Help troubleshooting consistent but sporadic connectivity failures on Orbi?
A few months ago we upgraded our old Nighthawk R7000 to an Orbi RBK752 system, currently with one satellite. So far this hasn't turned out to be the upgrade we'd hoped - our WiFi connection comes and goes seemingly at random for most devices in the home, and I've run out of ideas on how to isolate or correct the problem. Hopefully some wiser heads here can point me in the right direction, even if it's just tools for additional diagnosis. (Btw, Firmware is V3.2.16.22_1.4.9(
Looking at ping logs from a typical laptop shows periods of 30-90 seconds every 10-15 minutes where the gateway is reachable, but the modem itself is not (pings to the modem IP on the local network either time out, or return "destination net unreachable.") Then everything will start working fine again with 4-10ms pings, no router reboot, no IP address renewal etc - it just stops working, and then it starts working.
Things I've tried:
- Hard rebooting everything multiple times, from the modem on up. No change.
- Changing location of the main AP and satellite. No location makes a reliable difference (and the gateway is almost always reachable in any case).
- Double-checking Ethernet line connection to the modem, including swapping out cables. But that connection appears to be fine. Our old R7000 never exhibits this problem if we swap it back in for the Orbi. Also, other machines on the subnet will be able to ping the modem with no problem even when one or two are experiencing failure.
- Assigning every device a fixed IP, just to rule out IP address conflicts. No effect.
- Testing in the middle of the night with a minimum number of devices attached. No change.
- Disconnecting all devices (Sonos controller, NAS, etc.) connected to the router via Ethernet. No effect.
- Looking at performance on a 2.8g-only WiFi adapter vs a 5g adapter. This actually seems to make a difference. Even when both are just 5-10 feet away in the same room, the 2.8g only device works more reliably than the 5g one. Also, putting Tomato on the r7000 and configuring it as an AP on the 5g radio and a wireless Ethernet bridge on the 2.8g radio will let MOST devices connecting through that AP work fine for extended periods of time. But it's not a perfect solution, because (1) it only helps for that single AP, and (2) not all devices connect fine this way; a couple of the family iPad Pros, for example, are just as flakey connecting this way as they are directly to the Orbi router.
So I'm pretty well stumped as to what to try next here. If I could, I'd turn off the 5g radio completely on the base router and the satellite, and see how that affected reliable connectivity at the cost of throughput. But I can't see any way to do that via the firmware settings.
I'd love to hear some suggestions on how to proceed. I'm at the end of my rope at this point. If we can't fix this, my next step is just to chuck everything and move to Ubiquiti.
Re: Help troubleshooting consistent but sporadic connectivity failures on Orbi?
What is the Mfr and model# of the Internet Service Providers modem/ONT the NG router is connected too?
What is the size of your home? Sq Ft? What is the distance between the router and satellite(s)? 30 feet or more is recommended in between RBR and RBS to begin with depending upon building materials when wirelessly connected. https://kb.netgear.com/31029/Where-should-I-place-my-Orbi-satellite
Try disabling the following and see: Armor, IPv6 and Set 20/40Mhz Coexistence to 40Mhz only. Set Short preamble instead of Long preamble modes. Save settings and reboot the router and satellite(s).
Re: Help troubleshooting consistent but sporadic connectivity failures on Orbi?
Hi Furry, thanks for your reply. Responses are inline below:
Modem: Motorola MB8600, running on Comcast
Size of home: The area we're trying to cover with the Orbi is about 3k sqft on three levels. The Orbi base is on the middle level, with the satellite on the first level. 80%+ of our traffic connects through the base unit, most of it within 75ft of the unit.
What channels are you using? - I've tried pretty much all channel combos. Currently it's manually set to channel 5 for 2.4 and 36 for 5g, which appear to be the least noisy channels in our area.
Any Wifi Neighbors near by? Yes, I can see 3 other SSID's broadcasting in range of us.
20/40Mhz Coexistence - I set this to "disabled" shortly after we installed the router, and we're still running that way.
Preamble - just changed from long to short, and also changed CTS/RTS threshold from 64 to 500 while I was in there. We'll see if that helps!
IPV6 - has been disabled since initial setup.
Armor - has been deactivated since our trial expired
Other info:
AX is disabled for both 2.4 and 5g
I can believe that RF interference (including other competing AP's) could be at least partly to blame for our dropouts, but what is baffling me is that the problem is reproducible even when in the same room less than 10ft from the base router, AND that the router itself can be pinged just fine. It's almost as if packets are making it to the router, then dropped before being sent any further.
Thanks for the link, I'll take a look at it and see if I can learn anything useful there. I do really wish I could get more detailed log info from the router, though, to see what it's doing with packets from a specific IP within a given time window.
