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RAX80 randomly disconnects LAN cable
During random times on my router drops connection to LAN cables. My PS4 says LAN cable disconnected and sometimes the same to my pc. It only happens for a few seconds. I tried different cables and al...
Update on my saga:
So they sent me a replacement router and surprise - it has exactly the same problem. Now I am convinced each and every RAX80 has it and if someone doesn't see it they are using the router in a way that the issue is not that easy to notice (for example they are only doing web browsing) or simply are using it only for wifi. The support guys are very careful not to aknowledge that directly :)
It is not clear if the issue can be repaired via firmware or that this is a hardware defect that is never going away unless they start using different parts. It is not clear if the engineering team is aware that this happens with every router or they think just some units are defective. It is not clear what they would do if they know.
So I provided them with debug logs for the new router and I am waiting for them to suggest what to do next. The guy assigned to my case is sometimes missing (vacation, ilness, I don't know) and then I get assigned another person who asks me questions that are already in the support thread. Admittedly our saga has been going for many months so the support thread is increadibly long but it is annoying. It is also annoying that I know the questions are totally unrelated to the issue. For example they asked me what my network topology is. It is not the simplest one but not that strange (ISP -> another router in Router mode -> RAX80 in AP mode -> several computers on LAN) but it is not that strange and also I point out that people here are having problems with literally the simplest topology ISP -> RAX80 -> device. I can't tell how much of this is they bull**bleep**ting me and how much is them generally not being able to follow the issue.
On the other hand the replacement procedure was very civilized, they paid the shipping and assisted me shipping the unit across Europe. They sent the replacement first. I did not have to return the original unit to the store I bought it from (which is great because I would have needed to return it via mail in another country)
OK, new findings.
So I was trying to take clean log of the issue plugged my old router, totally disconnected the RAX80 and disabled its interface. Plugged one computer and ran a ping to the router itself with some scripts to be able to easily notice when it drops. To my surprise for 2.5 days I saw no issue (possibly "bad" luck, maybe the issue will happen eventually). What I noticed however is that I couldn't get the RAX80 to work without the ethernet cable, it wouldn't give my PC an address despite the fact that it was in router mode. I had to connect the Internet cable to "wake it up" and then I was able to disconnect it and do the tests normally. That's stupid behavior but not a big deal. However in the process I noticed that if I disconnect the Internet cable all other LAN ports get disconnected and the PCs show "network cable unplugged".
So here is the hypothesis - something causes the RAX80 to think the WAN Ethernet interface is unplugged. Might be a bug in the RAX80 or something in the other devices, doesn't really matter. Maybe other models are just tolerant to this behavior. So the RAX80 disconnects ALL LAN interfaces which causes PCs to renegotiate connection, get addresses through DHCP all that jazz. Now if Netgear engineers can fix this through firmware and NOT let the LAN interfaces be restarted due to Internet cable being unplugged then maybe the issue will be mitigated. This is reasonable expectation because we know WiFi is not affected by the drops. Maybe the routers are able to reestablish the internet connection very fast in say 50ms so in practice it would be unnoticable if it didn't cause all other LAN interfaces to be restarted.
Can people who have the issue confirm that their units restart all LAN interfaces if they unplug the Internet cable?
An update with hopefully good news.
So I have been in constant contact with support for 9+ months now. After being sent replacement routers, sending debug logs and so on they sent me a special debug firmware designed to catch the issue. I sent some more logs from the debug firmware version and they said the logs indicated that my main router DHCP was misbehaving and advised using static IP addresses. I've been running in a router mode and static IP address for the RAX80 and static IP addresses for my LAN computers for a week (they use the RAX80 DHCP because of the router mode but still...) and I have seen no issue. I switched the computers to DHCP yesterday and so far I have seen no issue. This is the longest I've gone without seeing the issue and I actually run scripts to try to catch it so it should be harder to miss. I will try to switch to AP mode tomorrow and see if using the DHCP of my main router for the computers will cause the RAX80 to disconnect even if it is not using the DHCP itself.
If other people in this thread can experiment with setting a static IP address on the RAX80 Internet connection (not on the computers but on the RAX80!) and report the results that will be great. You can do that in Advanced > Setup > Internet Setup > Internet IP Address
Here are my Powershell scripts that you can use to track the issueStart-Transcript -path C:\Users\<your user>\Desktop\Pings\netgear.txt
Ping.exe -t 192.168.1.1 | ForEach {"{0} - {1}" -f (Get-Date),$_}
The first line makes the console log everything to a file.
The second runs a ping but appends a timestampStart-Transcript -path C:\Users\<your user>\Desktop\Pings\netgearFiltered.txt
Ping.exe -t 192.168.1.1 | Where {$_ -notlike "*Reply from 192.168.1.1*"} | ForEach {"{0} - {1}" -f (Get-Date),$_}
The first line makes the console log everything to a file
The second filters invalid replies (usually a disconnect manifests as a General failure) and adds a timestamp.
I run both scripts and look at the filtered one so I can know if something happened and then confirm in the unfiltered log. Note that you should make your computer not go to sleep or you will have some drops right before the computer goes to sleep and after it wakes up. if you see an issue you can confirm that the RAX80 log also has the issue on the corresponding time.
I believe the real issue with RAX80 is that if it encounters any problem on the Internet interface it disconnects all interfaces. It is possible that for my setup the issue is DHCP (which support says is my other router misbehaving but it might be the RAX80 mishandling it, I have no way to confirm and I do not trust them that much). In your case it might not be the DHCP so this might not solve the problem.
Looking forward to other people experimenting