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Solved
Trek PR2000 DHCP-problems, keeps dropping connections, maybe workaround
Hi!
Some days ago I bought the new Netgear Trek PR2000 mobile wireless router. Purpose was to have an AP for all my devices while traveling and being able to connect them to a hotspot or hotel wifi.
Configuration was fine and I was able to connect to my home network in wireless client mode. My home router is a TP-Link TL-WR1043ND running OpenWrt 12.09 Attitude Adjustment, wifi with WPA2-AES, serving DHCP.
The Trek was able to connect and the whole system was running. Unfortunately I realized, that the Trek kept dropping connections every 3-5mins with the annoying Netgear genie popping up and trying to reestablish a connection. Sometimes it worked, later on the Trek failed to connect at all.
Since I read that OpenWrt Attitude Adjustment might be having problems with certain wifi connections, I upgraded my WR1043ND to Barrier Breaker. The connection drops continued, especially under OSX nearly every minute. The WR1043ND showed various DHCP- and wifi-failed-to-acknowledge-errors in its log.
After trying all possible setting changes in the Trek-config (and shortly before returning the Trek), I found something like a workaround. In the Trek-config I disabled the DHCP-Server for the LAN-zone and assigned static IPs to the connecting clients. Well at least until now this seems to be working fine. No more dropped connections, no more annoying genie popping up and trying to reconnect, the whole system seems to be working.
But at the moment I'm kinda confused about the reason. In my understanding, the Trek connects to a hotspot and gets an IP-address assigned by the hotspot-DHCP. Then the Trek uses NAT to connect the attached clients to the internet. Actually the DHCP-IP-addresses assigned by the Trek to the clients connected to the LAN-zone shouldn't affect the DHCP-settings of the hotspot-network at all. Normally the private IP and DNS-settings are just for the private client LAN, aren't they? If I'm not completely wrong with my assumption, there might be a bug in the DHCP-server of the Trek or the way how dynamic IPs of the client LAN are handled. Starting from the point where I changed to static IPs in the client LAN, there were no more error messages in the log of the WR1043ND.
Strange thing... Maybe someone could correct me if my assumptions are wrong? Btw, I'm using the Trek PR2000 stock firmware (which is something like 1.0.0.9) since there's no other available.
Thanks.
Some days ago I bought the new Netgear Trek PR2000 mobile wireless router. Purpose was to have an AP for all my devices while traveling and being able to connect them to a hotspot or hotel wifi.
Configuration was fine and I was able to connect to my home network in wireless client mode. My home router is a TP-Link TL-WR1043ND running OpenWrt 12.09 Attitude Adjustment, wifi with WPA2-AES, serving DHCP.
The Trek was able to connect and the whole system was running. Unfortunately I realized, that the Trek kept dropping connections every 3-5mins with the annoying Netgear genie popping up and trying to reestablish a connection. Sometimes it worked, later on the Trek failed to connect at all.
Since I read that OpenWrt Attitude Adjustment might be having problems with certain wifi connections, I upgraded my WR1043ND to Barrier Breaker. The connection drops continued, especially under OSX nearly every minute. The WR1043ND showed various DHCP- and wifi-failed-to-acknowledge-errors in its log.
After trying all possible setting changes in the Trek-config (and shortly before returning the Trek), I found something like a workaround. In the Trek-config I disabled the DHCP-Server for the LAN-zone and assigned static IPs to the connecting clients. Well at least until now this seems to be working fine. No more dropped connections, no more annoying genie popping up and trying to reconnect, the whole system seems to be working.
But at the moment I'm kinda confused about the reason. In my understanding, the Trek connects to a hotspot and gets an IP-address assigned by the hotspot-DHCP. Then the Trek uses NAT to connect the attached clients to the internet. Actually the DHCP-IP-addresses assigned by the Trek to the clients connected to the LAN-zone shouldn't affect the DHCP-settings of the hotspot-network at all. Normally the private IP and DNS-settings are just for the private client LAN, aren't they? If I'm not completely wrong with my assumption, there might be a bug in the DHCP-server of the Trek or the way how dynamic IPs of the client LAN are handled. Starting from the point where I changed to static IPs in the client LAN, there were no more error messages in the log of the WR1043ND.
Strange thing... Maybe someone could correct me if my assumptions are wrong? Btw, I'm using the Trek PR2000 stock firmware (which is something like 1.0.0.9) since there's no other available.
Thanks.
hksteve I would like to inform you that the fix is now available in our download page.
Feel free to update your firmware and provide feedback.
Thanks!
185 Replies
- Same here, disabling dhcp and setting rip to incoming helps for most clients, but not all. Android device connecting causes reboot short after. No new firmware availlabe, anyone any sugestions ?
grechlni wrote: Same here, disabling dhcp and setting rip to incoming helps for most
Yes, the RIP-setting set to "both" seems to be the root of all evil. At least it worked for me perfectly to set RIP to "disabled". I can even use DHCP now without any problems. I also contacted the German Support about a week ago about this issue and they told me they want to test that.grechlni wrote: ?..setting rip to incoming helps for most clients, but not all.
Have you tried setting RIP to "disabled"? As far as I know, it isn't really required when connecting to a hotspot. At least I didn't experience any problems. What router are you connecting to?- Yes, tried to set to disabled, but it doesn't work for me. Running quite unstable. Any suggestions?
- Any updates on this? I am having this problem and connection dropped 3 times while trying to register for the forum and post this reply. My older d-link travel router was rock-solid. I got the trek for more bandwidth but I am starting to hope it's not too late to return it
(Dropped 4 times before I finished typing this...) - If you can return then always do. Netgear support is pathetic, they are not technical support members and just hired BPO people and can't solve such issues.
I would suggest you contact support team for assistance.
- Default RIP settings seem to have changed now in the new firmware v1.0.0.10, along with fixing a huge security backdoor issue - but knowing netgear they probably made their backdoor a bit more hidden while keeping it in place).
Device is horribly unstable even with RIP disabled for me though. Would send this garbage back but I'm on holiday with this POS and stuck with it for now... - Anyone with further suggestions? Asked Netgear Support for help, May 15th. Probably all technicians of netgear are busy, so anyone who could be helpfull here?
- I am having this issue, but realised it was only dropping under certain conditions i.e. when plugged into an extension power cable.
Plugged directly into the mains socket or powered via USB cable - no drop out - I will investigate further to see if I can replicate issue with surge protected extension power cable.
Hope this helps others
