Orbi stops fowarding traffic

[AussieCJ7]

This thread is out of pure frustration with terrible support from Netgear, and hopefully will allow others considering orbi not to make the same mistake

Orbi has a critical software defect that based on a number of threads on here has not been resolved since 2018, reading the majority of these threads appears many out of frustration have only resolved by moving to another vendors product, so looks like I will be testing out the Google Nest 🙂

From my assessment and troubleshooting;

The issue is triggered intermittently by a DHCP renew on the WAN side (my ISP uses a lease time of 15 mins and 7:30 renew timer)

At intermitent lease renew process Orbi process fails and will forget the hosts on the LAN side with the router transmitting ICMP host unreachables back both WAN and LAN side.   The issue can be worked around by doing a manual DHCP lease renew or a reboot.

Escalation within Netgear support has seen this issue go in circles and their support managment and first line staff locked in process and can not put a customer in touch with the right people to have progressed.   I have had over 5 call backs promised that everytime did not occur.

[CrimpOn]

I have suspected that very short DHCP lease times could create this kind of problem for some time.  MY ISP uses a 24 hour lease, which gives the Orbi 12 hours to renew the lease before going into a panic.  If an ISP has thousands of customers with 7 minute renew times, I would suspect that plenty of these customers would be having this problem.  Since it is intermittant, they probably just "restart the WiFi" and go on.  This code could be buried deep inside OpenWRT and different from the DHCP management code in Netgear's other routers.

[AussieCJ7]

I believe there is a number of people seeing this issue based on the number of support community threads that describe symtoms of intermittent lock ups, given the wide range of techincal backgrounds of the user community some of these symptoms have been described more in a more generalist form others have got much closer to the issue but none have been resolved. I have even seen comments of people writing scripts to reboot every evening to try and prevent this issue out of frustation.

As of last night it appears my logs have made to to level 3 so hopefully there is enough in them to get to root cuase in the code. I did finally get a call back howvever very disrepectful 01:35hrs just makes it even worse with a already dis-satisfied customer.

[Blanca_O]

Hi @AussieCJ7

Please PM us the case number for us to properly followup and get the case on track. 

Regards,
Blanca
Community Team

[euidhawiojp12]

It's probably every hour to hour and a half that it stops traffic. I've rebooted my fiber gateway, main Orbi and sat Orbi in correct sequence as well. I installed the older firmware which kept for all of 20 minutes before the Orbi automatically upgraded itself back the newest. So annoying.

[CrimpOn]

Orbi RBR50 automatically updating stopped once firmware 2.3.0.30 was released early last summer.  Which firmware release is this Orbi on now?

This system sounds like an ideal candidate to test my theory about DHCP renewals.  Can you set up a capture to USB and let it run through at least two failures, with restart by DHCP Renew rather than reboot?

p.s. How are you doing the DHCP renew?  (telnet session command?)

[euidhawiojp12]

It's probably every hour to hour and a half that it stops traffic. I've rebooted my fiber gateway, main Orbi and sat Orbi in correct sequence as well tutuapp 9apps showbox I installed the older firmware which kept for all of 20 minutes before the Orbi automatically upgraded itself back the newest. So annoying.

[FURRYe38]

What happens if you configure the Orbi for AP mode and use your ISP Gateway as your router? 

Problems with ISP gateway modems: This would be a double NAT condition which isn't recommended. https://kb.netgear.com/30186/What-is-Double-NAT
https://kb.netgear.com/30187/How-to-fix-issues-with-Double-NAT
Couple of options,
1. Configure the modem for transparent bridge or modem only mode. Then use the Orbi router in router mode. You'll need to contact the ISP for help and information in regards to the modem being bridged correctly.
2. If you can't bridge the modem, disable ALL wifi radios on the modem, configure the modems DMZ/ExposedHost or IP Pass-Through for the IP address the Orbi router gets from the modem. Then you can use the Orbi router in Router mode.
3. Or disable all wifi radios on the modem and connect the Orbi router to the modem, configure AP mode on the Orbi router. https://kb.netgear.com/31218/How-do-I-configure-my-Orbi-router-to-act-as-an-access-point and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7LOcJ8GdDo&app=desktop 

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@euidhawiojp12 wrote:

It's probably every hour to hour and a half that it stops traffic. I've rebooted my fiber gateway, main Orbi and sat Orbi in correct sequence as well tutuapp 9apps showbox I installed the older firmware which kept for all of 20 minutes before the Orbi automatically upgraded itself back the newest. So annoying.

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[CrimpOn]

What happens?

• Since Orbi is no longer in "router mode", it no longer performs any "router functions"
  such as assigning IP addresses with DHCP, port forwarding, port blocking , web site blocking, Disney Circle,
  OpenVPN, etc.
• All of those functions are done on the primary router.
• The "good thing" is that there are no longer "two routers", so problems with "Double NAT" no longer exist.
• There is more flexibility in how devices are connected to the primary router ports, since there is now only one single IP space.

It is not a "bad thing" to put the Orbi in Access Point (AP) mode.  It is recommended as one of the ways to solve the Double NAT problem.