Re: LBR20 - 4G/LTE as failover doesn't work flawlessly

clemtys · ‎2020-09-20

Hi everyone, as suggested by a fellow user in the "Orbi" Forum, I repost my question here trying to get an well informed answer from the community.

I've got an issue with my LBR20 configuration. I want it use the 4G/LTE connection as a failover of my cable broadband connection.

I believe I configured it correctly (failover mode is enabled), however when the broadband connection fails, the router takes a long time (several minutes) to switch to the 4G/LTE connection (when it does, sometimes it doesn't switch at all).

And then, when the cable broadband connection comes back up, the LBR20 never switches back to the cable broadband connection. It's stuck with the 4G/LTE connection until I reboot the LBR20 and the cable modem.

Any idea about how I can :

Make it work in a way that the LBR20 switches flawlessly between the two connections ? (I would like it to take around 1 minute to detect the loss/recovery of the broadband connection and switch the connection)
Tweak the way the LBR20 should check the connectivity of the broadband connection (on my previous router, I had an option where I was able to set the IP to check and the frequency (in seconds) it should poll that IP to check whether the connection is working)

Thank you for your help.

Mstrbig · ‎2020-09-21

@clemtys wrote:

I believe I configured it correctly (failover mode is enabled), however when the broadband connection fails, the router takes a long time (several minutes) to switch to the 4G/LTE connection (when it does, sometimes it doesn't switch at all).

And then, when the cable broadband connection comes back up, the LBR20 never switches back to the cable broadband connection. It's stuck with the 4G/LTE connection until I reboot the LBR20 and the cable modem.
Thank you for your help.

Was this purchased new or used? If new, you could always contact Netgear and get a replacement.

A few questions?

Who is your ISP and what equipment did they provide?
What is the current firmware on your Orbi device?
What device is your Orbi router connected to?
Is your Orbi router in router mode or AP mode?

Do you have any protection features enabled on the LBR20?
Did you reboot your ISP modem/router, before starting the Orbi router install?
Have you changed the network cable connected from the ISP device to your Orbi router?
Are your satellites wired or wireless?

I would try these settings:

Disable Circle, Armor, Daisy Chaining, Fast Roaming, IPv6 and uncheck 20/40Mhz Coexistence.
Enable WMM, Implicit BeamForming, Mu-MIMO
Set Short preamble mode. Save settings, reboot Orbi.

If none of this help, I would start from the very beginning and factory reset the LBR20 and, if possible, configure as a router.

clemtys · ‎2020-09-21

Thanks a lot for your answer. Let me answer your questions. Hope this helps.

Was this purchased new or used? If new, you could always contact Netgear and get a replacement.
It was purchased brand new from Amazon on July 31st. Maybe I'll contact Amazon or Netgear.

A few questions?
Of course.

Who is your ISP and what equipment did they provide?
It's SFR (France). They provide the Sagemcom f@st 3686 v1b cable modem. I put it in bridge mode to let the Orbi do the routing and DHCP part.

What is the current firmware on your Orbi device?
V2.5.2.20. Apparently, it's the last available firmware version.

What device is your Orbi router connected to?
It's connected to the cable modem on the WAN port and to a patch panel distributing the entire house (RJ45)

Is your Orbi router in router mode or AP mode?
It's in router mode (the AP mode is not available (greyed)).

Do you have any protection features enabled on the LBR20?
Not as far as I know. But I'll give it a check out this evening.
I refused Circle, disabled Armor, IPv6 is greyed. Concerning the other advices you give (Disabling Daisy Chaining, Fast Roaming, etc.), I'll check this evening. Those settings don't ring a bell right now 😉

Did you reboot your ISP modem/router, before starting the Orbi router install?
I'm not sure, I did a lot of reboots then 🙂

Have you changed the network cable connected from the ISP device to your Orbi router?
Yes, I changed the cable just to eliminate it as a responsible of the dysfunction.

Are your satellites wired or wireless?
I've one satellite, it's wired through the patch panel.

Thanks a lot for your help. I'll try to follow your advice and restart the configuration from scratch.

Mstrbig · ‎2020-09-21

@clemtys wrote:
Thanks a lot for your answer. Let me answer your questions. Hope this helps.

Are your satellites wired or wireless?
I've one satellite, it's wired through the patch panel.

What patch panel are you referring to, what brand, and is the patch panel before or after the LBR20, or in between the LBR20 and satellite.

Which brings up another question, is your LBR20 directly connected to your ISP modem/router or is it connected to a switch or patch panel?

clemtys · ‎2020-09-21

What I called the patch panel is a kind of "switch" for home dispatching of TV (DVB-T or DVB-S), TEL or Internet through RJ45 outlets. I far as I remember (I'm not at home), there are 3 IN ports (TV, TEL and NET) and 8 OUT ports; for each out port, you choose what type of signal the outlet behind the port is expected to receive (TV, TEL or NEt). I suspect that those litlle selectors are only for visual purpose, it doesn't really filter the signal or wathever. Anyway, I only use that patch panel to connect the plugged devices to the LAN (no TV or TEL signals injected)
Here is the model of that patch panel :

https://www.legrand.fr/pro/catalogue/34447-equipement-pour-la-repartition-du-telephone-ip-de-linform...

Here is the chain of connection :

Cable Modem > LBR20 Router WAN Port (LAN 1) (Directly)
LBR20 (LAN 2) > Small netgear Switch (Netgear) (Port 1: NAS, Port 2: Hue Bridge, Port 3: Patch Panel) > Satellite and other wired devices (Macs, TV, STB, AppleTV, etc).

Blanca_O · ‎2020-10-01

Hi @clemtys

The expected failure switch time is 2.5 mins.

To verify, is this how you setup Failover:

1. Please make sure that you have the latest firmware v2.5.2.20.
2. Enable WAN/LAN port as WAN port only
Go to Advanced TAB > LAN Setup > uncheck "Enable WAN/LAN1 port as LAN port" > click APPLY to save the changes.
3. Enable failover mode
Go to Advanced TAB > Setup > Internet Setup > Mobile Broadband Settings > Select "Use WAN Ethernet with mobile as back up in case of failure"
You will see the warning message "you have enable WAN/LAN1 PORT as LAN function when mobile mode, please disable it first". Click OK to continue.
4. Setup WAN
Go to Advanced TAB > Setup > Internet Setup > Internet Setup Page. Please input the WAN type and click Apply for setup

Regards,
Blanca
Community Team

clemtys · ‎2020-10-30

Hello @Blanca_O ,

Thank you for your detailed answer and sorry for my late feedback. I finally managed to find the time to check the settings as you suggested and everything seemed properly configured.

You say that the expected switch time is 2.5 mins, which is good to know. Do you know if we can change this value and if not, do you know if it's planned to make it possible for a next firmware release?

And, my last question is : do you know how the router detects a connection failure? Does it ping a specific IP (if so, which one?) for example ?

pctekhi · ‎2021-01-04

I am testing the LBR20.. latest firmware v2.5.2.20

The time it switches from wires to Mobile from 2:15 - 3:15 minutes (need to do more testing). When i reconnect the wired internet connection, it is not switching over. The only way for it to switch is to power cycle the LBR20. This is not acceptable. if there is limited data server on the mobile internet connection, it could technically stay there for weeks if it's not monitored.

I'll continue tinkering with the for the rest of the week, otherwise, I will have to return this product.

MikeTRose · ‎2021-03-23

Seconded on this question. A failover time of over 2 minutes is not useful, and the inability to revert to ISP connectivity automatically is even more disqualifying -- it would be far too easy to blow through an LTE bandwidth allocation without realizing it!

clemtys · ‎2021-03-23

If it may help, after a few months with the LBR20, I can confirm that the switch to 4G when the main link fails can take up to 3 mns, I suspect I miss it sometimes but when you watch Netflix or similar, you can't miss it and this can be long, especially when the main link gets back up and down a few times in the evening.

However I have to say that I can't confirm that it doesn't switch back to the main link when it's up again. I can take some time (a few minutes) but it always switch back to the main link when available.

Dear Netgear team, it would be really useful to be able to manage the default detection time/frequency to be something closer to 30/45 secs.

pctekhi · ‎2021-06-08

After applying the latest firmware, v2.6.4.2, it now falls back from LTE to wired, about 30-35 seconds to detect the wired WAN connection, then takes about 20 seconds to switch over. During this time, there is no internet connectivity.

With the new firmware, wired WAN to LTE fail-over is about 1:15 - 2+ minutes before it switches to LTE. Internet goes down right away and the top purple light comes on to indicate that it is offline. Still doing some test, but it certainly is working better. One of the test, took 3+ minutes to switch from WAN to LTE. I'll have to see if there are any adjustments to make, I didn't see any.

burrington · ‎2021-06-08

Those switchover times match my measurements as well. It seems to work very well.

Does anyone know how to get a notification that it has switched to LTE and again when it switches back? Mine switched over the other day and ran up 4 GB of data without me noticing. That's was a great success, but could have been disasterous if I hadn't accidently noticed after 2 days.

I can have a computer do a regular ping to find the public ip address, and maybe interpret whether it belongs to the LTE ISP or the Landline ISP. But it would be REALLY nice if the Orbi would just send an email when it switches over - since it already knows how to send me an email...

Any ideas??...

clemtys · ‎2021-06-09

Thanks for your tests. It indeed matches what I can witness.

The thing is that 2+ minutes to switch from broken wired to LTE feels too long.

In my case, I have a wired link that is sometimes unstable. Sometimes, for a 1hr long period, it can drop for 3 mins, then get back up for 1 min, then drop again for 5 mins, then get back up for 2 mins...

When this happens, the fact that it takes 2+ mins to switch from broken wired to LTE and then 30 seconds to switch back to working wired makes me feel that it never switches to LTE. For 1h, I struggle having a working Internet connection.

If the wired connection had dropped for 1hr long, I would have only had a 2mins connection loss, but the fact that it sometimes gets back up again but for a short period of time makes the router switch back to wired connection just before it drops again and take 2+ mins to re-switch to LTE.

In this case, I'd really prefer to be on LTE all that time so I can work with bearly noticing any connection drop or only for 2 mns.

That's why I would love to have a setting where I could set the connection check frequency and method (ping to one of my servers).

burrington · ‎2021-06-09

When the path is changed, there is a lot has to happen to recreate your connection in the new path. It might not even be over the same provider. There are chances for lost data while the switchover is taking place. It takes a little while to determine that the path has failed, vs just being slow to respond. I assume that is why they have a longer delay before doing the switchover so that it isn't frantically flopping back and forth.

I agree that it would be great if it switched over seamlessly in a second or two, but I'm not sure that's technically possible.

I assume you've already put pressure on your landline ISP to make their circuit work properly? Maybe different ISP could do better?

clemtys · ‎2021-06-09

I understand your explanation about path switch delays but I believe this is doable in less than a few seconds.

French ISP "Free" has launched a few weeks ago and new proprietary modem (Fiber + LTE) that is able to switch from one connection to another in less that 2 secs?!. Heres is a video (sorry it's in french but you can understand without sound) where we can see the lady unplugging the main fiber link while the ping results show that it's still connected (TTL going from 250 to 47 shows that it changed the link). It only drops one packet when she plugs the main link back.

https://youtu.be/PYMEuUakEBE?t=157

Regarding my ISP, of course I called them a lot for that matter, but my main wired connection relies on coaxical cable technology which seems to be very sensitive against outside perturbations.

Optic fiber has just come to my door, I may be upgrading very soon. Maybe that "slow" path changing issue will not be an issue in the next few weeks 🙂

burrington · ‎2021-06-09

Wow, that looks like an awesome system. Love the fast switching!