RBR20 - Rekey interval

[jgsutton]

Hello,

Would anyone know how to change the rekey interval on the Orbi RBR20? I dont see this option anywhere in the advanced settings. Failing that, would anyone know what the default interval is set to?

Thanks!

[CrimpOn · Accepted solution]

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@jgsutton wrote:

Would anyone know how to change the rekey interval on the Orbi RBR20? I dont see this option anywhere in the advanced settings. Failing that, would anyone know what the default interval is set to?

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The group rekey interval appears to be set to zero.  i.e. there are three parameters that have "rekey" in them and appear to relate to this:

https://www.techwalla.com/articles/what-is-a-wpa-group-rekey-interval 

To see all Orbi parameters, activate telnet on http://orbilogin.net/debug.htm, telnet into the router, and type this command:

nvram show

To see only parameters with "rekey", type this command:

nvram show | grep "rekey"

What I infer from this is that the Orbi product does not constantly reset the WPA key.  I confess to not understanding much about WPA-PSK.  What I sense is that there is some mechanism built into the WPA standard for the access point and device to update the shared key without losing conection which would mean that someone snooping on the WiFi stream would be collecting packets where the key changes every so  often and this would make cracking the encryption exponentially more difficult.

[FURRYe38]

Rekey? What are you trying to do? 

[CrimpOn · Accepted solution]

---

@jgsutton wrote:

Would anyone know how to change the rekey interval on the Orbi RBR20? I dont see this option anywhere in the advanced settings. Failing that, would anyone know what the default interval is set to?

---

The group rekey interval appears to be set to zero.  i.e. there are three parameters that have "rekey" in them and appear to relate to this:

https://www.techwalla.com/articles/what-is-a-wpa-group-rekey-interval 

To see all Orbi parameters, activate telnet on http://orbilogin.net/debug.htm, telnet into the router, and type this command:

nvram show

To see only parameters with "rekey", type this command:

nvram show | grep "rekey"

What I infer from this is that the Orbi product does not constantly reset the WPA key.  I confess to not understanding much about WPA-PSK.  What I sense is that there is some mechanism built into the WPA standard for the access point and device to update the shared key without losing conection which would mean that someone snooping on the WiFi stream would be collecting packets where the key changes every so  often and this would make cracking the encryption exponentially more difficult.

[jgsutton]

Hi, thanks to both of you who replied.  I'm debugging a connected device, which has an issue with frequent disconnects on a different router (an ISP provided router). But this same device works well on the Orbi. My thought was the disconnects are occuring when the key is changed.  What I see from the Orbi debug menu, and the settings shown by "nvram show" is that all the rekey intervals are 0. This means no key changes. And this lines up with my experience that the device works well with Orbi, but not on the other router that changes the key frequently.

wla1_wpa_gtk_rekey=0
wlg1_wpa_gtk_rekey=0
wl_wpa_gtk_rekey=0
wla_2nd_wpa_gtk_rekey=0
wla1_2nd_wpa_gtk_rekey=0
wlg_arlo_wpa_gtk_rekey=0
root@RBR20:/#