Devices hardwired to Orbi router not pingable

[Ahwman]

I have several 4th gen Apple TV’s around the house all hardwired over gigabit Ethernet.  The one which is wired to the back of the Orbi router is not pingable after it goes to sleep which prevents me from waking it up over TCP.  The other Apple TV’s which are connected to other gigabit switches are pingable and are reachable over TCP as expected.  Not sure why the Orbi behaves differently than a simple switch.  FYI, my Orbi is in AP mode as my upstream switch does all DHCP, NAT and routing.  Any ideas?

Thnks,

Chuck

[st_shaw]

You should have no problem pinging devices connected to Orbi in AP mode, unless you have another router in the middle somewhere.

Normally, deivces that are "asleep" wil not respond to pings and cannot be woken up using a ping.  Normally, you must use a Wake on Lan (WOL) command to wake sleeping devices.

Are you sure your other Apple TVs are actually sleeping? Can you just set the problem Apple TV to always stay on by disabling the sleep function?

[Ahwman]

Thanks for the reply.  Actually, I’m not trying to wake up the Apple TV via pinging, but rather as a troubleshooting tool.  I have each of my 6 ATV’s set to sleep after 15 minutes.  That said, I control all of my AV equipment via iOS devices using Simple Control software.  My Apple TV’s are controlled via TCP.  When I turn on the Apple TV activity, Simple Control sends a menu command over TCP to the Apple TV to wake it up.  This method works perfectly for each of my other ATV’s, however the ATV hardwired to the Orbi ignores the command and the ATV never wakes up.  If I unplug the offending ATV and plug it into one of my other switches, it behaves as the other ATV’s do and responds to the wake up command as expected...

[st_shaw]

Ok. I also use Simple Control, but I have no Apple TVs.

Apple uses certain network protocols like multicasting, Bonjour, and mDNS.  I suspect there is an issue with Orbi handling one or more of these protocols.

Is everything on your LAN plugged-in downstream of the Orbi router?  If not, I would try hanging everything off the Orbi LAN ports and see if that makes a difference. Otherwise, I don't have any ideas.

[Ahwman]

You make some great points...  In answer to your question, my other devices are plugged into switches which are not downstream nor upstream but fed from the same switch as my Orbi.  Due to the geographic location of my devices, I could not plug my Orbi into my modem so my system is as follows:

Each room has an Ethernet drop which leads to a gigabit switch.  My modem and all switches feed into this shared switch.  Since my modem/router is upstream to all others, it is doing all DHCP, NAT and routing.  Because of this configuration, the Orbi is in AP mode, so I’m not sure why the router LAN ports on the Orbi would block any protocols even though it would appear that this is what’s happening.