Orbi AC3000 drops internet EVERY NIGHT

[buckleyje5]

First off, we have the Netgear Nighthawk Docsis 3.0 Cable Modem Router (with the WIFI disabled) running a wired connection to our Orbi- and we have 2 sattelites. 

Every Single Night the wifi drops around 9:30pm.  Every.  Single.  Night.  

The wired connection from the Nighthawk is still working though- I can use our desktop computer.  Just no wifi capabilities in our home.  Which leads me to believe it's an Orbi thing.

Why is this happening and what do I need to do?

[DarrenM]

Are you running Orbi in router mode or AP mode?

DarrenM

[buckleyje5]

I just switched to AP mode, but now my RING doorbell camera has a HUGE delay, so I'm going to move it back to Router mode.

BUT.... I did see that the "lease" was always ending at 9:30pm and I'm thinking that's why the glitch every night at that time.  When I woke up the next morning super early (5:15am) I renewed the lease- so now it expires while we are all still aslee in bed and not trying to use our laptops.

I'm thinking THAT was the fix!

[buckleyje5]

UPDATE:  Nope, it's down again.  The "lease renewal" didn't work.  I have internet on my wired device from my primary router- but anything coming from the Orbi does not work.  

HELP!!  Why does Orbi crash every night at the same time??

[Roamabout]

What if you run the Orbi router in AP mode and give it a static address. Does that change the behavior ?

[buckleyje5]

I did try the AP mode, and we didn't have any drops for several days.....BUT for some reason it made our Ring doorbell have a 10-second lag.  So I switched it back.

I don't know enough about networking to understand static IP, but when I read the log at the time internet disconnects, there's always a DHCP IP entry- so I thought about disabling the DHCP and moving to static IP, but does that mean I have to manually assign an IP to every device in our house?  Or will it keep the ones it has?  And what happens if a device leaves our house- will it reconnect when it comes back?

This is above my paygrade 🙂

[Roamabout]

The typical home router is assuming that everything (other than the router) is getting a dynamic address assigned by DHCP. You can usually configure the router to only assign DHCP addresses from a range, say 192.168.1.2 to 192.168.1.100. Now you can allocate a static address above 192.168.1.100 to any device. Everything else will stay on DHCP.

With the Orbi in AP mode and a static IP address that would take DHCP out of the picture.

[t_k]

 buckleyje5 - I have a theory on your problem based on my experience.

I suspect that circa 9:30pm there is just more traffic going over the Orbi's around that time. Perhaps devices are scheduled to perform backups and sync right around then. That shouldn't cause your Orbi's to fail, of course, but it makes it more likely due to bugs.

After a year+ of working against the Orbi's, I know for certain that the backhaul (WDS system) is very unreliable and will cut out or fail in different ways under any kind of sustained traffic. Note, that these are layer 2 issues - not IP level, which can make them confusing. Since the issues are layer 2 related, if your doorbell is attached to a satellite, it also explains the delay you're seeing there.

See my related post here.