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

Hi all, I am looking for help/visibility from Netgear staff/engineering. I have been having this issue since around the time of the 

Hardware / Firmware

• Model: Orbi RBE971 (single unit used as Access Point)
• Firmware: V9.13.2.1_1.3.35

Network Topology

• RBE971 is in AP mode behind OPNsense
• OPNsense provides routing, DHCP, DNS
• Symptom is Wi‑Fi only; Ethernet continues working and the AP remains reachable via wired management during events

Symptoms

• Randomly, all wireless bands/SSIDs drop simultaneously (2.4/5/6 GHz)
• All Wi‑Fi clients disconnect at the same time
• Wired clients remain stable; no full device reboot observed
• After some time, Wi‑Fi comes back 

What I have gathered

Two debug bundles taken around Dec 24, 2025 (to compare behavior across captures)

What the logs show (high level)

The kernel/driver logs strongly suggest the AP is not rebooting; instead the Qualcomm Wi‑Fi subsystem/radios are resetting:

• Repeated “SSR” (subsystem restart) events from the Wi‑Fi driver (e.g., ol_ath_wifi_ssr)
• CNSS transitioning radios to OFF / shutdown
• “QMI WLFW service disconnected” (Wi‑Fi firmware service disconnect)
• Remote processor stops for the Wi‑Fi radios (e.g., “stopped remote processor QCN9224_PCI0/1/2”)
• 6 GHz-related fatal teardown errors during/around the SSR sequence (e.g., “6ghz … Fatal error: Invalid l_soc_id …”)
• After this, there are repeated recovery-loop messages indicating Wi‑Fi interfaces/SSIDs are “not ready / not found/up” and it keeps looping until they return (this aligns with the “all SSIDs disappear” user experience)

Why I think this is the root cause

The events above are consistent with a radio/firmware crash → subsystem restart (SSR) → recovery scripts restart Wi‑Fi, which would drop all Wi‑Fi clients while Ethernet stays up.

Questions for Netgear / community

• Is this a known issue on V9.13.2.1_1.3.35 (especially involving 6 GHz / Wi‑Fi 7 / MLO paths)?
• 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 addresses QCN9224 SSR / WLFW disconnect issues?
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I can provide the debug bundles to Netgear support/engineering if needed; please advise what additional logging would be most helpful.