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Forum Discussion
RAX120 Router Random Disconnects
Hey everyone, I know that I'm not the only one with problems on the Nighthawk WiFi 6 devices, but thought I'd post my most recent headache. My hardware consists of a Motorola MB8600 DOCS 3.1 modem w/...
The router stayed up all night for about 8 hours and then the same symptoms occured once I logged into my laptop and started checking emails for about 5 minutes. I attempted to login to the RAX120 and it would not accept my username and password... I attemtped a number of times and I was not fat fingering, because I was pasting the password from my PW database. I logged into the RAX80 just fine without any issue. Nonetheless, I just reset my router back to factory and the issue still occured after it came online with a default config. WTH?!?!? Is my modem hosed and causing me the problem? The logs in the modem have nothing telling and only a couple status messages. Possibly it's a coincidence and I wasn't being patient. Eitherway, I reapplied my RAX120 config from a backup and the connections are up again.
Anyone out there have any ideas? Are these Nighthawks trash like the community has been evangalizing over the past year? Or am I just a fool? Even though I've managed numerous other network devices from Cisco, Brocade, Linksys, TP-Link, Apple, and even Extreme Networks without ever seeing an issue like this...
Hello rax120_rax80,
Welcome to the community! Thank you for taking the time to write a detailed report of your experience. We are currently running a beta firmware for the RAX120 that may help resolve your issues. Please let me know if you'd like access to the beta firmware.
Best,
Christian
Sure. I have nothing to loose. My network stability is already lacking. :-D
Please provide access to beta firmware for both the RAX120 and the RAX80, since I operate both devices.
Hi Christian,
Could I get access to the beta firmware? I just loaded .118 and it caused my router to completely die on me. It randomly reset its settings to the default SSID, etc. and took nearly an hour of resetting over and over again before I could finally get it cleared out and re-setup with the new.
As an aside, two things that are missing that are super frustrating for such an expensive router:
* more DDNS provider support (or, alteratively, just custom settings for DDNS - it's not that hard); and
* more VPN provider support (or, alternatively custom settings - again, not that hard to use standard protocols to connect to VPN).
Any thoughts? I bought this thing expecting the firmware to mature, but it doesn't really seem to be getting better. If anything, less stable. I took the update today hoping it would make it improved, and ended up losing more than an hour of my life.
Best,
lordloki
Christian_R can we get some help here? The same issue occurs with code .114, .115, and .118. The RAX120 fails to respond to DNS queries. Setting DNS manually to external servers is a no go on many IOT devices. This is a terribly crippling bug and the inability to schedule/script resets leaves the user base of this $400 router handicapped.
Well, after three failures in 2 hours I decided to roll back to code .108. I don't recall that code being tempermental in the tail end of last year, but I guess I'll find out soon enough. One thing I did notice is the CPU overhead is much less than when running on code .115. Coincidence? Maybe... Regardless, I'm tempted to do a factory reset again and restore as well, but I'll wait to see if this one fails in the next day.
On another note, while I was waiting for additional failures today I did a little digging that may be helpful as a work around to community. I enabled telnet (Really Netgear??? Not SSH?) by logging into the switch via http://IP_Address/debug.htm. After experiancing a DNS failure, I reset the daemon /etc/init.d/dnsmasq. Viola. The DNS requests/pings to hosts replied again. If code .108 doesn't stop the pain and bleedind, I'll throw a reset in crontab for this until Netgear can debug their buggy code. Or I'll just upgrade again to some true bordline enterprise class gear.
Just an update. After re-applying my configuration this morning the network has been stable since. However, I did disable all device MAC addresses, except for my laptop, via the security ACLs as well. About an hour back I enabled 3x IP cameras, a security NVR, and my alarm system gateway. So far so good. Possibly something on my network is being a bad neighbor after an automagic FW update the night before. I'll find out sooner or later.
The issue is back! The modem ran well all day yesterday, so at about 10pm I decided to allow a few more devices. I allowed an Amazon cloud cam, a thermostat, 5 light bulbs, and 4 smoke detectors. Everything ran until about 1am and the issue resurfuced. Here's the interesting part. If I connect my phone via LTE, I am able to communicate with my alarm system that is physically connected via a CAT5e cable and to the light bulbs that are on the 2.4GHz guest network. However, the thermostat and smoke detectors that are on the non-guest WiFi network are not online. I connected my laptop once again to the non-guest WiFi and I can ping external IP addresses, but I cant resolve hostnames/URLs. The same occurs on my phone or other devices connected to that network WiFi network. I connected my laptop to the guest 2.4GHz network, but I still couldn't resolve anything to the routers DNS. The next time it happens I'll have to connect my laptop via a physical cable to see if I can get DNS resolution, but I'm not optimistic since my streaming TV device didn't work. So here's a few questions.
Why are the light bulbs accessible from outside, inbound to the network when they are on the internal 2.4GHz guest network?
Why is the security system accessible from outside, inbound to the network when it's physically plugged with a CAT5e cable network?
This is getting very tiresome though... Everything functioned wthout an issue for a few months and no changes were made. Then on Sunday morning, it all went to hell in a handbasket.
Christian_R What is Netgear doing for customers? After 90 days you are stuck with no support and a paperwieght cuz of poor FW code.Rax120_rax80, did you have an opportunity to install the RAX120 beta firmware (see message #3 above) – and, did it improve the situation you are experiencing?
