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WiFi Internet Only drops about every 12 hours with WiFi cameras installed
Added 2 Amcrest (2MP-841 and 3MP-956) cameras to my 2.4GHz network and about every 12 (or less) hours, my WiFi (2.4GHz and 5GHz) loses internet. Keep in mind that WiFi cameras are on the 2.4GHz WiFi only. Wired LAN connections to the router stay up the whole time (meaning wired LAN and wired Internet are just fine). WiFi LAN works just fine too as tested by transferring 300MB file from wired NAS to WiFi laptop in no time at all. It's just the internet Wifi that I lose. Nighthawk shows good internet connection status, I can ping Comcast and Google DNS servers the whole time. Only way to bring WiFi Internet back is to 1) reboot cable modem (by the way, cable modem up/down signals look great the whole time), 2) reboot Nighthawk, or 3) disconnect cable modem to Nighthawk Ethernet cable for a few minutes and then reconnect. Doing any of these 3 things will bring WiFi internet back up. Nighthawk firmware is up to date. Camera firmware is up to date. I don't see anything unusual on Wireshark (even sniffed WAN traffic using a hub)...granted, I am no Wireshark expert. I tried implementing QOS by device and placing the cameras in the lowest queue...no help.
Final 24 hour test with my original Arris modem was successful. I'm going to summarize the final changes and mark this as an accepted solution.
For Amcrest cameras on the WiFi network, the symptom was that the R6700v2 would lose internet DNS after about 12 hours with 2 cameras running. I lost it after about 24 hours with just 1 camera running. I tried wired connections to the cameras instead of wireless, I tried various NAS settings, I tried a different cable modem. In the end, the issue seemed to be that the R6700 did not like the Amcrest auto DNS Settings. Amcrest by default sets the preferred DNS to the routers address and the secondard DNS to 1.0.0.1. This doesn't seem unusual to me because I believe the R6700 is proxying DNS, so having the router IP as the preferred DNS for clients seems normal. Anyway, the fix is to set your Amcrest camera for static IP (not DHCP) AND static DNS. This means you pick an IP address for the camera, then most home networks are /24 which is a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. Default gateway for most homes should be set to the router's IP address which is 192.168.##.1 where you fill in ## with your actual address. Preferred DNS, you can pick that. Your ISP provides that or you can pick a common one. I picked Google, so I used 8.8.8.8. Last field is the secondard DNS which again for Google is 8.8.4.4.
I also had a Synology NAS in my setup. I decided to go static on that too for both IP and DNS, again using Google's DNS. Not sure that made a difference. I also had the R6700 set up with reserved IP addresses for both cameras so the static settings I programmed into the cameras wouldn't be assigned by DHCP to other clients if the cameras were offline. Lastly was that I diabled the P2P checkbox in the Amcrest cameras which of course disables use of their mobile app and cloud service. I'm not sure that this made a difference, but this is how I wanted the cameras configured anyway, so I unchecked it during troubleshooting and never re-enabled it.
In summary, this simple setting was big time annoying to troubleshoot. It took me almost 2 weeks to figure it out because of the 12 to 24 hr lag time in symptoms appearing. Netgear can dispute this, but I believe this is a Netgear issue. Amcrest tech support thinks that too. I am running the Aug 2017 version of R6700v2 firmware which is V1.1.0.42_1.0.1. I am hopeful that they will release an update to fix this problem.
20 Replies
I just purchased and installed my r6700v2 and I may have the identical problem. I'd say my internet connection lasts 12-18 hours before it stops working. When the problem arises, wifi devices cannot access internet but can access each other... i.e. I can view all of my wifi cameras from my wifi phones/tablets (I do have two Amcrest cameras). Also interesting I have one wired device that works, my Roku 3, but my wired desktop PC does not work. From my PC I can access the router interface and the cable modem status page, but DNS does not resolve.
The quickest fix I found to reset my connectivity is to "renew" the DHCP lease on the internet connection status page on the router web interface.
I opened a ticket with Netgear support and will post if I find a solution. If I don't find a solution quickly, this router is getting sent back and I probably won't but Netgear again.
Good feedback thank you. I have been churning now for a solid 24 hours on my old router with the Nighthawk completely powered down and everything has been rock solid. Definitely looking like a Nighthawk issue. I'll get a ticket open with them too.
Internet access stopped working again this evening and I did a bit more troubleshooting, and I think I found the problem. On the PC that lost access I checked the DNS server that it got from the router's DHCP... it was the router IP. Looking at the router status page I could see the ISP DNS server addresses. As a test I tried to ping www.google.com and it failed, but I couldsuccessfully ping my ISP DNS. I then found that I could resolve www.google.com if I directed the query to the ISP DNS... e.g. 'nslookup www.google.com <isp dns>'. Once I got the IP for google, I could ping that too.
So in a nutshell, my internet access is working just fine. The Netgear router's DNS is getting hosed up. Time to toss the ball back in Netgear's court.
Ed94, are you still having success with your latest test? I did not have time to try anything last night, but tonight I can take a look and I'd like to try to replicate your results if possible.
Yes, another 26 hour test was successful. I just started my last run which is hopefully my final state which is with my original cable modem so I can give back the one I borrowed. No other changes other than to reboot everything which is what I have done at the start of each test period. Still running Amcrest with static IP, default gateway set to router's IP address, primary DNS 8.8.8.8 and secondary DNS 8.8.4.4.
Final 24 hour test with my original Arris modem was successful. I'm going to summarize the final changes and mark this as an accepted solution.
For Amcrest cameras on the WiFi network, the symptom was that the R6700v2 would lose internet DNS after about 12 hours with 2 cameras running. I lost it after about 24 hours with just 1 camera running. I tried wired connections to the cameras instead of wireless, I tried various NAS settings, I tried a different cable modem. In the end, the issue seemed to be that the R6700 did not like the Amcrest auto DNS Settings. Amcrest by default sets the preferred DNS to the routers address and the secondard DNS to 1.0.0.1. This doesn't seem unusual to me because I believe the R6700 is proxying DNS, so having the router IP as the preferred DNS for clients seems normal. Anyway, the fix is to set your Amcrest camera for static IP (not DHCP) AND static DNS. This means you pick an IP address for the camera, then most home networks are /24 which is a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. Default gateway for most homes should be set to the router's IP address which is 192.168.##.1 where you fill in ## with your actual address. Preferred DNS, you can pick that. Your ISP provides that or you can pick a common one. I picked Google, so I used 8.8.8.8. Last field is the secondard DNS which again for Google is 8.8.4.4.
I also had a Synology NAS in my setup. I decided to go static on that too for both IP and DNS, again using Google's DNS. Not sure that made a difference. I also had the R6700 set up with reserved IP addresses for both cameras so the static settings I programmed into the cameras wouldn't be assigned by DHCP to other clients if the cameras were offline. Lastly was that I diabled the P2P checkbox in the Amcrest cameras which of course disables use of their mobile app and cloud service. I'm not sure that this made a difference, but this is how I wanted the cameras configured anyway, so I unchecked it during troubleshooting and never re-enabled it.
In summary, this simple setting was big time annoying to troubleshoot. It took me almost 2 weeks to figure it out because of the 12 to 24 hr lag time in symptoms appearing. Netgear can dispute this, but I believe this is a Netgear issue. Amcrest tech support thinks that too. I am running the Aug 2017 version of R6700v2 firmware which is V1.1.0.42_1.0.1. I am hopeful that they will release an update to fix this problem.