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Orbi WiFi 7 RBE973
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RBR50 Red Lights Only - HELP!

RinkRat55
Aspirant

RBR50 Red Lights Only - HELP!

My ORBI RBR50 Router has been disconnecting now about once a month for several months (4?). This time I cannot get it back. It shut off in the middle of the night for reasons we cannot determine. I have powered it off and on, power cycled it, had my internet service provider send a reset signal to their modem, and talked with their tech support for 30 minutes, all to establish that our wifi is fine from the ISP. I've done these steps multiple times.

 

Took a few days off troubleshooting but am in the same place today. I cannot get it to light up anything but red after each restart. I have a satellite on the second floor, too, but I've given up running to that one each time I restart. I am leaving the satellite unplugged and powered off for now. I have had this network working with great success for years, and usually my only problems have been when I touch a cable going to or from it. It is cabled to my ISP's modem right now, and had a cable connected it to our Eufy security system. I have been allowing our old wifi network (through the ISP) to coexist with it, since it goes down often enough that I wanted a backup, especially with my husband working from home, and often 2 college students studying from home. Perhaps this is the problem, but it was fine for years. My son had connected an old Asus wifi router and turned it on several weeks ago, thinking it was needed (he's 12), and thus we had our house's very first wifi network available as a second backup. I just let it stay a few weeks ago (I'd previously disconnected it each time he did it), since it apparently makes him feel better and he keeps doing it. I have now powered it off and ran through the above procedures again. Still red lights.

 

I cannot use the Orbi app because I cannot access my router because it's not functioning properly - red. The power light is green. I've read through other community posts, but they are highly technical, and I can't seem to do anything to connect to my Orbi. I recently tried cabling my laptop to the orbi (using the cable that used to connect the Eufy, since I now have it going from my ISP's modem). I could see the network on Wifi but it said "No internet" when I tried to select it. When I tried typing the IP address directly into the browser, it said it wasn't a safe connection and people may be trying to steal information. I installed a VPN on my laptop and phone about a month ago, and it hadn't seemed to cause problems. Can anyone help me, using beginner language? I am incredibly frustrated and exhausted.

Model: RBR50|Orbi AC3000 Tri-band WiFi Router
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CrimpOn
Guru

Re: RBR50 Red Lights Only - HELP!

There are a lot of cooks in your kitchen!

 

Just to be clear: the power LED on the back of the Orbi glows green.

The "Ring Light" at the top of the Orbi glows magenta (technically, although it looks a lot like red to me).

 

This indicates that the Orbi WAN (Yellow) ethernet port is not connected to the ISP's modem.  That is the first thing to check.

As for the satellite, there is no point in plugging in the satellite until the router is functioning. That was a good move.

Can you determine what the Asus router is connected to?  He didn't unplug the Orbi?

 

And, yes, modern browsers complain about the Orbi web interface being "unsafe".  It is a long, complicated story going back to the summer of 2019 when Netgear's SSL certificate for a bunch of URL's expired. (router.net, orbilogin.net, orbilogin.com... etc.)  To my knowledge, no one has ever admitted if (a) Netgear forgot to renew the certificates, or (b) the certificate authority decided that it was stupid to allow 1,000's of devices around the world to claim to be "Netgear".  After a lot of confusion, Netgear placed a Self-signed SSL certificate on the Orbi.  Web browsers complain about self-signed certificates..UNSAFE.. UNSAFE..UNSAFE.  And then, in very tiny type, there is an option to proceed to the site anyway.  It's on your local LAN. You can connect to it.

 

 

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