first was day two and the second was day 8, so the frequency is much less so far - plus I have been testing and looking for this.
- Memory creep on Orbis - nothing obvious so far, but I am starting to get suspicious of one satellite 970 (which is the one that crashed, see below) - it has slowly moved from ~605MB used to 630MB. I only check it once a day and mem usage jumps around, but this will become obvious or not in the next 2 weeks.
- Restarts due to crashes - one unfortunately. I sent the logs in. According to the logs the restart happened overnight about 4 days ago, a kernel panic crash.
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.
Question:
What method are you using to determine memory creep? also how do you determine whether a crash was caused by memory leak? thanks for the eductation...m
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.
Many thanks for sharing with me. It's very interesting...m
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.
Same here:
asic Information
Firmware Version: V9.13.1.2_1.3.24
Boot Loader Version: 2016.01_rtm-9.6.0.2
seal: v2.2.6-0-g7fde0b86
armor-bd: v2.2.214.4
spc-circle: v3.32.0.4
guster: v1.0.0.2049
CPU Load: 5.90%
Available Memory/Total Memory: 1012 MB/1743 MB
System Uptime: 15 days 17:47:33
Though my RBS are now ETH connected. IPv6 diabled and do have Apple and Android devices. Only one WiFi7 Android phone.
Well apart from my google devices loosing internet a few times per day everything else seems ok so far my fingers are still cross
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 Information
Device: RBE971 WiFi Access Point
Firmware Version: V9.13.1.2_1.3.24
Boot Loader Version: 2016.01_rtm-9.6.0.2
seal: v2.2.6-0-g7fde0b86
armor-bd: v2.2.214.4
spc-circle: v3.32.0.4
guster: v1.0.0.2049
CPU Load: 4.80%
Available Memory/Total Memory: 1052 MB/1743 MB
System Uptime: 29 days 00:47:14
*********************************************************************************************************************************
Satellite Debug Screen Information for Satellite # 1
IP Address is: 192.168.1.101
Device: RBE970
Firmware Version :V9.13.1.2
CPU Load :11.24%
Memory Usage(Used/Total) :605 MB/1743 MB
System Uptime :29 days 0:47:48
Hop Count :1
Bootloader Version :U-Boot 2016.01_rtm-9.6.0.2 (May 27 2023 - 00:22:49 +0000)
*********************************************************************************************************************************
Satellite Debug Screen Information for Satellite # 2
IP Address is: 192.168.1.102
Device: RBE970
Firmware Version :V9.13.1.2
CPU Load :9.14%
Memory Usage(Used/Total) :600 MB/1743 MB
System Uptime :29 days 0:48:8
Hop Count :1
Bootloader Version :U-Boot 2016.01_rtm-9.6.0.2 (May 27 2023 - 00:22:49 +0000)
*********************************************************************************************************************************Would you post this here please?
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