2 NetGear ORBI Model RBR50 would not do DHCP after a power outage knocked them offline

[sflushe]

I work for an ISP in North Texas and I am submitting this to try to help my customers.  Yesterday there was an electric service outage in one of our service areas.  The electricity blinked off and on, so this means that our customer's routers went off then back on because of the electrical outage.  We provide internet over fiber in this area. There were at least 30 customers that were affected.  Some had our routers, some had other models of NetGear routers, but 2 cusomers had NetGear ORBI RBR50.  One customer's router had been online for 4 months and the other's for a little less than 90 days.  After the power outage, the RBR50s appeared to be online with a good link, and our DHCP service had given them the same IP address that they had prior to the electical outage, yet neither router allowed the customer devices to get to the internet.  I spent roughly, 6 hrs of my day working with these customers while we were on calls to NetGear support and while one of our IT specialists was at one of the locations to try to help these customers to get back online.  (One customer was out of warranty and had to pay for his call the other was just under 90 days and did not)  At the end of the day THE ONLY way we were able to get these customers online was to assign a Static IP in their router and on the internet port of the ONT that serves them.  The bad news is that there is a cost for a static ip in our network ($10/month).  It is not our desire to make our customers get a static IP.  So the question is...why were these routers working via DHCP before they were knocked offline, and now they will not.  Both customers stated that they loved their ORBI wifi system before this happened.  One customer decided to go with another router to avoid the increase in cost.  Surely there is a fix for this!

[FURRYe38]

What Firmware is currently loaded?
What is the Mfr and model# of the ISP modem the NG router is connected too?

[CrimpOn]

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@sflushe wrote:

 I spent roughly, 6 hrs of my day working with these customers while we were on calls to NetGear support and while one of our IT specialists was at one of the locations to try to help these customers to get back online.  (One customer was out of warranty and had to pay for his call the other was just under 90 days and did not)

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During all that time on the phone with Netgear, if the Orbi was "factory reset" and still would not function with DHCP, Netgear should authorize a replacment.  The product comes with 90 days of telephone support, but has a one year hardware warranty.

[sflushe]

Their Firmware Version is V2.3.5.30

They are working behind a Calix Optical Network Terminal model 711GE that is mounted on the outside of their residence.

There is an ethernet drop that connects the 711GE ethernet port to the ORBI router.  There is not a modem.

[sflushe]

That was the crazy part...the customer was able to install the RBR50 when it was "out of the box" new, and it obtained an IP address, and it worked.  Yesterday we tried to reset to factory defaults at both locations and could not bring them back online.

[FURRYe38]

When resetting the Orbi RBRs, was the ONT powered OFF for 30 seconds then back ON or rebooted during the reset sequence of the RBR? 

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@sflushe wrote:

That was the crazy part...the customer was able to install the RBR50 when it was "out of the box" new, and it obtained an IP address, and it worked.  Yesterday we tried to reset to factory defaults at both locations and could not bring them back online.

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[sflushe]

We did try to reset the ONT before resetting the ORBI. However, we already had tried to bypass the ORBI with a laptop computer plugged directly into the ethernet jack in the wall and were able to get to the internet.  We did the ONT reset and tried again, just for grins. We also did not have any problems when we replaced the ORBI with a different router.  It seems as though the ORBI is not requesting an IP.