Apple home pod offline / online after installing firewalla blue plus

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MattT

• October 12, 2021 08:37

I've put in a new blue plus in DHCP mode with an overlay network.  An apple home pod is connected and has an ip on the overlay network. There are no rules added yet apart from Active Protect and Family.

However, I now get sporadic 'home hubs are not responding' messages throughout the day. 

And I'm getting some homekit devices messaging they are offline, then online.  Example notification...

This has only started since the Firewalla has been installed. 

There is no network segmentation and they are all on the same wifi and in the same group in Firewalla. 

I'll move to 'unmanaged' and see if this stops the messages, but the point was that homekit would be monitored under an IoT group. 

Any suggestions as to what might be the problem / solution?

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  Firewalla

  • October 12, 2021 16:48

  Is the home hubs the speaker pods? or something else? I noticed mine has a strange thing that made my speaker move around my network and it seems they follow my phone. Can you double check the IP address these devices are getting? make sure they are all on the overlay network?

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  MattT

  • October 12, 2021 19:16

  So a home hub for Apple can be an Apple TV, iPad or a HomePod mini.  Mine is the latter which is, as you say, a speaker, but also functions as the control unit for IoT devices connected via the 'home' app.
  
  I had assigned all our family's devices with static IP addresses on the overlay network (192.168.2.x). 
  
  Turning off monitoring of the HomePod in Firewalla, and turning on / off power on the HomePod reconnected it to the original network (192.168.1.y).  Since turning off monitoring, all of the network connection issues have stopped as have the constant notifications.
  
  I also turned off monitoring for a few of the HomePod connected devices that were constantly jumping online / offline.  I'll turn monitoring back on for them one by one until the problem starts again to try to isolate the issue.

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  Firewalla

  • October 13, 2021 01:13

  If you turn monitoring off DHCP mode, it will move the device to the main network. So in your case, what you need to do is keep them all devices in the same network; the overlay network, and make sure your other devices (phone/ipad) are all on the same overlay. This will prevent apple devices from moving themselves to another network ... 

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  MattT

  • October 13, 2021 06:28

  Yes, I had done this.  All were in the Overlay network with static IP addresses. But the HomePod mini just constantly connects / disconnects.  I'll try to troubleshoot some more.

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  MattT

  • October 13, 2021 16:59

  OK - apologies!  This wasn't Firewalla.   had replaced the router with an upgraded model when I installed Firewalla (Orbi RBR50 with OrbiRBR50v2).  I hadn't realised but the v2 has a poorer network coverage and  it pushed the HomePod onto the edge of the wifi signal.  I've moved the HomePod now and haven't had any trouble since.

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