Drops network every 30 seconds for 5 seconds

[rix0rrr]

My Orbi is dropping network connectivity for 5 seconds just about every 30 seconds. It's not exactly 30 seconds, but it does occur very regularly, definitely every minute.

I'm on version 2.1.2.18. I unpowered the satellite to see if that was it, but that didn't help.

I captured ping statistics over a day (pinging a host on the same network over WiFi every second) so you can see the connectivity (timeout was set at 5 seconds, so all dropped connectivity shows as a latency peak to 5000 milliseconds).

How do I fix this? I thought this was supposed to be a good piece of kit.

Graph of my network interruptions over 1 day

[rix0rrr · Accepted solution]

Downgrading to V2.0.1.4 fixed it for me.

[rix0rrr]

Here's an interesting bit of info:

I found somewhere on the forum that you can go to a special url, http://<ip-of-router>/debug.htm, and from there I found I can ENABLE TELNET ACCESS!

After logging in on the box, I noticed a process called something like "miniupnpd" (or similar, it's hard to check now) eating a lot of CPU. After killing it, I still see occasional lag spikes of 100-200ms, but the drops are gone!

[rix0rrr]

Okay so killing miniupnpd doesn't fix it. The hangups occasionally still happen, but less frequently (once every hour or so).

Dropping packets/high latencies seem to be accompanied by high CPU usage on the Orbi.

[webminster]

Given your discovery, do you have UPnP enabled or disabled in the Web UI? Advanced Setup.  Causes issues for many people.

[rix0rrr]

The UPNP setting appears greyed out for me, probably because I have the device in AP mode... 😞

[rix0rrr · Accepted solution]

Downgrading to V2.0.1.4 fixed it for me.

[rix0rrr]

And my Orbi rolled forward again to V2.1.3.4 and now it's broken again.

Going to roll back and disable updates.

NetGear, you're not very good at software!

[PyroDog]

I've been through your exact same experience. No one from Netgear has been able to address this concern directly. My permanent solution has been to rollback all the way to V2.0.0.74 and use my main router's firewall to block the Orbi units from updating.

[FURRYe38]

Have you factory reset the router and satelllites and set up from scratch, after the system was updated to v2.1.3.4? This needs to be done when using this version of FW.

---

@rix0rrr wrote:

And my Orbi rolled forward again to V2.1.3.4 and now it's broken again.

Going to roll back and disable updates.

NetGear, you're not very good at software!

---

[FURRYe38]

What is the problem your having? Please give details.

Hard to know whats really wrong.

---

@PyroDog wrote:

I've been through your exact same experience. No one from Netgear has been able to address this concern directly. My permanent solution has been to rollback all the way to V2.0.0.74 and use my main router's firewall to block the Orbi units from updating.

---

[PyroDog]

---

@FURRYe38 wrote:

What is the problem your having? Please give details.

Hard to know whats really wrong.

---

@PyroDog wrote:

I've been through your exact same experience. No one from Netgear has been able to address this concern directly. My permanent solution has been to rollback all the way to V2.0.0.74 and use my main router's firewall to block the Orbi units from updating.

---

---

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Orbi-MR-2-1-Update-3-23-18/m-p/1533917/highlight/true#M26314

[rix0rrr]

Well if the thing's going to auto-upgrade, I hope I don't need to manually reset settings afterwards. That's just bad design. How would I even know this happened or that I need to do things?

I've just completely lost faith in NetGear to do software upgrades properly. I have downgraded to a version that I know works (mentioned before in this thread), and I've manually disabled updates by telnetting in and disabling that feature. **bleep** this **bleep**, no piece of hardware costing multiple hundreds of euros should be costing me this much of my time.

[FURRYe38]

The reason you have to factory reset and set up from scratch is that there are major changes in beta versions, These need to have a clear and good installation then set up form scratch to work well. When NG gets ready to do a full release, I was told that then users won't have to do a factor reset then set up from scratch. Upgrading with current configurations should work well and persist thru the upgrade. For now, betas need to be factory reset then setup from scratch. Others have said this has fixed there issues when using betas. Did for me as well.

Router:
CPU Load: 20.72%
Memory Usage(Used/Total): 159 MB/484 MB
System Uptime: 3 days 07:37:08

Satellite:
CPU Load 16.9903%
Memory Usage(Used/Total) 177MB/484MB
Flash Usage(Used/Total) 32MB/4GB
Network Session(Active/Total) 4333/65536
System Uptime 04 days 04:40:21

---

@rix0rrr wrote:

Well if the thing's going to auto-upgrade, I hope I don't need to manually reset settings afterwards. That's just bad design. How would I even know this happened or that I need to do things?

I've just completely lost faith in NetGear to do software upgrades properly. I have downgraded to a version that I know works (mentioned before in this thread), and I've manually disabled updates by telnetting in and disabling that feature. **bleep** this **bleep**, no piece of hardware costing multiple hundreds of euros should be costing me this much of my time.

---

[FURRYe38]

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Orbi-MR-2-1-Update-3-23-18/m-p/1547562/highlight/true#M27733

---

@PyroDog wrote:

---

@FURRYe38 wrote:

What is the problem your having? Please give details.

Hard to know whats really wrong.

---

@PyroDog wrote:

I've been through your exact same experience. No one from Netgear has been able to address this concern directly. My permanent solution has been to rollback all the way to V2.0.0.74 and use my main router's firewall to block the Orbi units from updating.

---

---

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Orbi-MR-2-1-Update-3-23-18/m-p/1533917/highlight/true#M26314

---