I just purchased RBK50 for my home Aug 1st 2018, My firmware is V2.1.4.16
A little about me. I have a rack of servers, and enterprise grade networking equipment in my house, and my ORBI is connected to CISCO layer managed switch, so the threads saying it has to be connected to a "dumb unmanaged" switch are incorrect. I am 20 year IT pro. It still took me a few hours to sort this out.
So I got my orbi connectected per instructions and needed immediately wanted to go to AP mode. When switching the GUI says setting IP addresses manually or "Fixed" is NOT recommended. This is where things go downhill.
My scenario was that my devices connected to the orbi via wifi COULD get internet. The solid Magenta ring on the router was because the ORBI router could not talk to the internet.
My issue is that my own routers (not any orbi unit) DHCP server gave my internal DNS server as the primary DNS, and an internet located DNS server as secondary. For some reason the Orbi could not make DNS lookups through my internal DNS. I specified googles DNS service (8.8.8.8) as the primary...and voila...Magenta light gone. and the orbi can can talk to the internet itself now.
Detailed Steps to resolve:
Note**: My ethernet cable is plugged into the the YELLOW internet port on the orbi.
So I went to the Orbi gui and pretended to but the Orbi back in router mode. (Advanced Tab --->Advanced Setup Menu---->Router/AP Mode) I clicked Router Mode and DID NOT save. then I clicked back on AP Mode, it gave me the option again to change my IP settings ("Use fixed IP Address (not recommended"). I gave my orbi a static IP and manually set the DNS to internet DNS servers as specified above. Saved, the Orbi rebooted....and everything is great.
I think Netgear makes things confusing by trying to discourage people from setting a static IP on the ORBI. Because people may not know how to get back in if the do something wrong.
