Re: Upgraded XR500 to V2.3.2.130 and shortly after all LAN ports not connecting to my devices

mpsalkin · ‎2021-11-16

Hello,

I recently purchased the XR500 a few weeks ago, upgraded FW to .114 and everything was working well. Then FW V2.3.2.130 was released so I upgraded and again everything seemed to be operating well. I came home from work today and none of my devices connected to the LAN ports have internet, all showing offline in the device manager. All devices connected to WiFi are running just fine.

I have not really configured any advanced settings. Just Setup QoS with my xbox and connected some devices to my VPN service via Hybrid VPN (however, none of the devices on the LAN are connected to the VPN). I tried rebooting the router, disabling QoS and disabling the VPN to no avail.

Any ideas on why my LAN ports randomly stopped working when they were all working last night?

Thank you in advance for any input.

Regards,

Matt

Netduma-Liam · ‎2021-11-17

Hey Matt, thanks for detail!

Are you able to get to the DumaOS interface when using a device connected via ethernet?

What lights are illuminated on the XR500 and what colour are they?

Did you factory reset the XR500 after installing the latest firmware?

FURRYe38 · ‎2021-11-17

What is the Mfr and model# of the Internet Service Providers modem/ONT the NG router is connected too?

@mpsalkin wrote:

Hello,

I recently purchased the XR500 a few weeks ago, upgraded FW to .114 and everything was working well. Then FW V2.3.2.130 was released so I upgraded and again everything seemed to be operating well. I came home from work today and none of my devices connected to the LAN ports have internet, all showing offline in the device manager. All devices connected to WiFi are running just fine.

I have not really configured any advanced settings. Just Setup QoS with my xbox and connected some devices to my VPN service via Hybrid VPN (however, none of the devices on the LAN are connected to the VPN). I tried rebooting the router, disabling QoS and disabling the VPN to no avail.

Any ideas on why my LAN ports randomly stopped working when they were all working last night?

Thank you in advance for any input.

Regards,

Matt

mpsalkin · ‎2021-11-17

Hi Liam,

Thank you for your quick response.

The lights were lit white on the modem for 2/4 connected devices (the other two may have been offline from inactivity).

I did not attempt to connect to DumaOS interface via ethernet cable, nor did I perform a factory reset as I didn't want to loose my configurations for device names and QoS. Is a factory reset required after upgrading firmware?

I went through my xbox troubleshooting and it said the router may not be assigning an IP via DCHP and to try to give it a static IP. I gave that a shot and after clicking apply 3 times in the LAN setup menu it actually connected. I then gave the other 3 LAN devices a static IP as well and sure enough they connected. I then removed the 3 LAN devices from static to automatic and they were still able to connect. Not sure why that seemed to kick it into gear...

Regards,

Matt

mpsalkin · ‎2021-11-17

Hi FURRY,I have a CM1200 and use Spectrum.

Netduma-Liam · ‎2021-11-18

We do reccommend a factory reset after upgrading firmware just because it's good for clearing out anything that could've been left over from the previous firmware. It's not always essential though.

It sounds as though the DHCP server is having trouble on the XR, though it's odd it only seems to be affecting wired devices.

It wouldn't be a bad idea to reserve IPs for these devices anyway, while we investigate DHCP issues with the XR routers. If you still have problems after that, please do let us know also.

mpsalkin · ‎2021-11-26

I did a factory reset yesterday and all seems to be working okay now using dynamic IPs for the LAN devices. I'll post if the problem surfaces again.

Though it was strange, after I did the factory reset the QoS BW allocation had allocated a higher percent of BW to one device and the traffic prioritization was set for 2 devices that were not the previous two devices I had set. The open ports were the same as I had previously set. After a factory reset I would have assumed the BW distribution to be uniform and there to be no devices under traffic prioritization. Seems somehow there was still some retained info left over and it got assigned to the incorrect devices. I did the factory reset via router console, not the physical button on the router.

Netduma-Fraser · ‎2021-11-26

Interesting, as we have changed those areas it may be they weren't added to be cleared by a reset, I'll pass this onto the team to investigate, thanks for the report!

mpsalkin · ‎2021-11-27

Today while I was watching TV my internet randomly dropped. Looked at my modem and the internet light was on so I did a power reset on the router. Once it powered back on the WiFi was disabled and I could not connect wirelessly to the router. I then unplugged the router for a minute, reconnected and powered on. Still WiFi was disabled. I then looked at the settings WiFi setup and under the advanced WiFi settings and everything was enabled as expected. I tried to reapply the WiFi settings and it loaded, then went back to the router console homepage and still both 2.4 and 5 GHz WiFi displayed as disabled. Tried a reboot one last time to no avail. Finally, I said screw it and went to factory reset it via the button.

To start I disconnected all WAN/LAN cables. Read some posts and saw Netgear in the past suggested to hold for 1.5 minutes. Did that and when the router turned back on I plugged directly into the router LAN with my laptop. To my surprise nothing had reset and all my settings were still there including same admin credentials to login (and still no WiFi). So now I tried to hold the reset button for 30 seconds and again it did not factory reset. Then I plugged in the WAN, held reset for 30 seconds and finally it reset.

Again, settings in QoS Traffic Prioritization were retained and assigned to incorrect devices. The Bandwidth Allocation and Congestion control setting were also retained.

Not sure why my WiFi dropped out and would not become enabled after a few power cycles. Especially considering I didn't change any configurations and was just watching TV. Unfortunately, I’m starting to lose my patience with this router and am considering returning it as I’m still within the return window. Certainly, if one more thing happens I’m likely to proceed with a return. Netgear's responses on the form have been much appreciated and helpful, and I really appreciate the good customer service Netgear is providing on the forms. However, when you pay good money for something from a reputable company you just expect it to work and not take hours of troubleshooting and reconfiguring away from your free time to get it work again.

Netduma-Fraser · ‎2021-11-27

@mpsalkin not sure why there was so much trouble there with the reset, that is certainly odd - for not resetting everything we will be investigating that. If you have Armor enabled I would recommend disabling it, this has helped other peoples issues previously. For the WiFi, I'd suggest doing this now as it has helped to make it more stable in the long run - disable WiFi completely, apply, reboot from the interface, wait 2 minutes then access, enable WiFi, apply, reboot from the interface, wait 2 minutes then connect. Whenever you do a factory reset or reboot always wait 2 minutes after doing so before attempting a connection or accessing - it is booting up during this time and so interacting with the interface for example could lead to an error if said feature hadn't loaded at that time.
We're from Netduma, the creators of DumaOS, this is Netgear's community forum so it's mostly community members and us helping out, for official responses from them you would need to contact them directly.

mpsalkin · ‎2021-11-29

Last night after playing Xbox (connected via LAN) all devices connected to the XR500 LAN went offline. Looking at the Device Manager the LAN did not show up. Not sure why they all dropped again. Went ahead and did the workaround that fixed the issue last time and set the LAN devices to a static IP then rebooted. Router came back up and LAN devices are now connected with static IPs. Also, under the LAN Setup page all of my "named" devices were not displayed with their assigned names from Device Manager and instead have their default names.

Is this issue happening to other XR500 users on FW V2.3.2.130? Is my router defective? Just doesn't seem like this should be happening on a brand new router (or even an old router).

Netduma-Liam · ‎2021-11-30

How did you access the interface when the LAN devices were down, via a Wi-Fi device? Or are you still able to get to the DumaOS interface via a LAN device when this occurs?

Can you assign these LAN devices IP addresses that are outside of the DHCP pool? So for example, set the DHCP range to be from .50-.250, then assign LAN devices IPs from .2-.49?

mpsalkin · ‎2021-11-30

I accessed the interface via WiFi when the LAN was down.

I have my LAN connected under x.50, then I changed DCHP starting IP to 50, applied, and my devices stayed connected. I then changed one of my devices above x.50, applied, and it stayed connected. I changed that same device to under x.50, applied, and it stayed connected. So it seems that the DCHP LANs are able to connect outside the IP range. What does this mean?

Netduma-Liam · ‎2021-12-01

The address range is just the range of IPs that the DHCP server will give out when renewing a lease or starting a new lease. If you reserve IPs for devices outside of the range, we should then eliminate DHCP from the equation and you shouldn't have any further issues.

mpsalkin · ‎2021-12-01

I came home from work today and all my LAN devices were disconnected again. They are configured with static IPs under x.50. I set the starting IP in the LAN setup for DCHP to x.50 as you suggested, hit apply, and they seemed to connect as I had internet on my apple tv, but they did not show in the Device Manager. I then restarted my router and none of them can connect to the internet, nor does the LAN show up in Device Manager. I went back and forth from x.1 to x.50 and hit apply, and they never connected again. Restarted my router, and they're still not working.

Is there a bug in the firmware or is my router defective? It doesn't seem like I should have to do this. On all my previous routers I never had to set the LANs to have static IPs and change the the DCHP IP range. Also, I've heard you're less secure if you set your devices to a static IP as repeate attacks on devices will become easier. I'd prefer not to have to have my LANs on static IPs nor have to change the DCHP range. It should work out of the box.

Netduma-Liam · ‎2021-12-02

You may need to reboot the devices themselves to ensure they get their new IPs, though to be fair I would've thought rebooting the router would've helped with that.

This is different from any issues we've seen on the XR500 as far as I'm aware. I would suggest now that you reach out to Netgear via support.netgear.com and see if they can assist further. We're now into the Network settings which isn't something we at Netduma had a part in, so we're a little limited in the advice we can offer.

Bans25 · ‎2022-03-13

I am having the same exact issue for over a month since upgrading to V2.3.2.130. When is the next FW release coming out? My family is not happy, I have to reboot the router multiple times a day in order to have even static devices connect. This is definitely a FW bug..

Netduma-Fraser · ‎2022-03-13

@Bans25 you've done all the suggestions made so far and the reserved IPs are outside the DHCP range? They wouldn't renew that much so it might be the IP the XR is getting is changing frequently, if you can set that as static it may reduce the issue. ETAs are not provided as they're always subject to change, we're doing our best to get one out as soon as we can.

Orosta · ‎2022-03-14

If you're comfortable with it, I'd recommend installing DD-WRT instead of the terrible firmware 2.3.2.130 until they sort the issues.

I've been running DD-WRT for the last month and while the UI isn't as flashy, IPV6, QoS, etc all work as intended and I've yet to have to reboot bar me fiddling with settings to get the best Wi-Fi bandwidth.

My speeds are the same, and my bufferbloat scores (QoS on a maxed out connection) are now A+. The congestion control on DumaOS never worked for me from .56 to .114 or .130. The DHCP issues are the worst. .130 should be pulled and recommended for deletion. It's an awful firmware.