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Forum Discussion
Intermittent bad packet loss with RAX80
Got the RAX80 last October and suffered through strange random sluggish internet problems for months - e.g. web sites would initially fail to load but then load on the 2nd or 3rd try, randomly. Fina...
Interesting. I will be sure to thoroughly test plugging directly into the cable modem if/when it happens again, but I'm pretty sure that immediately fixed it before (without rebooting the modem), pointing to the router as the problem - for me anyway.
You're totally right, when I plug the PC directly into the cablemodem the problem goes away without rebooting anything. I am told that would make sense because the traffic behind a router has more information packed into each packet, or some such thing, so it's more complicated, and the bad network is not sufficient to handle it. Whereas when you remove the router from the transaction it simplifies things so that the bad network is good enough to mask the problem, especially since plugging directly into the cablemodem means your whole home network is reduced to ONLY ONE DEVICE. Both yesterday and today, around 11AM performance got so bad I had to plug my computer into the cablemodem in order to get any work done, and had to suffer without Alexa and all the other goodies that would normally be on my home network. After 6PM I turned the router back on and it's been usable all evening with only one exception lasting about a minute. I'm pretty convinced now, that my problem is Optimum and not the router. Good luck to you.
- I have also determined over the last few months that this router does cause packet loss. After replacing the router with other brands and working very closely with COX on an FCC complaint this router causes 2-10% until reset. Once reset it will resolve for a few hours then start dropping packets.
Yeah, I hereby rescind my apology to the RAX80, several days ago. I have had an Optimum internet problem intermittently which led me to believe that the rest was not the router's fault, but it is. The problems I have when the RAX80 has NOT been attached to the cablemodem since the cablemodem's last reboot, are very minor in comparison to the problems while the RAX80 is or has been attached. Also, the problems with the RAX80 have continued getting worse and worse. And I have now spent way more $$$ worth of my time, troubleshooting this thing, than the ridiulously high amount of $$$ I paid for it. Up on the top shelf of the closet is where it goes now, for use in case of absolute emergency.
For several consecutive days I put the RAX80 back onto my network at 6PM and it dropped only a few packets. By 10:30PM some wifi devices in the house had lost connection, some of which stayed down all night. By 7AM I was losing so many packets even on ethernet-connected devices and even after rebooting the router, that my VPN connection to Raleigh was no longer usable so I had to disconnect the router from the cablemodem and plug my PC into the cablemodem directly. If I didn't reboot the cablemodem when I did that, then the packet loss continued (a lot less, but still bad). If I rebooted the cablemodem first, then very little packet loss all day, and connection to Raleigh behaved just fine all day. (As if the use of the router actually corrupts the cablemodem somehow??? Seems nuts. But that's what the behavior seems to point to.)
Whereas, if I reboted the cablemodem at 6PM and plugged the old tp-link router in instead, then for a couple of days no wifi devices got disconnected except the dropcam for very short periods, and packet loss was still there, rarely, but behavior of the VPN connection was flawless. The only reason I said "for a couple of days" is not because the problem started returning after that, but because that's when I would try putting the RAX80 back online.
Same result on multiple iterations of that experiment. So I'm done. The RAX80 problem is much, much worse than the Optimum problem.
Web page wouldn't load today. Sure enough, 20% packet loss. This time I was careful to try several reboots first without changing any settngs. After the first reboot, packet loss down to around 7%, not positive it was the reboot or random fluctuation. Kept rebooting and after either the 3rd or 4th, it looks like <1% packet loss now. So, I don't know, maybe it just takes a few reboots in a row. Not that this is in any way acceptable behavior for a top tier router.