app unable to find doorbell without ip reservation? - Arlo Wired Video Doorbell (AVD1001B-100NAS

[sbrownii]

When setting up my new video doorbell I was unable to complete he setup because the app couldn't find the device.

My router (eero pro) showed the doorbell was connected.

I tried  two different iphone 12 phones (ios), and two different moto phones (android) with no success. I tried factory reset on the doorbell. I disabled 5ghz on my router.

After about  6 hours of going through all the steps I noticed that the ip my router showed for the doorbell was 192.168.5.31, while generally my router hands out address like 192.168.4.x

I changed my router to set a fixed ip (ip reservation) for the doorbell like 192.168.4.200

After that the app was able to find the doorbell.

After initial setup I removed that ip reservation setting in the router and my doorbell showed as offline. So I set it back to a fixed ip.

I didn't notice anything in the setup steps about this. Is it required to configure the router to reserve an ip for the doorbell in order for it to work?

[jguerdat]

If the subnet (192.168.5) is wrong, nothing is going to work - it's as if it connected to someone else's WiFi. DO you have a guest network set up and it's connecting to that? Is there anything in your router/network setup that would use a different subnet, perhaps a second router handing out addresses?

[sbrownii]

no other router and no guest network. it shows up on my router with that IP unless I put that ip reservation in the router

it does seem odd. I've setup many devices (cameras, switches, plugs, irrigation controllers) of other types/brands and never seen this issue. So thought maybe it's some special requirement of this arlo doorbell.

The ip reservation gets it working for me so I guess I'll just continue with that.

[StephenB]

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@sbrownii wrote:

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After about  6 hours of going through all the steps I noticed that the ip my router showed for the doorbell was 192.168.5.31, while generally my router hands out address like 192.168.4.x

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Very odd.  The doorbell has no idea if the IP address is reserved or not, which rules out a doorbell bug.

Possibly something isn't quite right with the Eero DHCP (configuration or a bug)?  Or maybe there's another DHCP server running on the network somehow?

I suggest checking the double-checking address range configuration for the Eero.

[sbrownii · Accepted solution]

I have the eero configured to use its automatic DHCP config. Looks like it has subnet mask 255.255.252.0, so valid range is something like 192.168.4.1 - 192.168.7.254. 192.168.4.x is mostly what I see assigned, but there are a few 192.168.5.x and other than the arlo, they seem to work fine.
It does seem an arlo issue to me, but not sure if it’s an issue with how the app tries to discover or how the device tries to access the network. It seems possible it ignores some part of dhcp and makes assumptions of the subnet since reserving a 192.168.4.x address for the arlo gets things to work and matches simpler assumptions about a subnet.
Either way I think I’ll stick with this approach since it seems to address whatever the actual issue is

[StephenB]

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@sbrownii wrote:
I have the eero configured to use its automatic DHCP config. Looks like it has subnet mask 255.255.252.0, so valid range is something like 192.168.4.1 - 192.168.7.254. 192.168.4.x is mostly what I see assigned, but there are a few 192.168.5.x and other than the arlo, they seem to work fine.

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Still, you might want to reset the subnet to 255.255.255.0 - that should be more than enough addresses for a home network.

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@sbrownii wrote:
It does seem an arlo issue to me, 

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It could be.  A discovery protocol would typically use IP broadcast  - which would be 192.168.7.255 on your network.  It's possible that the app is trying to use 192.168.4.255. 

FWIW, if this is the problem, then I am thinking that your address reservation workaround was successful because the phone had a 192.168.4.x address.  

The other possibility is that you were just lucky (since the discovery often seems to require multiple attempts to succeed).