D6200 Modem-Router Wi-Fi access to internet drops frequently

[Retired_Member]

Hi there,

I have been using this D6200 Modem Router since 2013 first using an ADSL service and since a couple of years ago through the Australian NBN system (high speed fiber network) to connect to the internet.

At home we use the wi-fi provided by the D6200 to give internet access to our smartphones (2 Androids) and a couple of iOS tablets.

This environment has worked reliably for many years but recently we started to lose internet access to the devices connected via wi-fi. The access is OK for a day or two and all of a sudden the internet access disappears. The devices wi-fi setting shows "Connected to Wi-fi. Internet not connected" or something very similar.

The only way to fix this problem is to power off/on the modem and the internet access is restored to wi-fi.

I'm using a Toshiba laptop with Windows 10 and AVG Internet Security and both software are updated regularly.

I'm wondering whether thsi problem is due to something external to the modem or if need to get a new modem (which I resist because the nternet access via wi-fi works fine most of the time.)

I'd appreciate any help/comments.

Thank you

Elmstree

[Retired_Member · Accepted solution]

My apologies for causing so much confusion. My insistence that I was using the D6200 as a "modem and a router"; was due to my lack of knowledge about networks. I never pretended in my replies to understand networks. What I meant by that statement was that I did not have a separate modem between the D6200 and the NBN box. So I just assumed that the D6200 was fulfilling that role. Unfortunately, the Netgear articles nor the NBN user literature don't make this clear.

Having the two routers together may cause the problems you mention. But I did not come up with this arrangement; I just followed Netgear's recommendation on how to connect to the NBN. Anyway, it operated well without any problems for 2 years.

Anyway, I came to the community to seek help for my problem and I just tried to provide as much information as I could to the best of my knowledge. But it seems all I did was to cause much confusion with my (unintentional) mistakes for which I'm sorry.

Fortunately (for me) I have now all my problems sorted out with a different (borrowed) modem/router, albeit working in router mode only!

@michaelkenward Thanks for your time and explanations.

[FURRYe38]

Netgear has set up a community forum specifically for the DSL Modem products. Most of the people who watch that forum are more likely to have experience with DSL modems and know how to work it better than those of us who follow this forum. Might be more likely to find someone who has a solution if the question is posted there:
https://community.netgear.com/t5/DSL-Modems-Routers/bd-p/home-dsl-modems-routers

Please use this link to the main forum product list to review and choose where to make your posts. 
https://community.netgear.com/t5/NETGEAR-Forum/ct-p/en-netgear

Thank you.

[michaelkenward]

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@Retired_Member wrote:

Hi there,

I have been using this D6200 Modem Router since 2013 first using an ADSL service and since a couple of years ago through the Australian NBN system (high speed fiber network) to connect to the internet.

Does this mean that the D6200 is in router mode? If so, don't waste your, and everybody else's time, cluttering up another section with messages. This place is as good as any to get help and has much more traffic than the DSL section, where messages can get lost.

Wherever you post, you'll have to say more.

If the D6200 is in router mode, what is the modem you user? NBN just means Australian Internet. It comes in various shapes and sizes. They will all have "fiber" somewhere in the network. That's just a sales pitch.

What is an NBN network and is my NETGEAR DSL modem router compatible? | Answer | NETGEAR Support

So, tell us a bit more about your network and you may get more suggestions.

[Retired_Member]

Thank you! I'll repost the question in that forum.

[Retired_Member]

@michaelkenwardThanks for your reply.

First of all, it's not my intention to waste anybody's time nor clutter up any forum with unnecessary messages. Before posting my message I did all I could to use whatever information was available on my problem. First, I followed Netgear's articles and then searched the forum to see whether there was a similar problem.

I am using the Netgear D6200 both as a modem and as a router (I thought this was clear in my original post but it appears it's not). The modem part connects through the NBN to an internet provider. In my case the technology used is Hybrid Fibre Coaxial (HFC) with speeds of approx. 22 Mbs download and 8 Mbs upload.

The router part services a home network of 2 desktop computers with hardwired connections and about 4 devices connected via wi-fi.

I recently checked that the D6200 is running the latest firmware version.

I am not sure what additional details I need to provide for this post. This is my first interaction with the community so please bear with me.

Thanks

[michaelkenward]

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@Retired_Member wrote:

First of all, it's not my intention to waste anybody's time nor clutter up any forum with unnecessary messages. Before posting my message I did all I could to use whatever information was available on my problem. First, I followed Netgear's articles and then searched the forum to see whether there was a similar problem.

---

You weren't cluttering up the place. Someone else wanted you to do that, even though they did not know what your problem might be. Now that we know more, the advice might have been right in this case.

If the problem is with the router bit, this is as good a place as any to seek help.But you say that you use the D6200 as a modem/router. (Simply saying that you own one does not make that obvious because the D6200 has at least three way of working: modem/router, modem only. router only.) You only mentioned problems with the wifi. That is a router function.

You might get more help, and find earlier questions and answers specific to your device, in the appropriate section for your hardware. That's probably here:

DSL Modems & Routers

Unfortunately, Netgear's description of Hybrid Fiber-Coaxial (HFC) does not in itself mean that you need the DSL modem bit of the D6200. Read the article I linked to. It says that you can also use a router with HFC. This suggests that there may be different types of HFC. You don't say which Internet service provider you use.

NBN seems to be designed to baffle the world. It is been a constant cause of messages here. If you haven't done that already, it might be a good idea to look back at those

Try this:

Search - NETGEAR Communities – D6200 NBN

Read this conversation from four years ago:

Solved: Re: D6200 connected to cable modem? - NETGEAR Communities

The conversation may not be in the right "filing cabinet", but it was easy to find with a search.

Someone else has a D6200 on NBN HFC. They do not use the D6200 as a modem.

Perhaps you can see why it isn't easy to work out what is happening at your end.

As to the wifi issue, your description this is not very detailed.

This environment has worked reliably for many years but recently we started to lose internet access to the devices connected via wi-fi. The access is OK for a day or two and all of a sudden the internet access disappears. The devices wi-fi setting shows "Connected to Wi-fi. Internet not connected" or something very similar.

What does "lose internet access to the devices connected via wi-fi" mean?

Whar are these devices? Is the laptop one of them?

They cannot see the wifi SSID? They see the SSID and get some sort of error message?

What do the LEDs on the router look like when this happens?

Apologies for all the questions, but networks are complicated creatures with many variables. Knowing exactly what happens is the key to fixing problems.

[Retired_Member]

Earlier today I made a detailed reply providing information to the questions @michaelkenward asked but when I pressed 'Post' I got an 'Authentication Failed" and I lost all my input. I'll try again with a shorter version and I'll make a copy before pressing 'Post', just in case.

Thanks to all @michaelkenward and @FURRYe38 comments and advice provided to my original post. Really appreciate the time they have taken to respond. I'll follow the links they provided but I want to answer the questions first.

A brief description of my home network:

As I mentioned before I use the Netgear D6200 both as a modem and as a router:

As a modem: D6200 -> RJ45 cable -> NBN (HFC box) -> Coaxial cable -> Coax Wall socket -> NBN -> AussieBroadBand (ISP)

As a router: D6200 -> RJ45 cables -> Toshiba Satellite laptop and Apple iMac (2 computers)

                    D6200 -> Wi-Fi -> 4 (four) mobile devices: 2 Android Samsung S5 and A30 phones; 1 iOS Apple iPad and 1 Samsung Smart Disk player.

Computers OS: Laptop: Windows 10 Home Version 20H2;   iMac: macOS Big Sur

Note: All computers and mobile devices have their OS s/w updated regularly.

I run AVG Internet Security s/w in most of these devices (Not sure whether this is relevant to the problem described below).

This 'enviroment' or home network has been operational since Oct 2019 when I connected to the NBN/AussieBB. No problems were experienced until 3 or 4 months ago.

Description of the problem:

Let's start Day 1 in the morning with all this system operating normally. Then several hours later (or sometimes on the following day) the mobile devices (those connected via Wi-fi) loose access to the internet, all of them at the same time. If I looked at the Wi-Fi setting of the devices (say a Samsung phone or the iPad), the willl show the D6200 channel name (SSID) with "Connected. Internet not available."

In other words the devices are still connected to the router via Wi-fi but had lost the access to the internet. The computers hardwired to the router can still access the internet.

Recovery: The only way I found is rebooting the D6200, either through logging in to the modem or by using the power switch at the back of the D6200. Then a new cycle starts of running normally until the same problem happens again.

Now to @michaelkenward questions:

What does "lose internet access to the devices connected via wi-fi" mean?

I hope this explained above under Description of the problem.

Whar are these devices? Is the laptop one of them?

Please see my home network above. No, the laptop is hardwired to the router and can still connect to the internet.

They cannot see the wifi SSID? They see the SSID and get some sort of error message?

Yes, they can as decribed above. Yes, they see the SSID with the "Internet not available" message.

What do the LEDs on the router look like when this happens?

I believe they are still ON.

Thank you.

[michaelkenward]

I continue to have problems understanding what is going on here. Take this bit:

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@Retired_Member wrote:

A brief description of my home network:

As I mentioned before I use the Netgear D6200 both as a modem and as a router:

As a modem: D6200 -> RJ45 cable -> NBN (HFC box) -> Coaxial cable -> Coax Wall socket -> NBN -> AussieBroadBand (ISP)

As a router: D6200 -> RJ45 cables -> Toshiba Satellite laptop and Apple iMac (2 computers)

                    D6200 -> Wi-Fi -> 4 (four) mobile devices: 2 Android Samsung S5 and A30 phones; 1 iOS Apple iPad and 1 Samsung Smart Disk player.

These two scenarios are not possible at the same time.

Either the D6200 is a modem and router or it is just a router.

It is also not possible to use the D6200 is a modem if it is connected to an "HFC box".

The D6200 is a modem for DSL Internet. HFC Internet is not a DSl service.

Unless the HFC box performs some sort of magic that turns HFC Internet into DSL Internet, it just won't work to have the connection NBN (HFC box) -> D6200 modem.

One way to clarify this would be to tell people which socket the cable from the HFC box connects to on the D6200 .

I see no sign of this happening on this page:

Not all nbn™ modem routers are equal | Aussie Broadband – undefined

It might also help to tell people just what this HFC box is.

[Retired_Member]

Once again, my thanks to @michaelkenward who has put the effort to understand my explanations. I've done my best to try to make these explanations as clear and detailed as possible but it seems I've had not much success. Now it doesn't matter much as I explain below.

But for the benefit (I hope) of the community I'll try again to respond and provide additional details.

@michaelkenwardwrote:

These two scenarios are not possible at the same time.

Either the D6200 is a modem and router or it is just a router.

It is also not possible to use the D6200 is a modem if it is connected to an "HFC box".

My reply:

As I have said repeatedly before I was using the D6200 as a modem AND router since I connected to the NBN in Oct 2019. I've found 2 downloads from Netgear that I used at that time to configure the D6200 with the help of the ISP (AussieBroadBand, geat support from them BTW). Maybe this information could be useful for someone else so I'm attaching them to this post. In the first one ("What is an NBN network...") I have highlighted the bit that refers to HFC and also the date it was published (20-July-2017 not sure if it's still there). The second one ("How to connect a D6300 to NBN...") refers to a D6300 but I believe it also applies to the D6200.

@michaelkenwardwrote:

One way to clarify this would be to tell people which socket the cable from the HFC box connects to on the D6200 .

My reply:

It connects to the WAN port (See the article I attached "How to connect...")

@michaelkenwardwrote:

It might also help to tell people just what this HFC box is.

My reply:

I don't know. The NBN don't provide details; not to normal users anyway.

Anyway the problem is now solved: I replaced the D6200 with another modem/router and everything is working just fine.

[Retired_Member]

Here is the second Netgear article I mentioned in the previous reply. The system did not allow 2 attachments on a single post (or I didn't know how to do it).

[michaelkenward]

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@Retired_Member wrote:

Here is the second Netgear article I mentioned in the previous reply. The system did not allow 2 attachments on a single post (or I didn't know how to do it).

---

Aha. We fginally have an answer.

If you connect the D6200 to the NFC box through the WAN port, you are not using the D6200  as a modem router.

Connected like that, the D6200 works in router only mode.

To use the D6200 as a modem, you have to connect to the Internet through the ADSL port, the grey one on the left-hand end of the row of ports.

If your NBN box has four Ethernet ports, as it shows in the links you posted, this suggests that the box also work as a router. In that case you have two routers on the network, the NBN box and the D6200.

Two routers on your network can cause headaches. For example, you can end up with local address problems. Among other things, the other router can misdirect addresses that the Netgear router usually handles, such as routerlogin.net or the usual IP address for a router, 192.168.1.1.

This explains some of the other drawbacks.

What is Double NAT? | Answer | NETGEAR Support

This could also explain why your Wi-Fi access drops. The two devices are getting confused and don't know how to direct your Internet connection.

The first page you posted  – the same one that I posed earlier  – is another clue.

It says "you can use a NETGEAR DSL modem router".It does not say that the modem router is also a modem. It is actually just a router. You can tell that from the rest of the sentence where it says "or one of our home routers such as...". This means that you can attach any router to the NFC Internet.

I should have asked about the connection earlier on . We could then have corrected you constant insistence about how you are using the D6200 . You have not been using the D6200 as a modem router on NFC.

I do hope that you did not buy another modem/router. That would waste your money and might well mean that you end up with exactly the same state of affairs.

Two routers = bad news whatever they are.

[michaelkenward]

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@Retired_Member wrote:

As I mentioned before I use the Netgear D6200 both as a modem and as a router:

If anyone else wants to persevere with this conversation, the whole problem starts with that misunderstanding. It is wrong.

Unfortunately later messages repeated that mistake several times.

The first time the mistake came up here:

Re: D6200 Modem-Router Wi-Fi access to internet dr... - NETGEAR Communities – undefined

That was in answer to a question about the operating mode. Unfortunately, that answer is wrong and misleading.

A later explanation of what is going on – the wiring from the D6200 back to the Internet – reveals that @Retired_Member is not using the D6200 as a modem and as a router.

The Internet connection is through the WAN port. This means that it bypasses the modem part of the D6200. So the D6200 is, as suggested earlier on, in router  mode.

The bottom line is that just because a device calls itself a modem/router does not mean that it is always a modem.

These things can operate in various  modes:

• DSL modem/router (the most common reason for buying the D6200)
• modem only one (followed by a separate router)
• router mode  (bypassing the modem)
• Wireless Repeating Function (WDS) using the D6200 as a wifi repeater
• wireless access point (AP) mode wired back to the Ethernet port on a router

Just because it says modem/router on the box does not mean that this is what your device is doing.

[Retired_Member · Accepted solution]

My apologies for causing so much confusion. My insistence that I was using the D6200 as a "modem and a router"; was due to my lack of knowledge about networks. I never pretended in my replies to understand networks. What I meant by that statement was that I did not have a separate modem between the D6200 and the NBN box. So I just assumed that the D6200 was fulfilling that role. Unfortunately, the Netgear articles nor the NBN user literature don't make this clear.

Having the two routers together may cause the problems you mention. But I did not come up with this arrangement; I just followed Netgear's recommendation on how to connect to the NBN. Anyway, it operated well without any problems for 2 years.

Anyway, I came to the community to seek help for my problem and I just tried to provide as much information as I could to the best of my knowledge. But it seems all I did was to cause much confusion with my (unintentional) mistakes for which I'm sorry.

Fortunately (for me) I have now all my problems sorted out with a different (borrowed) modem/router, albeit working in router mode only!

@michaelkenward Thanks for your time and explanations.

[michaelkenward]

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@Retired_Member wrote:

What I meant by that statement was that I did not have a separate modem between the D6200 and the NBN box. So I just assumed that the D6200 was fulfilling that role.

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The NBN box is the modem. But, it may also be a modem router. (Does yours have a row of Ethernet ports?) And that could be the cause of your problem.

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@Retired_Member wrote:

Anyway, it operated well without any problems for 2 years.

Piling one router after another can cause the NAT issues that wreck the wifi. That it worked for two years is no clue. When you first set up the second router, the D6200, it trues to be helpful and to set itself up to avoid the NAT conflicts. It does this by allocating itself an IP address that does not conflict the one with the first router in the network.

That can work just fine, but if something changes in the network, or you just restart things, the network can get confused and dump you back in NAT hell.

The usual way to avoid that is to work out how to put the first modem/router into modem only (bridge) mode. Then the second router, the D6200, can do all the hard work.

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@Retired_Member wrote:

Fortunately (for me) I have now all my problems sorted out with a different (borrowed) modem/router, albeit working in router mode only!

---

You don't say what that borrowed device is, but be prepared for the wifi problem to crop up again some time. At least you now know where to begin to look for the cause of the problem.

[Retired_Member]

Thanks @michaelkenward.

No, the NBN box does not look like a router, i.e. it does not have a row of Ethernet ports. At the back it only has 3 connections: a) power supply, b) coax socket with coax cable connected to the wall socket and c) Ethernet port connected to the Wan port on the (modem) router.

So maybe this is just a modem.

Anyway, if wi-fi problems recur in the future with the new modem, I'll have a clearer picture.

Thanks for your comments. Bye for now