Port mirroring to LAN port - Is it working now?

[Atlixnor]

Searched for a guide how to set this up. According to this post it is not working:

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/quot-WAN-Port-mirror-to-LAN-port1-quot-Not-Working/td-p/197108...

Debugging is enabled like this: orbilogin.net/debug.htm

P.S What is the recommended fw to run ORBI RBR50 v2 now? European version.

[CrimpOn · Accepted solution]

Good Luck.  I was bitterly disappointed when I tried it, but that was over a year ago.  I wanted to see every packet that appeared on the WAN port, both to the Orbi and from the Orbi, for as long as I had disk space to hold.  The option to Enable LAN/WAN packet capture creates circular files in system memory (or in my case on a USB stick in my Version 1 Orbi's USB port) and they do not hold much.  I wanted to let Wireshark run for over 24 hours so I could watch my Orbi renew the DHCP lease from Spectrum.

[plemans]

Have you tried it? 

[Atlixnor]

No, didn't. Will try though 👍

[CrimpOn]

I was the person who was disappointed with "WAN Mirror to LAN Port 1", and I still cannot find that post explaining what it actually does.

At one time, Netgear had two separate firmware versions for the RBR50 that were based on some vague difference between US and the rest of the world, perhaps having to do with licensing Disney Circle.  That is no longer the case.  The RBR50 has only one universal firmware version.  In part of (most of? all of?) the world Netgear is now forcing a firmware update to V2.7.3.22.  If the user loads a previous version, then Netgear updates back to V2.7.3.22 again almost immediately.  There are methods to prevent this.

[Atlixnor]

hi,

OK, I have had 2.7.3.22 for more thaan a year, so not much has change dthen. But no neeed, it is working fine, yes.

I think "WAN Mirror to LAN Port 1" means that you can connect a PC/MAC to port 1 and sniff with Wireshark for packets. That is what I will try.

[CrimpOn · Accepted solution]

Good Luck.  I was bitterly disappointed when I tried it, but that was over a year ago.  I wanted to see every packet that appeared on the WAN port, both to the Orbi and from the Orbi, for as long as I had disk space to hold.  The option to Enable LAN/WAN packet capture creates circular files in system memory (or in my case on a USB stick in my Version 1 Orbi's USB port) and they do not hold much.  I wanted to let Wireshark run for over 24 hours so I could watch my Orbi renew the DHCP lease from Spectrum.

[Atlixnor]

OK, thanks for clarifying. In my case 24H is enough, so I will give it a try.

[CrimpOn]

Sorry I was not clear.  My goal was to capture 24 hours of WAN data.  What actually happened was I did not get anything useful at all.

I expected to see every packet to and from the Orbi WAN port, but that was not what I got.  The debug option to capture LAN/WAN packets does this, but cannot capture very much due to the size of memory.  When I used a 32GB USB stick, the WAN capture file topped out at less than 2GB.  I was totally unable to capture 24 hours.