Need help with cascading a router

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@Dutch7 

Interesting to see someone else try this. On paper, Orbi should work for the scenario in question, but Att must have implemented some proprietary extensions in IGMP which breaks communication.  I tried everything I could think of and had been in contact with Netgear itself about the issue.  

In the end I ended up rearranging my equipment by swapping the location of the DVR and the wireless settop box , but ultimately ended up canceling Uverse TV. It’s on ancient no longer supported hardware and there are too many better choices out there than to throw money at an undeserving platform.  

And no, implementing cascaded router or anything else not part of the base hardware connected directly to a gateway is going to work.  

The U-verse TV devices make extensive use of Multicast and much consumer networking equipment, especially Wi-Fi devices, struggle with it.  Just supporting IGMPv3 or IGMP peeking is not enough to properly handle Multicast, especially a steady 6 Mbps stream of multicast packets.

So, leave your Orbi as an access point or convert it to a router (and use IP Passthrough for it in the Gateway) as you desire, but do not attempt to connect your AT&T U-verse IPTV gear through it, or to a switch on the same Gateway port as it.

Actually I could stream video fine.  It’s was the advanced time shift controls that failed  to work, and those were extremely important to my use of the service at the time.  Also worth noting Orbi claims explicit support for IGMPv3 actually but it wasn’t enough.  

IGMPv3 is a protocol to help mitigate some of the issues with multicast.  It lets a supporting layer-3 router know that there's a device who wants to see multicast traffic for one or more multicast addresses.  Without it, the device has to forward all multicast traffic it gets to all ports or just drop all multicast traffic.  With IGMPv3 support it can be selective about it.  IGMP-peeking is a feature in layer-2 devices (Ethernet switches) where they snoop on the layer-3 IGMPv3 traffic in order to decide to do the same thing at layer 2 (by peeking inside the layer-3 TCP headers and looking at the destination addresses of all the traffic).

@JefferMC 

😎I will miss these educational sessions in the forum.  

Curious though what the OP plans to do going forward.  

Yeah, I am not trying to use the Orbi for the Uverse TV.  That I know.  But this issue with the wireless receiver is driving me nuts (it doesn't seem to occur with the wired DVR).

I want to use and have the Orbi set as an access point, but it seems like it still acts like a router.  Because if it was a pure AP, it should not give me any grief, right?  When I call support, they can see the Orbi on my system and tell me I either need to remove it, or use IP Passthrough/DMZ.  I like the Orbi because of the range I get with the mesh system.  I don't want to pay $10/month for AT&T's wireless extender.

This issue has only arisen in the past couple of months.  I haven't made any changes to my network.  I thought it might be an issue with the line to my house, but support says it looks fine.  All of the equipment is fairly new (they swapped it out when I needed a new gateway).   Could it be something with the AP that they use for the wireless TV receiver?

Does anyone know what kind of network range I could/should enter in the Network Address field?

I have also tried making the Orbi a router with the IP Passthrough/DMZ.  But when I connect my XBox Series X to it, I get a restricted NAT even after I have set up the Port Forwarding/Port Triggering.  I also still had the issue with the Uverse TV receiver.

This is a real head scratcher!  Or, AT&T has made it so you can only use their proprietary hardware to work off the gateway.

So the symptom you're looking to fix:occasionally the wireless receivers are losing sight of the DVR and are displaying this message.

make sure the receiver and the DVR are on the same network.

The DVR is connected directly to the Gateway via Ethernet?

The AT&T WAP is connected directly to the Gateway via Ethernet?

The Orbi is connected directly to the Gateway via Ethernet?

How often does this error happen?  Does it happen often enough that you might could disconnect the Orbi from the Ethernet long enough to see if it plugged in and broadcasting Wi-Fi, but unconnected to the Ethernet, demonstrates the problem?

The DVR is connected directly to the Gateway via ethernet

The AT&T WAP is connected directly to the Gateway via ethernet

The Orbi is connected directly to the Gateway via ethernet and I have a managed switch connected to the Orbi

Red = Desktop

Blue = Orbi

White = WAP

Grey = DVR

This issue happens occasionally.  Sometimes none at all during the evening.  Sometimes I will experience program freezing/resuming during the evening.  Sometimes, it will freeze, and I will get the error message, wait a moment or two, then try "Resume Play" and it will work.  Sometimes I will get the message, wait, try "Resume Play" and it won't start and I will get the message again.  Sometimes I will switch to a live channel and it will be frozen or blank and it will give me the message that it has lost connection.

That's clearly a "the receiver can't talk to the DVR" message.  I haven't seen that message since I banned coax from the network, but I've never had wireless receivers.

Are the wireless receivers a long way from the WAP?

Can the WAP be moved any closer to the receivers?

Is the WAP at least 3 feet away from the Gateway?