Re: Orbi RBR 50 - Struggling to reconnect devices after reboot

xyzw · ‎2022-01-01

Hi all,

I have an Orbi 50 system with one satellite and approximately 40-50 devices connected (of which 10 wired through a switch and the others on wi-fi).

Since a couple of months, after overcoming the threshold of 30 connected devices, I have been experiencing significant delays in network restart after rebooting / repowering the router and satellite. In particular, the Orbi struggles to reconnect all the devices. Checking throught the app interface after reboot, the number of devices is growing to somewhere between 20 and 30 than keeps dropping and increasing also for hours before reconnecting all devices.

I have not found a way to ensure a fast restart of the network apart from multiple reboots (every 30' or so) that eventually achieve a stable network. The issue seems to be related to the wireless connectivity since wired devices reconnect within seconds.

Hoping to reduce DHCP overhead, I have been reserving IPs for most of the IoT devices in the house (approximately 30 devices that cannot be powered-off during reboots). This seems to help, but did not solve the issue.

The Orbi is running on the latest version of the firmware (V4.6.5.14). Has anyone experienced a similar issue and has found a solution?

Thank you in advance for your help!

Stefano

plemans · ‎2022-01-01

some additional details:

1. What firmware is on the router and statellite

2. what modem/gateway is the router connected to?

A couple things to check/try.

1. When its having issues, check to see if devices are connecting to the satellite. If everyting is connecting to the router for some reason, it could be to many on that one device.

2. Maybe its actually the satellite causing the issue. Try powering it off and seeing if the router can manage everything. It wouldn't be the first time a satellite issue caused problems.

3. Sometimes a device just needs the firmware reinstalled, then to be factory reset and a clean install done. by clean I mean not using a backup. I've seen corrupt firmware or even old settings cause issues.

CrimpOn · ‎2022-01-01

@xyzw wrote:

Hi all,

I have an Orbi 50 system with one satellite and approximately 40-50 devices connected (of which 10 wired through a switch and the others on wi-fi). issue seems to be related to the wireless connectivity since wired devices reconnect within seconds.

...

The Orbi is running on the latest version of the firmware (V4.6.5.14). Has anyone experienced a similar issue and has found a solution?

It would help to know the specific model number of the Orbi (from the product label on the bottom of the router).

@xyzw wrote:

Hoping to reduce DHCP overhead, I have been reserving IPs for most of the IoT devices in the house (approximately 30 devices that cannot be powered-off during reboots). This seems to help, but did not solve the issue.

DHCP has practically zero overhead. Only six tiny data packets are required to secure a 24 hour lease (86,400 seconds). All of those devices go through exactly the same sequence whether an IP has been 'reserved' for them or not. This is not to argue against assigning IP's to devices. Every device that regularly connects to my Orbi has an entry in the LAN Setup table. The point is that this is not the right area to focus on.

Rebooting the router every 30 minutes is probably doing more harm than good. When the Orbi system reboots, the router begins broadcasting WiFi significantly before the satellites do. If those IoT devices detect a poor router WiFi signal, they may 'stick' to it.

Rebooting the IoT device may be the best way to address this issue.

There are definitely concerns about satellite behavior in some of the newer AX models of Orbi.

xyzw · ‎2022-01-01

Hi piemans and CrimpOn,

thank you for your help.

As per the configuration

0. the exact models of the router / satellite system are

- Router RBR750

- Satellite RBS750

1. both router and satellite are running fimrware V4.6.5.14 (I believe this is the latest available)

2. the modem is proprietary and provided by the ISP, but network management options should have been fully tuned down (no DHCP service, no UPnP, port forwarding for used ports, ...).

3. Unfortunately most IoT devices are hard wired (e.g. Shelly or Tuya switches) and the only way to turn them off is through a power cycle at electric meter level, turning off and on the router / satellite as well.

I made a couple of tests and

1. devices try to connect both to router and satellite and they keep dropping off both for a while

2. the router definitely struggles as well alone. However in this case network quality is significantly worse for 10-15 devices

3. a clean firmware installation might be quite painful in terms of time. Is there any further step to troubleshoot the issue before resetting everything?

Thank you all for the help!

Stefano

CrimpOn · ‎2022-01-01

@xyzw wrote:

1. devices try to connect both to router and satellite and they keep dropping off both for a while

I am interested in how "dropping off" is observed:

The devices appear in the Orbi Attached Devices (or 'app') and then later do not appear, or
The smartphone app that manages the devices says they are not on-line?

xyzw · ‎2022-01-02

@CrimpOn, thank you for your question. The devices appear in the Orbi app, in the "Network map" section by pressing on the router / satellite icon. They initially are listed with a green dot on the left (apparently) in a consistent way with the list of attached devices in the "Device Manager" section of the same app. When they "drop" they drop both from the list in the Network Map (being listed with a gray dot below conneted devices) and in the list in the Device Manager section.

This is not always consistent with feedback from third party apps that may or may not see the devices independently from the status reported in the Orbi app. Direct calls to local IPs from a web browser are not always successful either also when devices appear to be "connected" according to the app.

Looks like my Orbi has some issues in building the IP table for the wi-fi network, but I have no specific evidence supporting my guess.

Thank you for your help!

Stefano

CrimpOn · ‎2022-01-02

Is it always the same devices (or type of devices) that disappear?

Would you mind sharing the brand/model of the devices that disappear?

I find troubleshooting network issues frustrating because devices vary so much in how they behave on a network. i.e.

Some devices host a web page. (Orbi's do. My printer does.) while others do not.
Some respond to ICMP requests (ping), while others do not. My Sonos and Nest Mini speakers do, while the Echo Dot does not.
Some appear to exist only in terms of the smartphone app that controls them.

xyzw · ‎2022-01-03

Hi @CrimpOn,

the issue applies to almost all devices types connected including:

- Amazon Echo ones (various models)

- Shelly IoT switches (various model)

- Tuya family actuators

- Samsung devices. In particular, mobile phones are not able to connect and give a "Could not obtain IP address" error

Definitely looks as an issue at router / satellite level!

Stefano

CrimpOn · ‎2022-01-03

Can you separate devices into groups:

Those that do not connect on restart.
Do they ever get connected?
Those that "show connected" and later do not?
Do they ever get connected again by themselves?

I am much more comfortable with the Orbi web interface. Information on the Orbi app is gathered from the router using a Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) which is not documented by Netgear (that anyone can find). Although it should match the web interface Attached Devices page, there have been complaints for years of the app not being correct.

There are hundreds of posts on the AX forum discussing the 4.x firmware for the 750 and 850 routers. Have you considered "rolling back" the firmware to the 3.x version and blocking the router from updating?

austin-bob · ‎2022-01-30

We have rbr750 with two satellites. We have 65 devices connected, most smart devices. Streaming on 2 firesticks. A couple days ago added 12 new smart "can" lights and now we're having serious issues with our orbi router. Several of these new devices were very difficult to get connected to orbi WIFI. The last few took many, many painful attempts.

Yesterday we lost the "main" SSID, BandB. We could never get it to connect to the internet but it was still broadcasting the SSID. Very strange. We tried everything to get the system back up. Since all of our smart devices use that SSID and password we didn't want to reset every device, that would take forever. Finally, we factory reset the system using BandB again but it never worked, same issue. We tried this multiple times. In the end we kept ORBI65 SSID and created a guest SSID, BandB. Everything seemed to work ok smart devices being smart again and streaming just fine. Today, issues again. The orbi router keeps bouncing from connected to not connected interupting streaming.

Stats:

We are on the lastest version of firmware. Orbi apps shows almost a gb of bandwidth in 'Internet Speed' and never waivers. We have one satillite wired and the other on WIFI.

We are in the process of wiring the second to see if that helps. House is single story and about 2500 sq ft.

We have tried everything to get it working. Our guess is these last few devices we added put us over some device limit. Up until yesterday we LOVED our orbi system and have had no issues apart from minor issues connection 2.4 smart devices.

Any suggestions besides upgrading to "bigger" system?

FURRYe38 · ‎2022-01-30

Please make a new post regarding your 7 series orbi and we'll help you out there. This thread is for the 50 series which dffers from the 7 series.

This thread will be moved to the Orbi AC forum.

Thank you.

@austin-bob wrote:

We have rbr750 with two satellites. We have 65 devices connected, most smart devices. Streaming on 2 firesticks. A couple days ago added 12 new smart "can" lights and now we're having serious issues with our orbi router. Several of these new devices were very difficult to get connected to orbi WIFI. The last few took many, many painful attempts.

Yesterday we lost the "main" SSID, BandB. We could never get it to connect to the internet but it was still broadcasting the SSID. Very strange. We tried everything to get the system back up. Since all of our smart devices use that SSID and password we didn't want to reset every device, that would take forever. Finally, we factory reset the system using BandB again but it never worked, same issue. We tried this multiple times. In the end we kept ORBI65 SSID and created a guest SSID, BandB. Everything seemed to work ok smart devices being smart again and streaming just fine. Today, issues again. The orbi router keeps bouncing from connected to not connected interupting streaming.

Stats:

We are on the lastest version of firmware. Orbi apps shows almost a gb of bandwidth in 'Internet Speed' and never waivers. We have one satillite wired and the other on WIFI.

We are in the process of wiring the second to see if that helps. House is single story and about 2500 sq ft.

We have tried everything to get it working. Our guess is these last few devices we added put us over some device limit. Up until yesterday we LOVED our orbi system and have had no issues apart from minor issues connection 2.4 smart devices.

Any suggestions besides upgrading to "bigger" system?

Yosmany21 · ‎2022-06-03

I have this exact same issue with my RBR50. It drives me insane that the RBR50 can't be power cycled without a 1-2 hour delay reconnecting all my devices.

If my RBR50 and (2) RBS50s are power cycled, and the router connects to the Satellites early in the power up cycle process (so all 3 are online) it takes 2-3 hours for all of 60 devices to reconnect.

The attempt for a device to connect to the network yields a "IP configuration" error. Hours to get back online. Seriously.

If I just boot the Router and let it go without the Satellites, it's take about 1 hour for 45 out if 60 devices to come online.

Then..I boot the Satellites, 1 at time. And wait the 2 hours for the remaining devices to connect.

Over 24 hours, the devices will eventually connect to be closest Satellite.

It truly sucks that I can't power cycle my modem and router and expect everything to just come back online or expect the router to remember the old IP addresses.

Seriously frustrating.

Now if I change the SSID, "bam" all the devices just connect. But have the devices hold the old SSID and have them auto-reconnect router is one of the most painful things I've ever experienced.

Trent41 · ‎2022-10-19

Hello I am having the same exact problem. I've never owned a router set that took hours to reconnect devices following a simple power cycling I came from Nest WiFi which was SO much more simple to manage, but had poor wireless throughout.

I'm seriously hoping to find a fix for this issue as I dropped close to $500 for this setup.

KevinLiT · ‎2022-10-21

Hello Trent41,

Please ensure your firmware is on version 2.7.4.24. If your firmware is not up-to-date please download the firmware from the link below. I also included manual installation instructions for you to successfully update your RBR50.

Please navigate to the link below for the download file for your RBR50:
https://www.netgear.com/support/product/RBK50#download

For more information on manually updating your RBK50 please navigate to the link below:
https://kb.netgear.com/31573/How-do-I-manually-upgrade-firmware-on-my-Orbi-router-using-orbilogin-co...

Please let me know if this helps!

Best,
Kevin
Community Team

Yosmany21 · ‎2022-10-21

So I've had this issue for 3 years. Here's what I see happening and how I fix it.

The first time you ever set up your Orbi, all of your devices are new to your router and satellites. As your router and satellites find your devices, either one will dole out an IP address. No problem.

The next time you reboot/reset your Orbi and Satellites, the router and satellites somehow remember that those devices were on your network and they both want to assign the Ip address. The devices closests to the satellite or router will immediately get an IP address. The devices that sit between the satellite and router will enter an IP conflict where the router and satellites will fight to assign and IP address. They will continue for 30 mins to 2 hours and eventually one or the other will win and an IP address will be assigned.

Here what I do to resolve the issue. If I reset the router and satellites. I'll boot the router, set it up and pair the satellites. Once the satellites are paired I turn them off.

I let the router and only the router assign all Ip addresses. Once the router has assigned the IP addresses, then I turn on the satellites. The satellites will find the devices closest to it and will move them over to the satellite.

If I need to reboot the modem, router. and satellites, I'll boot the modem first. Then I'll boot the router, then I wait 15 -20 mins for the router to add all the IP addresses, then I boot the satellites.

TL, DR. Booting orbit router and satellites...devices take 1-2 hours to connect. Booting router only, waiting, then booting satellites, devices take 15-20 mins to connect.