Base Station VMB4540 does not connect to the internet - has flashing orange light

[mamakayr]

My arlo system has been working for years until last month.  My internet serive is a satellilte system.  The Satellite company had county wide issues and no internet service for 3 days.  When the internet was restored everything in my home worked except the Arlo cameras.  

The base station flashes orange when connected to the router, which means it is not connected to the internet.  The router is definitely working as several other devices are running off the router properly.

I did a factory reset, and the base station showed a solid blue light (connected to the internet) for about a minute, then it went back to flashing orange.  I have tried multiple different ethernet cables to no avail.

If I bypass the router altogether and plug the satellite cable directly into the base station, I will get a blue light that it is connected.  However, then I have no router connected to the internet and cannot use any of my other devices.  

Arlo support not sure what is going on and has opened a ticket for the team to review.

Anyone have suggestions?

[mamakayr]

The Arlo support team was of no help to me.  I just googled the issue on my own.  Took me days and days and hours of my precious time to figure out. 

I went into my router settings and the base station had been “blacklisted.”  So I fixed that by simple trial and error.

Arlo support kept telling me to make sure ports were open and to contact my internet provider.  Obviously that all just was useless and time consuming.   

I am happy with my Arlo products, but not with customer service.  I don’t appreciate having to solve issues on my own or being sent on wild goose chases.

[StephenB]

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@mamakayr wrote:

I went into my router settings and the base station had been “blacklisted.”  So I fixed that by simple trial and error.

Arlo support kept telling me to make sure ports were open and to contact my internet provider.  Obviously that all just was useless and time consuming.   

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I get the frustration with Arlo support.  Though personally I wouldn't expect them to solve my router problems - there are a lot of router models out there (and a lot of manufacturers). The details on how the routers manage connections vary quite a bit, so there's no way they'd be able to provide a lot of help with a specific router (especially if that router was provided by your ISP).

Plus the overall scenario (internet service down for days, and the base stops connecting when service is restored) does point to your ISP.  It is a bit odd that the router suddenly decided (apparently on its own) to blacklist your base.  I am guessing that the ISP might have pushed an update to the router when they restored the service, and that update is what triggered the blacklist. 

Though it would have been more helpful if Arlo had suggested that you check your router settings in addition to the other stuff.