This week I was away on holidays and was hoping I could rely on my HomeAssistant based security system with motion sensors / cameras etc. Many of these rely on WiFi / Internet.
However two days before I came back I noticed I couldn't connect to my home network from away, and I was notified that my google nest devices were offline so they were no longer reporting back to Google that they were alive. When I got home I found that the WiFi in the house was gone offline and all of my Orbis, 1 RBR750 + 2 Satellites with latest firmware V7.2.6.21_5.0.20 had turned solid purple.
After plugging each one out and back in, they all connected up to the internet just fine and everything came back online again.
My questions are
1) How can I debug what happened here. After I rebooted them, and now a few hours later I find no Admin logs going back far enough to see what happened. Is the solid purple color enough to indicate it was just that the Orbis somehow lost internet connectivity or should some logs exist somewhere other than the Administration->Log in the UI that go back a few days to help debug this?
2) Why when a physical power off/on fixes the issue immediately, why can't the Orbis internally do something similar, either reboot themselves, or try to simply reconnect to the internet if the link goes down. My assumption can only be that they do try to reconnect but some firmware bug causes this retry/reconnection to not work. If they had some sort of option to reboot after x minutes of no internet it could mitigate this issue, if it can't be fixed with a firmware update. Better yet if it can be fixed, that would remove the need for such a reboot option.
All inputs are welcome. I can share any logs with the developers if interested to look to fix this. Or if any options that I'm not aware of are available to reboot under such conditions I will definitely turn them on.
After plugging each one out and back in, they all connected up to the internet just fine and everything came back online again.
"Plugging" refers to the electrical power? (not any of the Ethernet cables)
Was the ISP device (cable modem or fiber ONT) power cycled as well?
As you have noticed, rebooting the Orbi router clears the Log file. It would have been interesting to see if the log contained anything prior to pulling the plug, but with the entire network down most of us would be more interested in getting the networking again than in investigating things.
Is there any way to determine if there was an electrical power outage during that time? (My UPS, for example, reports the data/time/duration of power interruptions.)
Very frustrating situation since the system is already supposed to react to disruptions:
If the power goes out and then resumes, the router should reconnect to the internet.
If the ISP connection fails and then resumes, the router should then reconnect.
After plugging each one out and back in, they all connected up to the internet just fine and everything came back online again.
"Plugging" refers to the electrical power? (not any of the Ethernet cables)
Was the ISP device (cable modem or fiber ONT) power cycled as well?
As you have noticed, rebooting the Orbi router clears the Log file. It would have been interesting to see if the log contained anything prior to pulling the plug, but with the entire network down most of us would be more interested in getting the networking again than in investigating things.
Is there any way to determine if there was an electrical power outage during that time? (My UPS, for example, reports the data/time/duration of power interruptions.)
Very frustrating situation since the system is already supposed to react to disruptions:
If the power goes out and then resumes, the router should reconnect to the internet.
If the ISP connection fails and then resumes, the router should then reconnect.
Yes plugging in this case means electrically powering the system on and off. I didn't power cycle anything else, just the three orbis. So to me something within the Orbi firmware or options could/should have gotten around this in my opinion. What do you think?
I have some strange feeling the underlying linux kernel or something is affecting these devices in general. My ISP router (which I no longer use) would last about 1 week before going into this state and need a reboot. My google wifi used to last maybe 2 to 4 weeks before needing a reboot. The Orbi in fairness has lasted much longer but it does seem perhaps roughly (very roughly) every few months needs a reboot. I would love if it was even more robust and in circumstances like this is also having some feature to reboot itself assuming theres some weird underlying kernel issue.
I'm thinking back to my days in SunOS where there was the concept of a watchdog that could in exceptional circumstances, reboot a process when it wasn't behaving well. I think in this case it might remove the human from the equation and maybe have a concept like backing up some admin log as part of its reboot process to eventually help fix the underlying issue but essentially reduce the downtime on the user.
Edit: I can tell from my Home Assistant VM that it wasn't a full power outage at least as it stayed powered on during the Orbi outage.
My ancient RBR50 Orbi has gone six months without losing service (until Edison favored us with a power outage to "upgrade equipment")
You are correct that for a long time it was generally accepted that rebooting computer devices every so often was a good idea. (My security cameras have an automatic reboot option of once a week or every day.) Older Netgear routers may have had a reboot option as well (much as they defaulted to different SSIDs for 2.4G and 5G WiFi channels) None of the Orbi products have such a feature. In my case, enabling such a feature would wreak havoc on things. So many things in my house rely on constant internet that deliberately pausing the connection would result in chaos.
If this happens again, it might be worth taking a few minutes to determine:
My ancient RBR50 Orbi has gone six months without losing service (until Edison favored us with a power outage to "upgrade equipment")
You are correct that for a long time it was generally accepted that rebooting computer devices every so often was a good idea. (My security cameras have an automatic reboot option of once a week or every day.) Older Netgear routers may have had a reboot option as well (much as they defaulted to different SSIDs for 2.4G and 5G WiFi channels) None of the Orbi products have such a feature. In my case, enabling such a feature would wreak havoc on things. So many things in my house rely on constant internet that deliberately pausing the connection would result in chaos.
If this happens again, it might be worth taking a few minutes to determine:
Whether the internal LAN is still functional.
If anything appears in the Orbi log.
Well I can tell a lot from HomeAssistant VM actually. It shows a good insight into what went offline from its point of view. It itself is wired directly into the Orbi via direct wired LAN. I can see connectivity to wired devices like my Living Room Sky box and other wired devices remained fine throughout the outage. It seems only wireless devices started to have issues from both HomeAssistants view, from its logs, history view, as well as from Googles cloud point of view (reporting WiFi devices like doorbells and cameras were offline). So I guess the only thing missing is the orbi log. But as you suggest, its hard to get it if it doesn't survive reboots.
I suggest two immediate Orbi improvements.
1) Make logs survive at least one reboot so that circumstances like this are easier to debug for those who are not so lucky or technical that can get into the orbi logs before reboot.
2) If it is in any way common that this is a WiFi specific issue, and is not easy to fix, provide some option to restart the routers to get around it. I understand it doesn't make sense for everyone but for some users like me who just want a stable network, if a reboot is needed, it should be automatable while a fix is being looked into.
From observing the status of some of the more prominent suggestions, I do not have "warm feelings" about the prospects of suggestions resulting in action.
From observing the status of some of the more prominent suggestions, I do not have "warm feelings" about the prospects of suggestions resulting in action.
OK thanks for the suggestion. In my case its more than just "Google gizmos" reflecting no connectivity. When I came home, no mobile devices were connectable to the WiFi nor were our 60~ WiFi bulbs. I'll try via the idea exchange but I fear Orbi will fall into the same trap as my ISP and Google Wifi, slowly degrading to having no connectivity after x days / weeks but have no way to log / debug it to ever actually see it and eventually provide a fix.
Logged as an Idea but from looking through forum posts I realize there's a pattern of people seeing the same instability so ideally it should be a bug fix rather than worked around via this idea.
OK thanks for the suggestion. In my case its more than just "Google gizmos" reflecting no connectivity. When I came home, no mobile devices were connectable to the WiFi nor were our 60~ WiFi bulbs. I'll try via the idea exchange but I fear Orbi will fall into the same trap as my ISP and Google Wifi, slowly degrading to having no connectivity after x days / weeks but have no way to log / debug it to ever actually see it and eventually provide a fix.
Orbi systems should not need a reboot or power cycle. Router and MESH systems are designed to be online 24/7 with out failing. If there is a reboot or power cycle needed to resolve something, then the problem should be troubleshot and investigated to see where or what is causing the problem. If your saw this same issue with a different MESH system, then would be most likely something causing these systems to stop working.
Having 60 WiFi bulbs could be one cause.
Would need to know how many other wired and wireless devices you have connected as well. Along with all these bulbs connected, maybe slowly overloading the system.
How many RBS are deployed? What is the size of your home? Sq Ft? What is the distance between the router 📡 and satellite(s)🛰️? 30 feet or more is recommended in between RBR 📡 and RBS 🛰️ to begin with depending upon building materials when wired or wirelessly connected. https://kb.netgear.com/31029/Where-should-I-place-my-Orbi-satellite 🛰
What channel configurations are currently set on the router? Any WIFI Neighbors near by? If so, how many?
If you disconnected half of these bulbs, does the problem still happen?
Has a factory reset and setup from scratch been performed since last FW update?
Please post a screen capture of the RBR and RBS debug page information see at the IP address of the RBR and RBS/debug.htm
Particularly the CPU and memory usage and system uptime please.
OK thanks for the suggestion. In my case its more than just "Google gizmos" reflecting no connectivity. When I came home, no mobile devices were connectable to the WiFi nor were our 60~ WiFi bulbs. I'll try via the idea exchange but I fear Orbi will fall into the same trap as my ISP and Google Wifi, slowly degrading to having no connectivity after x days / weeks but have no way to log / debug it to ever actually see it and eventually provide a fix.
Orbi systems should not need a reboot or power cycle. Router and MESH systems are designed to be online 24/7 with out failing. If there is a reboot or power cycle needed to resolve something, then the problem should be troubleshot and investigated to see where or what is causing the problem. If your saw this same issue with a different MESH system, then would be most likely something causing these systems to stop working.
Having 60 WiFi bulbs could be one cause.
Would need to know how many other wired and wireless devices you have connected as well. Along with all these bulbs connected, maybe slowly overloading the system.
How many RBS are deployed? What is the size of your home? Sq Ft? What is the distance between the router 📡 and satellite(s)🛰️? 30 feet or more is recommended in between RBR 📡 and RBS 🛰️ to begin with depending upon building materials when wired or wirelessly connected. https://kb.netgear.com/31029/Where-should-I-place-my-Orbi-satellite 🛰
What channel configurations are currently set on the router? Any WIFI Neighbors near by? If so, how many?
If you disconnected half of these bulbs, does the problem still happen?
Has a factory reset and setup from scratch been performed since last FW update?
Please post a screen capture of the RBR and RBS debug page information see at the IP address of the RBR and RBS/debug.htm
Particularly the CPU and memory usage and system uptime please.
For the wifi bulbs, usually about half of these are powered on at any given time, the other half are physically switched off. When I was away on holidays about half, 30 would have been connected. They are all lifx brand (a mix of bulbs plus led strips).
Regarding wired devices that would have been on at the time, I would have had 1 PC wired (hosting an Unraid server with a HomeAssistant VM within it). I would have had one other Sky TV box also wired in, but asleep so it shouldn't have really being doing much. Everything else like two TVs and some Home Appliances (washing machine, dishwasher, dryer) would have also been on but asleep, and all using WiFi also.
I have one RBR and two RBS. The house is ~2200 sq ft. Both RBR and RBS are physically wired to eachother over the LAN. The RBR is in the garage about 50 feet from the house itself, with the other two RBS about 40 feet apart within the house, one in the downstairs corner, the other in the upstairs opposite corner.
Regarding performing tests like turning off half the bulbs, because it only randomly happens every few weeks/months, its near impossible to perform such a test realistically. I would almost need to see something like some internal stats from the router itself to notice something perhaps increasing over time slowly where I could almost see the issue about to occur and test based on that to see if any particular device helps.
For the WiFi channels, 2.4Ghz is set to channel 11, and 5ghz set to channel 36. Regarding neighbors, each side of ours there is another house, each about 60-70 meters away. Using WiFi analyzer on my android phone, I can sometimes pick up their WiFi ssids but they are very weak. At this very moment I can't pick them up where I am within the house but our WiFi speeds at least are always excellent, almost maxing our our 1Gig connection in most places within the house.
Yes the last FW automatic update caused the entire network to go down so I had to factory reset at the time. Attached screenshots of the debug page from the RBR and one of the RBS. For some reason my admin user/password is giving me a 401 error on the second RBS.
OK thanks for the suggestion. In my case its more than just "Google gizmos" reflecting no connectivity. When I came home, no mobile devices were connectable to the WiFi nor were our 60~ WiFi bulbs. I'll try via the idea exchange but I fear Orbi will fall into the same trap as my ISP and Google Wifi, slowly degrading to having no connectivity after x days / weeks but have no way to log / debug it to ever actually see it and eventually provide a fix.
Orbi systems should not need a reboot or power cycle. Router and MESH systems are designed to be online 24/7 with out failing. If there is a reboot or power cycle needed to resolve something, then the problem should be troubleshot and investigated to see where or what is causing the problem. If your saw this same issue with a different MESH system, then would be most likely something causing these systems to stop working.
Having 60 WiFi bulbs could be one cause.
Would need to know how many other wired and wireless devices you have connected as well. Along with all these bulbs connected, maybe slowly overloading the system.
How many RBS are deployed? What is the size of your home? Sq Ft? What is the distance between the router 📡 and satellite(s)🛰️? 30 feet or more is recommended in between RBR 📡 and RBS 🛰️ to begin with depending upon building materials when wired or wirelessly connected. https://kb.netgear.com/31029/Where-should-I-place-my-Orbi-satellite 🛰
What channel configurations are currently set on the router? Any WIFI Neighbors near by? If so, how many?
If you disconnected half of these bulbs, does the problem still happen?
Has a factory reset and setup from scratch been performed since last FW update?
Please post a screen capture of the RBR and RBS debug page information see at the IP address of the RBR and RBS/debug.htm
Particularly the CPU and memory usage and system uptime please.
Regarding connected devices, at any point only about half of the WiFi bulbs would be connected, the rest would be physically switched off. While away on holidays only about half, 30 would have been on. A few other wireless devices would also have been connected, but doing nothing like washing machine, dryer and dishwasher, as well as two TVs. For wired devices a Sky TV box would have been connected but again asleep. The only device that I believe might be doing something more meaningful would be the HomeAssistant PC that is wired into to the LAN. Its an Unraid server with a HomeAssistant VM on top.
Two RBS are connected to the RBR. Its a 2200 square foot house. The router is in the garage about 60 feet from the house, wired directly into the house LAN. The two RBS are within the house, spread as far as possible apart, approx 45 feet apart.
The 2.4Ghz is on channel 11 and 5ghz is on channel 36. There are two neighboring houses but quite far, about 60 meters away each. I can sometimes pick up their WiFi devices using a WiFi analyzer but at this very moment I can't. We consistently get great WiFi speeds of almost 1Gig, maxing out our Fibre connection.
Regarding performing any tests like disabling some bulbs, as it might take weeks/months to see if it has a result, it might not be practical. I think instead if there was a way to on an ongoing basis see if the running LAN/WiFi devices are doing something that could possibly / randomly stress the RBR/RBS out to the point that it requires a reboot, I can definitely monitor that. Is it simply cpu usage / memory usage that would help me know over time if its getting worse?
I did a factory reset of RBR and both RBS when I had the last firmware update as the network actually completely went down at the time.
Screen capture of one RBR and one RBS attached. The second RBS debug.htm page reports 401 even though the same user/password works for the RBR and the other RBS. Is 37% high for the RBR, given at the minute there's almost nothing happening in the house, no downloads, just me lightly browsing the internet.
Regarding connected devices, at any point only about half of the WiFi bulbs would be connected, the rest would be physically switched off. While away on holidays only about half, 30 would have been on. A few other wireless devices would also have been connected, but doing nothing like washing machine, dryer and dishwasher, as well as two TVs. For wired devices a Sky TV box would have been connected but again asleep. The only device that I believe might be doing something more meaningful would be the HomeAssistant PC that is wired into to the LAN. Its an Unraid server with a HomeAssistant VM on top.
So there would be no power running to these buibs for the ones that are physically switched OFF? Or are they on some kind of schedule to be switched off using there software program?
Two RBS are connected to the RBR. Its a 2200 square foot house. The router is in the garage about 60 feet from the house, wired directly into the house LAN. The two RBS are within the house, spread as far as possible apart, approx 45 feet apart.
Are these Two RBS wireless or ethernet wire connected to the RBR?
The 2.4Ghz is on channel 11 and 5ghz is on channel 36. There are two neighboring houses but quite far, about 60 meters away each. I can sometimes pick up their WiFi devices using a WiFi analyzer but at this very moment I can't. We consistently get great WiFi speeds of almost 1Gig, maxing out our Fibre connection.
Something to try, set manual channel 1 and 40 on the RBR.
Regarding performing any tests like disabling some bulbs, as it might take weeks/months to see if it has a result, it might not be practical. I think instead if there was a way to on an ongoing basis see if the running LAN/WiFi devices are doing something that could possibly / randomly stress the RBR/RBS out to the point that it requires a reboot, I can definitely monitor that. Is it simply cpu usage / memory usage that would help me know over time if its getting worse?
I did a factory reset of RBR and both RBS when I had the last firmware update as the network actually completely went down at the time.
Screen capture of one RBR and one RBS attached. The second RBS debug.htm page reports 401 even though the same user/password works for the RBR and the other RBS. Is 37% high for the RBR, given at the minute there's almost nothing happening in the house, no downloads, just me lightly browsing the internet.
Ok so the one RBS looks ok, however RBR CPU usage is moderately high and wondering if this maybe creeping upwards and getting to a point if it gets too high, caused the problem you saw before you returned home. CPU should not be this high.
Need to gain access to the 2nd RBS and capture debug page info on it. Try a power OFF of the RBS for 1 minute then back ON. Wait for it to complete syncing to the RBR and try the debug page again.
How many devices does each RBS show being connected to them and what does the RBR show for devices connected to it?
Is IPv6, Armor, Access Controls, Smart Parental controls or Traffic Meter enabled on the RBR?
What is the Mfr and model# of the Internet Service Providers modem/ONT the NG router is connected too? Be sure your using a good quality LAN cable between the modem and router. CAT6A STP is recommended.
Regarding connected devices, at any point only about half of the WiFi bulbs would be connected, the rest would be physically switched off. While away on holidays only about half, 30 would have been on. A few other wireless devices would also have been connected, but doing nothing like washing machine, dryer and dishwasher, as well as two TVs. For wired devices a Sky TV box would have been connected but again asleep. The only device that I believe might be doing something more meaningful would be the HomeAssistant PC that is wired into to the LAN. Its an Unraid server with a HomeAssistant VM on top.
So there would be no power running to these buibs for the ones that are physically switched OFF? Or are they on some kind of schedule to be switched off using there software program?
Two RBS are connected to the RBR. Its a 2200 square foot house. The router is in the garage about 60 feet from the house, wired directly into the house LAN. The two RBS are within the house, spread as far as possible apart, approx 45 feet apart.
Are these Two RBS wireless or ethernet wire connected to the RBR?
The 2.4Ghz is on channel 11 and 5ghz is on channel 36. There are two neighboring houses but quite far, about 60 meters away each. I can sometimes pick up their WiFi devices using a WiFi analyzer but at this very moment I can't. We consistently get great WiFi speeds of almost 1Gig, maxing out our Fibre connection.
Something to try, set manual channel 1 and 40 on the RBR.
Regarding performing any tests like disabling some bulbs, as it might take weeks/months to see if it has a result, it might not be practical. I think instead if there was a way to on an ongoing basis see if the running LAN/WiFi devices are doing something that could possibly / randomly stress the RBR/RBS out to the point that it requires a reboot, I can definitely monitor that. Is it simply cpu usage / memory usage that would help me know over time if its getting worse?
I did a factory reset of RBR and both RBS when I had the last firmware update as the network actually completely went down at the time.
Screen capture of one RBR and one RBS attached. The second RBS debug.htm page reports 401 even though the same user/password works for the RBR and the other RBS. Is 37% high for the RBR, given at the minute there's almost nothing happening in the house, no downloads, just me lightly browsing the internet.
Ok so the one RBS looks ok, however RBR CPU usage is moderately high and wondering if this maybe creeping upwards and getting to a point if it gets too high, caused the problem you saw before you returned home. CPU should not be this high.
Need to gain access to the 2nd RBS and capture debug page info on it. Try a power OFF of the RBS for 1 minute then back ON. Wait for it to complete syncing to the RBR and try the debug page again.
How many devices does each RBS show being connected to them and what does the RBR show for devices connected to it?
Is IPv6, Armor, Access Controls, Smart Parental controls or Traffic Meter enabled on the RBR?
What is the Mfr and model# of the Internet Service Providers modem/ONT the NG router is connected too? Be sure your using a good quality LAN cable between the modem and router. CAT6A STP is recommended.
I managed to get into the second RBS, had to reset it using a pin on the back though. Screenshot link below.
Using the Orbi app, I can see the RBR having 9 WiFi devices connected to it and 7 showing as connected via LAN. RBS1 shows 30 WiFi devices connected to it. RBS2 shows no devices connected to it, but perhaps after a while itll all balance out as RBS2 is just after being rebooted.
For IPv6 under Advanced -> IPv6 it shows "Internet Connection Type" "Disabled"
I have no parental controls, armor or traffic meter enabled.
For the ISP modem, I have none attached. The Orbi is directly connected with the ISP modem detached. The ONT seems to be a small white Huawei brand but no discernible numbers can be seen on it itself.
We have Cat 6A cable used throughout the house and connecting out to the garage / RBR.
Yes I have Cat 6a everywhere throughout the house. I have three Netgear switches through the house. One is used to take the connection coming from the garage where the RBR is and it then fans out to the other Lan devices such as the two RBS. If the models of those Netgear switches is important I can provide details.
The three switches I have are 2 x GS108Ev3 and 1 GS308E. The only one between the three RBR/RBS devices is 1 of the GS108Ev3. The other two switches are in other rooms to help branch out to connect some devices like media devices where otherwise I have only one Lan connection at those points.
Does the front LED on the RBR turn PINK when the RBR doesn't seem to connect to the Internet?
Ok so the GS108Ev3 is a smart or semi managed switch. These have been known to cause problems on Orbi systems with RBS ethernet connected. A GS108 or GS308 with out any letter characters after the model # are non managed switches and would be recommended in between the RBR and ethernet connected RBS. One thing you can try and check on the 108Ev3 is log into it's web page and disable any IGMP and Green Ethernet protocols.
Something to try as well, find a GS105/108 or GS105/308 non managed switch to swap in place of the 108Ev3 switch.
I've been testing a 850 series here with ethernet connected RBS and have found some CPU creep in upwards of 30% with two RBS connected. However my testing was wiped out this last Saturday with a home power bump that caused the ISP modem and RBR and RBS to power cycle and reboot. I was waiting for the RBR CPU usage creep to get high enough to see what would happen. GS108 switches are in use here. Not ruling this out as a cause of your RBR not connecting, however could be on contribution. I found that with RBS wirelessly connected, didn't cause CPU creep or having 1 RBS ethernet connected didn't see CPU creep upwards, adding the 2nd one did cause the RBR CPU creep upwards after the Hop Count on both RBS went from value 1 to Blank. Unknown why this happened and the results causing this creep.
Something to try, turn OFF one of the RBS and leave the other connected via ethernet, after checking the two items on the 108Ev3 options.
If the RBR is going pink when you notice no internet, might also be a problem with the RBR and the ONT failing to continue to work together and possible something is happening on the ONT side that stops and the RBR can't regain the connection. Something to check the front LED and check the Show Stats on the RBR for the WAN section. If you see the uptime reset here and the uptime on the RBRs debug page doesn't show same change, then the WAN connection stopped working here or was reset. I might ask the ISP to check the ONT logs and there ONT service logs from you location the next time this happens to see if anything appears to them when this happens again.
Need to find out why the RBR CPU usage is so high. Should be down the low tens or teens.
Does the front LED on the RBR turn PINK when the RBR doesn't seem to connect to the Internet?
Ok so the GS108Ev3 is a smart or semi managed switch. These have been known to cause problems on Orbi systems with RBS ethernet connected. A GS108 or GS308 with out any letter characters after the model # are non managed switches and would be recommended in between the RBR and ethernet connected RBS. One thing you can try and check on the 108Ev3 is log into it's web page and disable any IGMP and Green Ethernet protocols.
Something to try as well, find a GS105/108 or GS105/308 non managed switch to swap in place of the 108Ev3 switch.
I've been testing a 850 series here with ethernet connected RBS and have found some CPU creep in upwards of 30% with two RBS connected. However my testing was wiped out this last Saturday with a home power bump that caused the ISP modem and RBR and RBS to power cycle and reboot. I was waiting for the RBR CPU usage creep to get high enough to see what would happen. GS108 switches are in use here. Not ruling this out as a cause of your RBR not connecting, however could be on contribution. I found that with RBS wirelessly connected, didn't cause CPU creep or having 1 RBS ethernet connected didn't see CPU creep upwards, adding the 2nd one did cause the RBR CPU creep upwards after the Hop Count on both RBS went from value 1 to Blank. Unknown why this happened and the results causing this creep.
Something to try, turn OFF one of the RBS and leave the other connected via ethernet, after checking the two items on the 108Ev3 options.
If the RBR is going pink when you notice no internet, might also be a problem with the RBR and the ONT failing to continue to work together and possible something is happening on the ONT side that stops and the RBR can't regain the connection. Something to check the front LED and check the Show Stats on the RBR for the WAN section. If you see the uptime reset here and the uptime on the RBRs debug page doesn't show same change, then the WAN connection stopped working here or was reset. I might ask the ISP to check the ONT logs and there ONT service logs from you location the next time this happens to see if anything appears to them when this happens again.
Need to find out why the RBR CPU usage is so high. Should be down the low tens or teens.
Thanks for this info, its great. I'll first try to change those settings on the managed switches I have to see if it helps. Do you know if anyone at Netgear is actively looking to fix those issues if they are known ones / possible to reproduce? That'd obviously be the ideal solution and would mean I could rule those in/out if a firmware fix was able to resolve at least those known ones.
For me when I came home, both the RBR and RBS's were a solid purple type color. My worry is, if they were having some issue with connectivity to the ONT, even if it was the ONT fault, why wasn't there some internal restart of whatever module/service (I'm not sure how it works) inside the firmware that would have meant the hard reboot from my side was needed.
I guess without being able to see some permanent log that survives a reboot I'll have to try to get into the router logs before rebooting it next time, possibly via the LAN if eg my PC can get to its IP over the LAN.
Yeah that will be interesting to see why my RBR is so high in terms of cpu usage. Even as we speak its still at 37.2% and almost nothing (that I'm aware of) is happening in the house (I guess something is causing it that I'm not aware of so I'll start shutting things off/on to see can I figure out whats causing it to be so high.
Does any other debug type of page show any sort of breakdown of that percentage to give any hints as to whats causing it? Does the debug page show a very up to date view of the cpu %. eg if I shut down a device, would it in theory affect the debug.html cpu usage figure fairly quickly or is there any lag / delay.
One thing to note, I remember when searching a few months back to see if I could eliminate the use of my ISP provided modem, as to whether the Orbi RBR could support the VLAN tagging that my ISP uses. It seems the Google WiFi doesn't support it but the Orbi does. But I vaguely remember reading some threads that using this feature of the Orbi router does in some way slow it down.
Is this in any way related to its high cpu usage, untagging/tagging this vlan id that my ISP uses as traffic comes and goes? Not that it causes any issues for me on a daily basis of course, and I guess also shouldn't cause the complete outage that I had, but just might explain the high cpu usage?
So within the routers settings under "Advanced" -> "Enable VLAN / Bridge Setup" I have set "By VLAN tag group" with VLAN ID of 10 set so that I can connect to my ISP directly. Does this also show high CPU for you when used?
It's possible. My ISP doesn't use VLAN tagging as it's a Cable ISP. So it's all DCHP here.
Only way to check that would be to put the ISP router online, use the ISP router to configure any VLAN tagging, then use the DMZ on the ISP router for the RBR in router mode and then monitor CPU usage.
Possible that this VLAN tagging and the ISP service at the ONT with the RBR is not working right and causing higher CPU usage and eventually stops if the CPU usage gets too high.
