Orbi system - Faulty LAN / switching design

[superczar]

Issue - Orbi system with 2 satellites (R1, S1, S2) will randomly drop LAN communication between segments.

e.g. devices connected to S1 (both wired/wireless) won't be able to ping devices on S2 (or vice versa)
or sometimes devices on S2 won't be able to ping devices on R1 and vice versa

All devices will continue to have Internet access though.

4 years and counting yet NG haven't fixed this issue which is so blatantly bad

And it’s not just me -

Orbi loosing part of the network NOT Internet

I have strange disconnection problems that it is not loosing Internet access. But I am losing part of my LAN that is connected to one satellite. I have 2 satellite and 1 Orbi router set up. All parts of the network could access Internet and no issues as far as I could tell. However...

community.netgear.com

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Serious-Satellite-Connectivity-Bug/td-p/1303604

Devices attached to satellites unable to talk to each other

For the last few weeks I've noticed issues where devices on my network aren't able to reliably talk to each other. Specifically I have a NAS and a server PC attached via Ethernet to a satellite in the basement, and my laptop connected to either an upstairs satellite or the main router via WiFi...

community.netgear.com

I personally spent days trying to resolve it. Eventually called it a day by keeping all devices on 2.1.4.16 on which the onset of this issue is relatively delayed.
After another recurrence few days ago, decided to upgrade to 2.5.1.16 in the hope it would be fixed by now.
Guess what, the issue started to recur within 30 mins of the upgrade.


Other points to note:

- System Restart fixes the issue temporarily

- After some time, 15 mins to a few hours, the LAN comm will breakdown and require a restart again

- Occurs in both AP and router mode

- 2.1.4.16 is relatively stable and runs for weeks to a month before this starts



My guess - this has something to do with messed up / out of sync ARP tables between R1, S1, S2



Such a shame actually - Orbi is a brilliant system otherwise.

It's just appalling though that a fundamental networking bug with LAN switching would not be resolved in production firmware even after years

 

[joshuap]

Hi! I have the same issue, its quite frustrating since i have many IOT devices. Did you find a solution?

 

[superczar]

As a workaround, I wired the satellites which solved at least this problem .
Eventually I just ended up switching to TP Link Omada since I had done the wiring anyway - Significantly better performance esp with roaming… and no random bugs or performance drops either

 

[joshuap]

As a workaround, I wired the satellites which solved at least this problem .
Eventually I just ended up switching to TP Link Omada since I had done the wiring anyway - Significantly better performance esp with roaming… and no random bugs or performance drops either

That's a shame, but glad you found a solution. I am still tinkering with settings in an attempt to make it stable. If anybody would like to suggest settings that worked for them, that would be great.