RBK50 will not save second ssid

[Almazar80]

I bought a refurbished RBK50 kit from Microcenter.  It seems to work okay except for one thing.  It won't allow me to save the second ssid.  I go to the debug page, turn telnet on, telnet to the router and add the second ssid:

config set wla_ssid="SOMEVALUE"

config commit

reboot

It works for a few minutes, but the second ssid doesn't show up on the advanced wirless page.  After a few minutes, the router resets briefly and the second ssid disappears.  When I telnet to the router, the ssid is back to the same one it was before (same as the wl_ssid).  It doesn't matter which one I change (the 2.4ghz or the 5ghz ssid) since the ssid disappears either way.  Is there a way to fix this or did I get a bad refurbished unit?  Thanks.

[FURRYe38]

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/How-to-set-a-separate-SSID-for-the-5-GHz-network-on-your-Orbi/...

[Almazar80]

Thanks for responding.  I did all the things that the document you linked to said that I should.  And for a few minutes, it does work.  Unfortunately, in my case, the router reverts to the single ssid after a short amount of time.  I tried this several times.  I even check the satellite to make sure that the ssids were propagated after the change and they are.  Unfortunately, the system resets after a few minutes and reverts to a single ssid configuration.  The other changes I put in place (new router address, DHCP configuration, DMZ setup etc.) are retained.  Only the second ssid setup is reverting to the previous configuration.

One thing I haven't tried is to change the ssid after doing a reset.  I'll save the configuration, reset the router, and see what happens.  It should not make a difference, but perhaps the second ssid can only be set when the router is at the default 192.168.1.1 address.

[CrimpOn]

If it's not too personal, would you be willing to share the reason for devoting this much effort to creating a second SSID on the Orbi that was clearly designed to host one SSID?

I am 99.9% certain that the IP address of the Orbi router has no bearing on this issue.

[Almazar80]

I don't have to have two ssids.  I can do with one, and in my use case, it works well enough.  Though I always like having finer control of which devices use which band, etc.  And since one can supposedly do it, I tried to do it and followed the procedures outlined but found a problem.  I guess curiosity why something failed is the paramount reason for this query.  I want to try to understand what's happening and why.

I don't think it's the router IP address that's causing the problem either, but I'll reset the router and see what happens.  I am using the latest firmware.

[Almazar80]

I asked the question too soon.  After reading through the big discussion, the answer was buried in the thread, but there are multiple solutions to this problem.

1. Revert to earlier firmware

2. Execute the following commands before changing the ssids:

config set wifison-monitor_stop=1

config commit

3. Change a config file.

Thank you to the people who have worked to find solutions for this common need (multiple SSIDs).  I can understand why a single SSID is a good solution for many, but the few isn't as small as Netgear thinks it is, so why not give people a choice?