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Knowledge Base Article
Cell phone flipping celllular/disconnecting when on WiFi? Read this for possible solution!
Technical Analysis and Repeatable Evidence of DHCP/Routing Bug in Netgear Orbi 971 (Router Mode)
Summary of Issue
In environments using the Orbi systems in router mode, certain iOS/iPadOS devices (tested: iPhone 16 Pro Max and iPad Pro 2024) sporadically exhibit a failure state in which the device:
- Remains physically connected to the Orbi Wi‑Fi network (SSID displays as connected),
- Maintains a strong Wi‑Fi signal with excellent throughput (700–1200 Mbps),
- Yet silently fails over to the cellular interface (e.g., 5G), with no data traversing the Wi‑Fi path.
- Disable IPv6 on the router
- Go to your router admin web page, Advanced tab, LAN Setup, and change your DHCP range to something like 192.168.1.2 starting, 192.168.1.150 ending. This is to make room to create some manual address(es) outside the DHCP range, to avoid collisions; one for each device experiencing dropouts. The assumes your router IP address is 192.168.1.1.
- Go into settings for your iPhone WIFI connection, and for each device set a MANUAL IP address to something like 192.168.1.152 (or later; anything above your DHCP pool range set in #2), subnet 255.255.255.0, router 192.168.1.1.
- On the same page on your iPhone WiFi connection, set a MANUAL DNS address - add two routers there. Choose Google (8.8.8.8, 4.4.4.4), Cloudfare (1.1.1.3, 1.0.0.3), or another external DNS server of your choice. DO NOT point it to the router at 192.168.1.1. By steps 3 and 4 we are eliminating DNS/DHCP conversation between the phone and router.
- Do these steps on any other device seeing connection drops/flips to cellular. But start with your phone as a test case.
- Wait to see the WiFi connection icon at the top right of your phone, then test the connection via Speediest or browser to ensure all is set up and working ok!
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