Orbi 772 backhaul through MoCa

My sense is that the root of the problem the Orbi satellite not appearing to be connected to the Orbi router LAN ports.  This situation has appeared many times on the Forum, usually in terms of connecting the router and satellites to an Ethernet switch that is in turn connected to the primary router.  (In this instance, the coax cable is equivalent to a layer 2 Ethernet switch.)

Both the router and satellite will broadcast DHCP requests for IP addresses, which the primary router will respond to.  Clients can be connected to both the router and satellite, and will get IP assignments through DHCP (from the primary router) and will have internet access.  However, as far as the router is concerned, there is NO satellite connected to any of its LAN ports, and thus it is totally unaware of the satellite.

Here is an experiment that should validate this hypothesis:

• Locate the Orbi router and satellite in the same room as the TP-Link router (temporarily, for this experiment)
• Create a local network using either:
  o A simple unmanaged Ethernet switch, or
  o Some coax cable and three MoCA adapters.  No need for any splitters.
• Connect the TP-Link router, the Orbi router WAN port, and the Orbi satellite LAN port to this network. i.e.
  o either connect to the switch using Ethernet cables, or
  o connect to the three MoCA adapters using Ethernet cables

What I predict will result is a network which will appear to "work" in the sense that devices can connect to the Orbi router and Orbi satellite and function normally, except that

• The Orbi router will report that there is no satellite connected.
• If you attempted to update the firmware on the satellite, it would fail because there is no satellite connected

Could Netgear have programmed the Orbi system in a way that allows the satellite to connect to the router through the router WAN port?  Probably.  Did they?  I think not.