Arlo Base Station cannot be found

[krravi]

I have the Arlo VMB400 base station which was working fine for years. Suddenly it stopped working and I noticed that the USB memory stick I had connected to the base station was very very hot and it left a slight black burn mark above the USB port.

So, I took a brand-new base station with power cord and did the following,

1) Reset the base station

2) Completely reset my router

I can see that the router has assigned an IP to the base station and I am able to ping it from my PC. Has two Solid green lights for the power and internet.

Still the Arlo app or portal cannot find the base station.

Disabled any firewall on my router.

Added the base station to the DMZ.

Added ports 80 and 443 to port forwarding for that specific IP address as I assigned a static IP to that base station on the router.

Still no go.

Contacted Arlo and they asked me to go to https://portchecker.co and asked me if port 80 and 443 were open. My browser says No. They asked me to contact my ISP to open those ports up. Contacted my ISP and they say they are just running a line straight to my home as it is a gigabit ethernet and they don't control any ports on my connection.

So that's where we are.

What is the issue?

[StephenB]

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@krravi wrote:

Added ports 80 and 443 to port forwarding for that specific IP address as I assigned a static IP to that base station on the router.

Contacted Arlo and they asked me to go to https://portchecker.co and asked me if port 80 and 443 were open.

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Sometimes they make you jump through these hoops when they run out of ideas.

You almost never need to do this (or put the router in the DMZ).  Port forwarding is only needed for unsolicited inbound connections.  The base only makes outbound requests on these ports, the cloud does not try to establish inbound connections.  A commercial grade firewall that includes an http/https proxy can interfere with the traffic.  But not an ordinary home-class NAT router.

And of course this was working perfectly with your old base.  No reason to think your ISP suddenly started blocking ports.

So the ports are not blocked.  You should remove the forwarding rules you added.  I'd also remove the base from the DMZ, and re-enable the firewall on your router.  (Leaving that off puts all the devices on your network at risk).

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@krravi wrote:

I can see that the router has assigned an IP to the base station and I am able to ping it from my PC. Has two Solid green lights for the power and internet.

Still the Arlo app or portal cannot find the base station.

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You tried my.arlo.com on a PC, and that fails?  If you use VPN software on the PC or phone, then make sure it is turned off when onboarding.  If you can connect the PC with ethernet to the router, then I suggest also trying that.

Another base station reset might be worth a try.

[krravi]

Yes, trying it through my.arlo.com from the PC as well as trying it through the App on my phone, both fails. I never had to change DMZ and other stuff. But I tried everything I can here to make sure I can detect the base station.

The PC is connected to the router using an ethernet cable and I was running Cloud fare on my PC but that should not affect the Base Station + Router though. My DNS server settings on the router are from Cloudflare and it has been that way for a long time too. Disabled that and still no go.

Might try another reset again this evening...  

[StephenB]

The reason I suggest ethernet when possible is that I believe Arlo is using broadcast packets to discover the camera.  Some routers might not forward these to your wifi network.

I think that is also why Arlo wants you to connect your phone to 2.4 ghz when installing a wifi camera.  That eliminates any chance the router isn't forwarding broadcast packets from 2.4 ghz to 5 ghz (and vice versa).

If you get really stuck, you could try going to a friend's house and see if you can install there.  Then just move the base back home, and connect it to internet.

[krravi]

Where do I find this in my router settings for broadcast packets? Is it the IGMP or something like that?

[StephenB]

If you have internet security software installed on the PC, then perhaps disable that also.

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@krravi wrote:

Where do I find this in my router settings for broadcast packets? Is it the IGMP or something like that?

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I doubt you will.  There's no user control in my Orbi router for broadcast.  (However, my Orbi does handle these ok, as I have been able to install 2.4 ghz cameras when my phone was connected to 5 ghz).

If you see any controls on "Storm Control" (or "Broadcast Storm") then you could look deeper at those.

IGMP is used to create a multicast group (which is different from broadcast).

[krravi]

I have a ASUS Mesh router that merges the 5 and 2.4 ghz channels under one ssid. 

[StephenB]

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@krravi wrote:

I have a ASUS Mesh router that merges the 5 and 2.4 ghz channels under one ssid. 

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The Orbi I have does that also.  Which makes following Arlo's advice to connect the phone to the 2.4 ghz network impossible to follow.  But my installs still work, despite that.

[krravi]

I went through a list of Wi-Fi routers before I settled on this Asus which I really like for its extensibility, reliability and performance. Had a rock-solid Apple Extreme for 9 years. lol But, it was showing its age but never had to reboot it ever in 9 years.

So, when I did go through different routers, the Arlo worked great with no issues at all. I wonder why suddenly this issue came up and am still puzzled by the first router USB port heating up a lot. Could be a power brick issue is my guess.

[StephenB]

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@krravi wrote:

am still puzzled by the first router USB port heating up a lot. Could be a power brick issue is my guess.

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Maybe a failing drive???

[krravi]

That piping hot USB flash drive from the first base station after it cooled down worked fine in my PC. Not going to use it further but just saying.

[krravi]

After going through all the permutation and combinations of settings on my router. Its still a no go. I am going to try it with a different router (The Apple Extreme) to see if that was the issue.

Meanwhile, I am wondering if there is some sort of provisioning Arlo does on its equipment. I have read some threads on here related to that.

[krravi]

You mentioned the cloud doesn't make inbound connections. So, its streaming the video live from its servers which gets the video stream from my base station? I thought anytime you streamed live video it was doing it directly from my base station. But you could be right as there is a few seconds delay in reality versus what I see in the video.

[StephenB]

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@krravi wrote:

You mentioned the cloud doesn't make inbound connections.

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This doesn't mean that the cloud can't send data to the base.  Just that the base always initiates the connection the cloud (which is then kept open, so traffic can flow in both directions).  This is the normal approach for devices that run behind NAT routers - and reason for that approach is that it eliminates the need for port forwarding.

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@krravi wrote:

I thought anytime you streamed live video it was doing it directly from my base station. 

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I think that is the case when you are home.  When you are away, I believe it is going base->cloud->app.  But traversing through the cloud doesn't add seconds of delay, at most it adds a couple hundred ms.   

The important point is that when the base establishes the connection, there is no need for port forwarding.  It is only needed then the device outside the home network (app or cloud) is initiating it. 

The only time Arlo does require port forwarding is with the direct access to local storage.  So the app must be initiating the connection through the home router to the base when it downloads the video.  It'd be better if Arlo used the same data path that they use for livestreaming.  But that would cost them a bit more, since they do pay for bandwidth that goes through their cloud.  

[krravi]

Regarding the delay, I have around 3 second delay when watching the video live from my home and I have a Gigabit internet connection and it has always been that way. 

[StephenB]

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@krravi wrote:

Regarding the delay, I have around 3 second delay when watching the video live from my home and I have a Gigabit internet connection and it has always been that way. 

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Understood. I am just saying that is not due to the transit time to the Arlo cloud servers and back.

Delay in audio/video systems has three components - packet buffering, structural delay, and transit time.  Seconds of delay is due to packet buffering - not structural or transit time.  While it's hard to pinpoint the exact cause, it is ultimately due to Arlo's implementation.  There is no technical reason why the delay should exceed what you see in a FaceTime video call (or Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Zoom, etc).  These services are also routing the media through cloud servers.

While I can live with this delay myself, it'd be good if they analyzed and fixed this issue.  Among other issues it makes 2-way talk pretty useless.

[krravi]

Oh no Facetime or others are instant. Arlo Video has always had a latency of 3 seconds for me and my internet connection has been 1 GB for last many years.

[StephenB]

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@krravi wrote:

Facetime or others are instant.

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Exactly my point.  There's no reason why Arlo's delay should be noticeably longer than those services.

[krravi]

Finally, I gave up and took the old Base Station that actually started the issue and connected it to try.

Lo and behold, it worked.

I suspect some issues on Arlo cloud that must have been fixed. I can't explain how it suddenly started to work.

I am still going to try the other base station(new one) and see if that works as well. But I was scared not to mess this up in anyway. Might try it by connecting to another satellite mesh node I have and see if that works.