RBE971 drops offline & reboots continually, ready for return

[nakiri]

Migrated from Eero Gen 1 (EOL) about 4 days ago and the Orbi system is completely unstable. Have managed at best ~8hrs of up time.

I set up Orbi to use same SSID that includes Pixel 5,6,7,8 phones, a couple of different generation Lenovo laptops, large Sonos topology, a couple RPi/IoT devices (PiHole/HomeAssistant), Arlo cameras, Qolsys alarm panel, a couple Rokus, Synology NAS & LG TV and Yamaha receiver.

Tried disconnecting satellites and creating a new SSID with only phones & laptops connected with same result. Tried new cable modem with same result. Restored Eero network and it's back to a workhorse-stable network with the new modem.

Config:

• Xfinity 1Gb/s service with Arris S33v2 (was Motorola MB8600) connected via .5m CAT7, Xfinity has checked line and modem provisioning. Get ~300Mb/s with Eero & 1.2Gb/s with Orbi speed tests from the router apps.
• RBE971 is running v9.10.02
• Clients are Lenovo laptops with various gen wireless a,b,g/n/ax, phones are 4 generations of Pixel running Android 10-14

Symptoms:

Wifi and wired networks drop offline, sometimes every couple of minutes & sometimes every couple of hours. No lights on router & cable modem is still online @  Xfinity.com and its WAN ethernet port still shows a link light. If I don't power cycle, eventually (after 15min or so) router will reboot, flashes white then comes back online. In addition to the above, when satellites were connected (wired and wireless backhaul) the same thing would happen at the router but satellites would also occasionally disconnect, reboot & resync before router eventually reboots.

This doesn't feel like a fully baked product, but if there is some known issue/workaround I'm willing to give it one more try before it goes back -- but my return window clock is running and I'm out of patience. This is not surprising with draft-spec. 1st-to-market products so it's kind of on me for taking the plunge. 802.11ax is mature and tested and I don't really need 802.11be so I guess that's where I'm headed.

If I had to guess, some unhandled exception, error threshold, or race condition is causing kernel lockups and watchdog timer expiration reboots. There is no way to save a debug.htm log before the reboots occur, so I'm skeptical that this is easy to root cause without a JTAG debugger or instrumented firmware.

[Straq · Accepted solution]

Hi @nakiri,

Correct we are aware of the issue and already have a fix planned to get released soon to everyone. However, is still under going from Quality Assurance testing. If anyone else has similar issues please direct message me and we will get you latest firmware.

**Please note when getting early firmware releases, keep in mind that other issues can arise due to full cycle of QA not being completed**

[FURRYe38]

Does the front LED turn PINK when this happens? 

Does this happen with the RBS turned OFF? 
Does this happen with both wireless and wired devices? 

What is the size of your home? Sq Ft?
What is the distance between the router and 📡 satellite(s)?

Be sure to disable any MAC Address randomizers on phones and pads while at home:
https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi-App/NETGEAR-Mobile-Applications-and-Apple-Devices-FAQ/td-p/222...

Has a factory reset and setup from scratch been performed since last FW update?

@Straq 

[nakiri]

Answers inline...

Does the front LED turn PINK when this happens? No

Does this happen with the RBS turned OFF? Yes, both satellites were powered off, after factory reset they haven't yet been added back
Does this happen with both wireless and wired devices? Both. When I had only two phones and two laptops connected wirelessly, it would occur. LAN crashes at the same time too, no DHCP on etherenet ports. SSID broadcast disappears. This is why is suspect bugcheck/kernel hang.

What is the size of your home? Sq Ft? ~3500sf
What is the distance between the router and 

 satellite(s)? Router on 2nd floor. When connected, one router is one floor and ~40' away, the other is one floor and +60' away

Be sure to disable any MAC Address randomizers on phones and pads while at home:
https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi-App/NETGEAR-Mobile-Applications-and-Apple-Devices-FAQ/td-p/222...

Trying this and IPv6 disabled now.

Has a factory reset and setup from scratch been performed since last FW update? Yes

[FURRYe38]

Can you also turn OFF one RBS and just run with the RBR and one RBS? 

For that size of home, having two RBS deployed maybe a bit too much. 

I wish we could turn down the power on the system. 🙄

[nakiri]

Don't have any satellites configured right now and, although I'm getting good coverage in the area that formerly needed an Eero satellite, it's still crashing every 30-40 minutes with just the router though.

[FURRYe38]

Ok, Have you contacted NG support yet?

@Straq 

[videogravity]

Since you mentioned Pixel 8, wanted to mention that I see very similar issues while I have either of my family's 2x Pixel 8 Pros connected to our RBE971 / RBE970.  Seeing the router crash frequently when either are connected.  To temporarily work-around the problem, I enabled the IoT network, limited it to 2.4Ghz / 5Ghz only, and only connect the Pixel 8s to it.  Have yet to see a crash for weeks while they are on the IoT network.  Something you may want to temporarily try. I Currently have an active case with NetGear about this.

[Straq]

Hello,

Engineering team here. We will be private messaging you.

Currently there is a stability issue with Pixel 8 Pro on current firmware but there already is a new firmware under test that fixes this issue. If have similar issue please private message

Thanks

[nakiri]

Thanks for that, I'll try quarantining the phone on the IoT network. I disabled wifi on the Pixel 8 yesterday and left it offline and managed 15hrs of uptime. However this morning I reenabled it to check some settings and crashed the router within 5 minutes.

NG Support seems optimistic that they have this specific problem understood and a fix for it in the upcoming firmware release.

BTW there's a Google Nov OTA update out for Pixel/Android 14 that I just installed that has a lot of bugfixes, but none seemingly specific to this issue. 

[Straq · Accepted solution]

Hi @nakiri,

Correct we are aware of the issue and already have a fix planned to get released soon to everyone. However, is still under going from Quality Assurance testing. If anyone else has similar issues please direct message me and we will get you latest firmware.

**Please note when getting early firmware releases, keep in mind that other issues can arise due to full cycle of QA not being completed**