Re: RBR50 DNS Issues

daverichard4 · ‎2020-03-29

I've suspected that this is a Circle issue for some time. If you telnet to the router you can see there is a DNS hijack process running. I suspect that is Circle hijacking DNS requests to apply it's filtering. Can someone that isn't running Circle check to see if there is a DNS hijack process running? If you telnet to the router and then run "ps |grep dns", one of the process's should contain dnshijack in the name. I'm not at the house to confirm, but it should stand out. I suspect if you aren't running Circle or Armor that you wont see it running. Since Disney has a new version of Circle, I suspect they aren't putting any time into the old version that's running on these routers.

milenkojmb · ‎2020-03-29

Here is a copy of the grep with circle and armor not enabled. I left both turned off after my factory default.

CrimpOn · ‎2020-03-29

My Orbi has never had Disney Circle activated. It shows a process

7225 root 2364 S aclhijackdns

Explanations of how Disney Circle works talk about ARP poisoning, not intercepting DNS.

tomschmidt · ‎2020-03-29

I likewise have never activated Circle or Armor. Here are my DNS processes, which includes aclhijackdns:

root@RBR50:/# ps -w | grep dns
1282 guest 2632 S /usr/sbin/dnsmasq --except-interface=lo -r /tmp/resolv.conf -P 4096 --log-facility /tmp/dnsmasq.log --log
7126 root 2364 S aclhijackdns
7877 root 2412 S /usr/sbin/ntgrddns -c /tmp/ntgrdns.conf
13776 root 1568 S grep dns

agregory23 · ‎2020-03-30

I can confirm all of the findings here. Started after about 3-4 days of quarantine. Been in use for over a year before and never had any problems. Oddly enough, adding static DNS entries on the clients does not solve the problem (but I can do an nslookup from that same client specifying my DNS server).

I have changed my DNS servers on the router from the Comcast provided ones to 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8 thinking it was upstream at first. Same thing. I also do have circle enabled, have my modem in bridge mode and am on the latest 2.5 firmware.

FURRYe38 · ‎2020-03-30

Disable Circle. This seems to be the cause of users problems with DNS. Users have mentioned DNS working again after Circle is disabled.

@agregory23 wrote:
I can confirm all of the findings here. Started after about 3-4 days of quarantine. Been in use for over a year before and never had any problems. Oddly enough, adding static DNS entries on the clients does not solve the problem (but I can do an nslookup from that same client specifying my DNS server).

I have changed my DNS servers on the router from the Comcast provided ones to 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8 thinking it was upstream at first. Same thing. I also do have circle enabled, have my modem in bridge mode and am on the latest 2.5 firmware.

agregory23 · ‎2020-03-31

I do have to say... I just recalled that the only setting that I have changed in a while was enabling the Traffic Meter. Full disclosure I pay for Disney Circle because I find it great for metering and restricting my kids usage.

I disabled Disney Circle and thought I would try re-enabling it and see if that helped. At that point I came across the Traffic Meter setting and remembered I had enabled that a couple weeks back. I have disabled that and will see if it makes a difference tomorrow.

Side note, I had setup a ping to www.google.com on my MacBookPro. It stayed successfully pinging until I noticed my phone would not get out again. I went back to my laptop and the ping was still resolving. I stopped the ping and tried to start it again and it would not resolve. Its like its a session based issue. I am fairly certain if I was connected to my company VPN I would not have any problems as long as it was a full tunnel and did not fail. That ping would also get intermittant failures every 20-30 pings. Since disabling Traffic Metering its been constant with no loss.

Either way this is definetly a Netgear problem and they need to get on their firmware to fix this issue. Its obviously happening to a decent amount of people.

MarkMorton72 · ‎2020-03-31

Just to echo whats been said before in this thread. Had this happen for the first time last night and a reboot of the RBR solved the problem.

Running RBR50 and three RBS50 satellites with no problems for over a year - been very impressed with the ORBI. Not an IT professional but been around this stuff long enough to troubleshoot most stuff.

So, set up is:

Virgin Media ISP - router in modem mode
RBR50
3x RBS50 all wifi backhaul
All on V2.5.1.8
35-40 devices on the network, mix of wired/wireless
Disney Circle enabled (paid for version)
Armour not enabled
All DHCP; Auto DNS

What I found echos much of what;s above:

DNS lookup fell apart suddenly
Some DNS resolution happening (e.g. could resolve news.bbc.co.uk but not https://www.disneyplus.com) - cache working?
Couldn't change DNS resolver in the ORBI (due to Circle?)
Manually changed DNS to 4.4.4.4/8.8.8.8 in iPad settings - so bypass router resolver (192.168.1.1) and worked fine (or appeared to)
Restarting the RBR50 only fixed it and no problems in the last 14 hours

Looks like an issue with the ORBI running out of some internal resource - maybe circle but I think people without circle enabled are having the probelm?

Would be good for someone at netgear to look at this - it's a showstopper when it happens and we're all working from home right now.

FURRYe38 · ‎2020-03-31

Please post about this in the Circle app forum:
https://community.netgear.com/t5/Circle-Smart-Parental-Controls/bd-p/en-home-circle

Thank you.

@MarkMorton72 wrote:
Just to echo whats been said before in this thread. Had this happen for the first time last night and a reboot of the RBR solved the problem.

Running RBR50 and three RBS50 satellites with no problems for over a year - been very impressed with the ORBI. Not an IT professional but been around this stuff long enough to troubleshoot most stuff.

So, set up is:

Virgin Media ISP - router in modem mode
RBR50
3x RBS50 all wifi backhaul
All on V2.5.1.8
35-40 devices on the network, mix of wired/wireless
Disney Circle enabled (paid for version)
Armour not enabled
All DHCP; Auto DNS
What I found echos much of what;s above:

DNS lookup fell apart suddenly
Some DNS resolution happening (e.g. could resolve news.bbc.co.uk but not https://www.disneyplus.com) - cache working?
Couldn't change DNS resolver in the ORBI (due to Circle?)
Manually changed DNS to 4.4.4.4/8.8.8.8 in iPad settings - so bypass router resolver (192.168.1.1) and worked fine (or appeared to)
Restarting the RBR50 only fixed it and no problems in the last 14 hours
Looks like an issue with the ORBI running out of some internal resource - maybe circle but I think people without circle enabled are having the probelm?

Would be good for someone at netgear to look at this - it's a showstopper when it happens and we're all working from home right now.

MarkMorton72 · ‎2020-03-31

Thanks @FURRYe38 have done here

CrimpOn · ‎2020-03-31

@agregory23 wrote:
Side note, I had setup a ping to www.google.com on my MacBookPro. It stayed successfully pinging until I noticed my phone would not get out again. I went back to my laptop and the ping was still resolving. I stopped the ping and tried to start it again and it would not resolve. Its like its a session based issue.

This observation is entirely correct. Almost every device keeps a cache of resolved DNS entries. When an application connects to a particular IP address, such as a web site, it tends to make 100's of connections to the same site. So, the computer remembers that DNS address for a while. Eventually, the cache "times out" and has to be reloaded.

Spiffywerks · ‎2020-03-31

I would like to thank all in this community for the help. I had Disney Circle enabled, but wasn’t using it. I turned it off and resolved the DNS failing issue I was experiencing for the past week after I began using VPN to connect to my office.

Manually setting DNS on each device to 8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4 would bypass the router’s DNS and internet would work, but was not an acceptable solution for 30+ devices connected. Was having to reboot the router 3-4 times a day.

Setup: Frontier Fios ONT > RBR50 > 2x Satellites with WiFi backhaul. (All on FW v2.5.1.8)

FURRYe38 · ‎2020-03-31

Thank you for letting us know. Circle seems to be causing some problems. Keep it disabled if your not using it.

@Spiffywerks wrote:
I would like to thank all in this community for the help. I had Disney Circle enabled, but wasn’t using it. I turned it off and resolved the DNS failing issue I was experiencing for the past week after I began using VPN to connect to my office.

Manually setting DNS on each device to 8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4 would bypass the router’s DNS and internet would work, but was not an acceptable solution for 30+ devices connected. Was having to reboot the router 3-4 times a day.

Setup: Frontier Fios ONT > RBR50 > 2x Satellites with WiFi backhaul. (All on FW v2.5.1.8)

gchk · ‎2020-03-31

I don't think this issue is limited to Circle.

We get DNS failures regurlarly, although unlike the failure modes experienced by other posters, this is temporary and resolves itself after a few seconds. But it's constant, it'll happen every 15-30 minutes. Generally with the message of DNS Probe Finished Bad Config.

This has persisted across two different modems upstream of the Orbi, a SB6141 and a Netgear CM500.

The issue is fully resolved when a static DNS address is set on the end device, either the ISP's DNS servers or Google or OpenDNS, all work flawlessly.

However, the same DNS address set on the Orbi will generate this error regardless of which server I pick. This is across all devices on the network, and we have a mix of OSX, Windows, ChromeOS, Android, and iOS devices. Issue has persisted across DNS flushes. Issue goes away when tunneling through VPN.

All Orbi routers/satellites are on latest firmware V2.5.1.8. All devices are getting ip addresses assigned by Orbi. Everything points to the DNS server on the Orbi being buggy.

FURRYe38 · ‎2020-03-31

Try a factory reset on the RBR and setup from scratch. Be sure not to enable Circle. Others are reporting the reset also helps with DNS issues. I haven't seen this aswell.

You can also try Voxels FW as well:

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Voxels-FW-available-for-50-series-Orbi-only-available/m-p/1883...

@gchk wrote:
I don't think this issue is limited to Circle.

We get DNS failures regurlarly, although unlike the failure modes experienced by other posters, this is temporary and resolves itself after a few seconds. But it's constant, it'll happen every 15-30 minutes. Generally with the message of DNS Probe Finished Bad Config.

This has persisted across two different modems upstream of the Orbi, a SB6141 and a Netgear CM500.

The issue is fully resolved when a static DNS address is set on the end device, either the ISP's DNS servers or Google or OpenDNS, all work flawlessly.

However, the same DNS address set on the Orbi will generate this error regardless of which server I pick. This is across all devices on the network, and we have a mix of OSX, Windows, ChromeOS, Android, and iOS devices. Issue has persisted across DNS flushes. Issue goes away when tunneling through VPN.

All Orbi routers/satellites are on latest firmware V2.5.1.8. All devices are getting ip addresses assigned by Orbi. Everything points to the DNS server on the Orbi being buggy.

agregory23 · ‎2020-03-31

For what its worth my traffic has been great since last night. Longest its gone in a couple weeks.

Disabling Traffic Meter in the Orbi app as well as toggling Circle (I did the toggle first) has seemed to solve my DNS problems. I have a feeling the Traffic Meter may put too much strain on the system hardware when both are enabled.

My CPU usage was higher when the Traffic Meter was enabled. (telnet into the device, type "top" and then press the number 1 to see individual core usage). Before it was hovering in the 40-50% range consistently. Now its down in the 8-20% range.

FURRYe38 · ‎2020-03-31

Traffic Meter needs some processing power to do it's jobs.

Glad you are experiencing better operation it and Circle disabled. Circle has been causing problems recently for Circle users.

If you need Circle support, please post over in the Circle forum:

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Circle-Smart-Parental-Controls/bd-p/en-home-circle

Hopefully NG can get that fixed.

Good Luck.

@agregory23 wrote:
For what its worth my traffic has been great since last night. Longest its gone in a couple weeks.

Disabling Traffic Meter in the Orbi app as well as toggling Circle (I did the toggle first) has seemed to solve my DNS problems. I have a feeling the Traffic Meter may put too much strain on the system hardware when both are enabled.

My CPU usage was higher when the Traffic Meter was enabled. (telnet into the device, type "top" and then press the number 1 to see individual core usage). Before it was hovering in the 40-50% range consistently. Now its down in the 8-20% range.

agregory23 · ‎2020-03-31

Just to clarify.... Traffic Meter is Disabled and Circle is Enabled in my now working setup.

FURRYe38 · ‎2020-03-31

LEt us know if you experience any issues with Circle enabled. Some have had problems with it enabled. TM was disabled as well.

daverichard4 · ‎2020-04-03

Probably shouldn't be saying this for fear the issue will rear it's ugly head again, but I haven't changed a thing about my setup and haven't had the problem now since 3/28. I still have Circle enabled as I always have. This is the longest I've not had the issue since mid Feb. I haven't seen anyone else posting on this issue....I'm thinking that Circle engineers have tweaked something on their end.

daverichard4 · ‎2020-04-04

I knew I shouldn't have said anything, Just had the DNS failure again:(

SW_ · ‎2020-04-04

DNS issue is being tracked and investigated by NG. Hopefully a hot fix will soon appear. At the meantime, check out this thread for suggested workarounds: Orbi RBR50 Circle frequent DNS failures

FURRYe38 · ‎2020-04-04

Disable Circle for now and leave it disabled. If you need to factory reset the RBR and setup from scratch and this time don't enable Circle.

Hopefully NG will get this fixed on there side.

@daverichard4 wrote:
I knew I shouldn't have said anything, Just had the DNS failure again:(

Photo-Craig · ‎2020-04-05

I saw this thread as I am having a similar issue with the new AX6000 Wifi 6. I am a seasoned IT engineer, and this setup is a no brainer. Out of the box default install went fine, things worked ok only for "some devices". Others had major slow issues. Upon investigating I figured it out as a DNS issue. Instead of playing with the router I just used my Synology NAS as a DNS Server. After that everything worked fine. Yes the orbi seems to have DNS issues using the default ISP DNS. I am running Firmware Version
V3.2.10.11_1.2.12. Just so you know when you upgrade to the latest and greatest the problem follows.

FURRYe38 · ‎2020-04-05

Please post about this over in the Orbi AX forum:

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi-AX/bd-p/en-home-orbi-ax

Good Luck.

@Photo-Craig wrote:
I saw this thread as I am having a similar issue with the new AX6000 Wifi 6. I am a seasoned IT engineer, and this setup is a no brainer. Out of the box default install went fine, things worked ok only for "some devices". Others had major slow issues. Upon investigating I figured it out as a DNS issue. Instead of playing with the router I just used my Synology NAS as a DNS Server. After that everything worked fine. Yes the orbi seems to have DNS issues using the default ISP DNS. I am running Firmware Version
V3.2.10.11_1.2.12. Just so you know when you upgrade to the latest and greatest the problem follows.

Re: RBR50 DNS Issues