RBE971 AP: Wi-Fi drops, wired stable, QCN9224 SSR & 6GHz fatal errors

Hello Travisivart,

Welcome to the NETGEAR Community!

Thank you for bringing this to our attention! 

I will personally endorse you to our experts to further investigate these claims. Please send me a private message with a link to the logs that you would like to share. 

Best,

Kevin

NETGEAR Team

I am having quite similar issues, that I believe also began with the update to the V9.13.2.1_1.3.35 firmware (although I cannot be 100% certain of this).  

Network Topology

• Model Orbi RBE971 operating in Router mode behind a cable modem using the V9.13.2.1_1.3.35 firmware 
• 3 RBE970 Satellites not hardwired using same firmware version.   
• RBE971 provides internal DHCP/routing

Symptoms

• My symptoms are also Wi‑Fi only.
  
  
• On average about once every day, (or 2-3 days at the most) all 3 satellites disconnect from the router at once, all Wi-Fi clients disconnect at the same time, and there doesn't appear to be any Wi-Fi being broadcast from the router.    This occurs at random times of the day (at first I thought it might be a scheduled thing or something one of the clients was doing to trigger it on a regular basis, but the times are definitely random).   

• When the event occurs I usually will gracefully reboot the router via the web management interface and then the satellites will reconnect (occasionally one of them has to be rebooted as well but usually they will reconnect organically after the router reboot).    I have not waited long enough to observe the Wi-Fi radios restarting on theirown/Satellites reconnecting without a router reboot.    The longest I have tolerated waiting to see if that occurs is 10-15 minutes, but so far it has not in my case.    
   
• Ethernet continues working, wired devices remain connected throughout (outside of when the RBE971 is rebooted of course), and also the RBE971 remains reachable via wired (web) management during events (as well as via anywhere access through the app via cellular coming in from external), again apart from the duration of the manual reboot.   

What the logs show

• The web management interface logs do not show anything leading up to and immediately prior to the event other than normal DHCP lease renewal events.   I have not attempted to gather anything via shell access outside of the the web management gui.   

Questions:   I too am extremely interested in the same things travisivart asked:

• Is this a known issue with V9.13.2.1_1.3.35? 
• Are there recommended mitigations while waiting for a fix (disable 6 GHz, disable MLO/Wi‑Fi 7 features, reduce channel width, etc.)?
• Is there a newer firmware (or a known-stable prior version that I can downgrade to) that addresses QCN9224 SSR / WLFW disconnect issues?

Needless to say this is extremely frustrating, and my family is quite irritated with the entire thing and are ready to throw the Orbis in the trash and get something more reliable from somewhere else.   I am not yet at that point since this was a costly upgrade from the RBK50 and I don't want to eat the cost of switching yet again, but I did keep the old hardware *just in case I needed something to fall back to and that is looking more and more like an option, at least until there's some confirmation that new firmware fixes this (or I can downgrade to more stable firmware).     

What is the brand and model# of the Cable modem?     
Motorola Docsis 3.1 MB8611

What all devices are connected to the system? 

A mixture of normal home devices.   Windows and Mac systems, phones, a printer, apple TVs, a thermostat.    The Satellites and a couple of the devices I have given (internal) static IPs outside of the DHCP range.     I have one or two things on the IoT network. 

Is IPv6 enabled on the RBR?   
No

Happens with out the RBS turned ON? 

Have not and will not try running without the Satellites for any length of time waiting for the issue.    That is not really an option.    

Size of home in sq feet please? 

2500 ish not including garage/patio/exterior.   I know this question relates to if the satellites are stepping on each other/placed too close.   They are mainly in opposite sides of the house although I have tinkered with placements here and there.    The furthest one is on the complete opposite corner of the house with many walls in between it and the router and is usually daisy chained, it was obtained to try and improve fairly poor performance in the farthest area away from the router.     Changing the position of the router in relation isn't really a viable option.    

Try downgrading FW to see if this issue continues? 
The netgear support/firmware downloads page is 404.    Where are older FW to obtain?   The reason for posting was in the hopes that netgear support was going to post an answer to Travisivart's questions

Channels used on the RBR? 

For 2.4GHz - auto.   IoT network 2.4GHz only.    For 5GHz I have tried 40, 44, 48 and even tried a couple of the DFS channels as well just to see if anything changed.    The problem has persisted across each and no I don't live near known radar sources.       
I have tried 20/40MHz Coexistence on and off.   I normally have it on.    
I have tried Long Preamble and Auto.    
I have tried MLO 240 on and off.
No change in symptoms when the event occurs.    


Has a factory reset been performed since last FW update? This should be performed if it hasn't been yet. 

Factory resets were done on the Satellites but not on the RBR.   Frankly that is an annoyance and one that shouldn't really be necessary as a default go-to "have you done this yet" troubleshooting step after any/every firmware update on such an expensive piece of gear just in the off chance that solves the problem.   A problem with very similar symptoms to travisivarts.     If the problem can be solved via a firmware upgrade/downgrade or another mitigation in the settings as travisivart asked then I'd rather save factory reset as a last resort.    And tbh If I reach that point then I'm about one repeat of the problem away from ditching orbi/netgear forever for something more reliable.    

An update to my situation if anyone cares.    Also - sorry to Travisivart for inadvertently hijacking his initial thread.   

Over the past week with much troubleshoot and testing, I believe I have narrowed down the specific trigger of my systems issue (which manifests the same as travisivarts by the way, that the router's wifi radios appear to all cut off simultaneously), which then leads to the satellites all becoming immediately disconnected.    A reboot of the router at that point is necessary to restore wifi functionality in a timely fashion.

This issue occurs specifically only during a cold boot of one particular machine that has been utilizing wifi on my network.     When this machine is warm rebooted, the issue apparently does not occur (although I only tested that one time), nor does it occur when wifi is turned off completely and it is hardwired directly to a satellite via ethernet.      Upon startup during a cold boot, the wifi on that system will never connect, and when I observe the router the wifi radios appear to be off, all satellites disconnect, but there is nothing in the logs captured via the web interface.    Anything hardwired to the router is still functional via ethernet.    The machine in question has AMD's RZ717 Wi-Fi 7 hardware on the motherboard and has the 5.6.0.4444 driver for that wifi module installed, which was released I believe in the october/november timeframe.    

Testing done

The issue occurs the same on firmware versions:

9.13.2.1
9.13.1.2
9.12.5.3

The issue occurs the same regardless of satellite placements within my home
The issue occurs the same with 3, 2 or only 1 satellite connected.    I did not test with 0 Satellites connected and only the router however. 

I did not downgrade the wifi driver on the machine in question.     

Mitigation:
As mentioned earlier that machine is now set up with wifi fully disabled and only connected via ethernet to one of the satellites.    It has gone through a couple of cold boot cycles with no adverse impacts.    When AMD next updates the wifi driver for that module, I may test again to see if the conflict with the Orbi remains but otherwise am going to keep things like this in the hopes of having some stability, finally.