Orbi did not reconnect after power outage

[GKACK]

The Orbi system (2 sattelites and firmware v2.1.2.18) has recovered after a power outage in the past but did not after a longer than usual outage this week. The house is not occupied so recovery and remote management capability is really important to me as it is very expensive to get people into the house to work on the internet and wifi.  I was certain that the internet connection from Xfinity was to blame but when they came out they found the cable modem was working fine and that internet was available to the router.  The bottom line is that the tech and my house caretaker reset the Orbi and got me a new remote management address which allowed me to go in and reenter all of my SSID and wifi password information.  And yes they tried everything to get the router to reboot properly but it never came back online with wifi that would instantly reconnect with all of the devices waiting for a signal.

I would like to know if this is a common problem and what I could do to reduce the possibility of this happening in the future.  I am even considering using a switch and a redundant router that I could manage remotely and leave wifi disabled until something like this happens again and then go in and turn on the wifi on the redundant router.  For the cost of having people go to the house to reboot or reset the router, I could buy a lot of high quality equipment.  Thanks in advance for thoughts and advice. 

[FURRYe38]

What is the Mfr and model of the ISP modem? Built in router here by chance?

How long was the power out approximately before it came back on.

[GKACK]

The cable modem is an Arris Surfboard SB6183.  It is just a modem (no router).  I chose to bring my own modem and not rent the Xfinity modem/router combo.  That has worked fine for the past few years though this is the first off season away with Orbi in charge.  Power was out for about 8-10 hours at most.  

[FURRYe38]

wow, thats a significant power outage. 

So what was exactly wrong when the power came back on? No access to the router via the ISP modem? Was Wifi still running or just no internet at all? The Orbi router should come back online if there is a power outage. 

Something to considier however not sure if it would be of any help since you have this power outage for 8-10 hours, however a UPS back up system might be a good idea. However duration of how long UPS lasts vs what your experiencing may not be helpful.

[GKACK]

We are in the Northeast which has had several bad storms this winter.  Normally, everything would come back online after an outage.  There are over 20 connected devices from cameras to smart plugs and switches so I can easily see that they all reconnected.  This time, I didn't see them reconnect so I confirmed that power had been restored and then checked with neighbors to confirm that their internet service had come back. Once I knew it had, I contacted Comcast who said the internet was working and that they could reach my cable modem but I didn't believe that since the Orbi would certainly pick up the signal.  I could not reach the Orbi via remote management and a couple of devices that are hardwired into into the Orbi router did not come online either so I feel like the router did not come back online.  Comcast came out and confirmed that the internet was working and that it was the Orbi.  I am not sure if the wifi on the Orbi was broadcasting the SSID and whether devices were connected since I was not there.  But, the tech came to the conclusion that the only choice was to reset the router.  

[FURRYe38]

Only thing I can think of which would seem to be a bug in FW, there is a loss of configuration on the WAN port of the router that connects to the ISP modem. It would need to be tested more and I presume your not at the location currently with the router. 

Only thing I can think of would be to notify NG support @DarrenM about this and see if there is anything they can do to help. Seems like an extended pouwer outage or loss of power for some period of time on the Orbi router doesn't work after power comes back on. One would need to pull the power adapter or turn off the power strip that the power adapter is connected to, at sertain timed intervals to see this happens both in short time frames or just longer times when the pouwer is out. 

I would look into a UPS for both ISP modem and router. I have one, however it only last for about 30 mins. 

[Nigel124]

Same issue here this afternoon.  Power went out for approx 1 hour after which Orbi broadcasts SSID but cannot see the ethernet connection to the modem.  Power cycling did not help; tried a full factory reset and that has also not worked.  Resetting anything and everything I can think of but result is always the same -> Orbi can no longer see the ethernet cable and therefore also sees no internet connection.

Had to fish out an old Verizon router in order to get online and look for a solution......

Help!

[FURRYe38]

Did you power cycle the modem as well for 1 minute after turning OFF the Orbi router? 

What is the Mfr and model# of this modem your using currently? 

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@Nigel124 wrote:

Same issue here this afternoon.  Power went out for approx 1 hour after which Orbi broadcasts SSID but cannot see the ethernet connection to the modem.  Power cycling did not help; tried a full factory reset and that has also not worked.  Resetting anything and everything I can think of but result is always the same -> Orbi can no longer see the ethernet cable and therefore also sees no internet connection.

Had to fish out an old Verizon router in order to get online and look for a solution......

Help!

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[Nigel124]

Yes, powercycled the modem (Verizon Fios MI424WR) and connected a laptop directly to turn on that WiFi and test the internet connection.  Orbi remains purple.

[Nigel124]

Note:  I can see Orbi from my modem so the ethernet connection is there.  However, pinging Orbi gets a failure response so it's definitely an Orbi problem.

[Nigel124]

After a break for dinner I got back to this problem, after multiple factory resets Orbi finally woke up and recognized the ethernet connection.  I spent 3+ hrs on this and still don't know what the problem was or why it finally started working.  My best guess would be that the power outage caused Orbi to hang somewhere in the middle of some firmware and that Factory Reset is unreliable/unstable.  Now, I need to go and manually resync the satellites as only 2 out of 4 reconnected automatically (although why would any of them connect automatically considering I finally got a factory reset to bite?)

I'm moving home soon and giving serious thought to whether I reinstall Orbi in my new house....

[FURRYe38]

Modem Combo Units:
Couple of options,
1. Configure the modem for transparent bridge mode. Then use the Orbi router in router mode.
2. If you can't bridge the modem, disable ALL wifi radios on the modem, configure the modems DMZ for the IP address the Orbi router gets from the modem. Then you can use the Orbi router in Router mode.
3. Or disable all wifi radios on the modem and connect the Orbi router to the modem, LAN to LAN and configure AP mode on the Orbi router.

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@Nigel124 wrote:

Yes, powercycled the modem (Verizon Fios MI424WR) and connected a laptop directly to turn on that WiFi and test the internet connection.  Orbi remains purple.

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[GKACK]

Update on my issue where the router had no internet after the power outage.  I continued to have an issue after resetting the Orbi even when I rebooted the router.  No internet after the reboot.  Sending a signal through Xfinity app to restart the cable modem did seem to work.  Then  I noticed a setting for the "Router MAC Address" and it was set to Use Computer MAC Address.  I changed this to Use Default MAC Address and ever since making that change a reboot resulted in a successful restoration of internet access without a need to send a signal to the cable modem (or unplug it).  

Does this make sense?

[FURRYe38]

Default settings for MAC is not cloned. Was this changed at some point during an initial set up?

Even if the ISP modem/service supported cloned MAC, shouldn't loose connection I believe.

Sounds like you found your fix for your problem...

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@GKACK wrote:

Update on my issue where the router had no internet after the power outage.  I continued to have an issue after resetting the Orbi even when I rebooted the router.  No internet after the reboot.  Sending a signal through Xfinity app to restart the cable modem did seem to work.  Then  I noticed a setting for the "Router MAC Address" and it was set to Use Computer MAC Address.  I changed this to Use Default MAC Address and ever since making that change a reboot resulted in a successful restoration of internet access without a need to send a signal to the cable modem (or unplug it).  

Does this make sense?

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[GKACK]

I do not remember changing it but the Xfinity tech who came to the house when we were not there and reset the Orbi might have.  

I will also note that I had started to use the Netgear dynamic DNS service for remote management access.  I switched that off about the same time I changed the MAC address setting and went back to the standard IP address access which always seemed to work anyway.  Maybe that was also a contributor to the problem?

[FURRYe38]

Well you have two areas that you can try to reproduce if you get curious. Enable both or one at a time, then simulate a power outage by pulling the plug on both router and satellite and see what happens. I don't think DDNS would be a cause...however, anything is possible with Orbi.