u/Randomousity

Having recently switched ISPs, and having gotten a new Eero Pro 7 included in the service, and the Orbi being EOL, I'm downgrading my Orbi RBK50 (one router, one satellite) to AP mode just for better coverage.

So, my question is, am I better off using the same SSID on both the Eero and Orbis, so all devices can just connect to whichever AP has the best signal, or am I better off having the Orbi use a different SSID, and then either being able to direct devices to connect to either the Eero or one of the Orbis, depending on which SSID I configure them to use? And then just letting some devices (phones, laptops) switch SSIDs depending on which one is stronger, but then being able to easily tell which they're connected to?

The Orbis are running the latest Voxel firmware (RBK50-V9.2.5.2.45SF-HW), and the RBR50 has an wired backhaul (as I think is required?), and then the RBS50 is using a wireless backhaul to the RBR50.

I recognize I could also put the Orbi back in router mode and use double NAT, but there doesn't seem to be any benefit to that, and more complications.

Using the RBK50 setup with current EOL stock firmware, I've noticed that devices sometimes randomly get added to the block list for no apparent reason. It's not always the same device, doesn't seem to follow any pattern, and usually just changing it to allowed resolves it for several weeks or months before another device gets blocked. Nobody else is accessing the admin controls.

However, today multiple devices were blocked at once (usually it's only one at a time), and allowing them wouldn't stick. I even both rebooted the Orbi, as well as power cycled both the router and satellite.

Also, for the first time that I've noticed, the satellite was blocked, which caused a whole host of other problems, since any device connected via the satellite lost Internet access, and it took me a bit to figure out what was wrong.

Has anyone else experienced random device blocking? Is there any known cause, or is it just a glitch? I can reset it and reconfigure everything, but I'd like to avoid that if at all possible, as IP reservations are a pain since they removed telnet access from the firmware.