XR1000 Internet Drops on WiFi only

[wakkoroti]

The internet loses connection intermittently for devices that are connected via WiFi on the router. When it happens, clients that are connected via LAN have no issues. Clients connected via WiFi are able to connect to devices on the network (I.e., router, modem, other clients) but not able to reach the internet. It seems to restore if I turn off any single WiFi connected device. I don't believe I have reached the client limit on WiFi as each time I have checked there were no more than 13 devices on 2.4 ghz and 11 devices on 5ghz. According to net gear docs, should support 32 clients on each band. 

Running XR1000 1.0.0.52_1.0.38

[wakkoroti · Accepted solution]

It has now been a week and turning off iOS Private Address for both 2.4 and 5ghz networks AND reserving an IP address for any iOS device as made the router happy. I kept the release version of firmware on the router.

[Netduma-Fraser]

Could you disable Smart Connect for WiFi please and manually connect devices to 2.4/5GHz and see whether it resolves the issue please?

[wakkoroti]

I don't use smart connect. I only use it as two separate networks already. 

[Netduma-Fraser]

Do you have any wireless devices e.g. headphones, remotes or electrical devices within 3 feet of the router? If so move them away if possible and see if it continues please.

[wakkoroti]

No devices are close. 

Problem suddenly started when I returned home from a long trip. Was working fine for my partner for months. When I arrived home, bringing 5 devices back to the network with me that all use WiFi, the problem started. 

[Netduma-Fraser]

What are the specific devices that you connected? If you make a guest WiFi network and connect those devices to it does that prevent it happening on the main WiFi?

[wakkoroti]

These were devices that were working on this network prior to my trip, but they are:

iPhone 12

iPhone 7

MacBook Pro

Surface Pro 6

Apple Watch 4

iPad Pro

I'll try the guest network option. On a device that wasn't working, I did try changing to the 2.4ghz network and it still didn't work. It's largely intermittent but seems to have to be related to multiple clients in use. Last night was streaming to a LAN connected AppleTV and trying to surf on iPad and both devices started losing connection. When I disconnected the iPad from the wifi, the AppleTV resumed its connection.

[Netduma-Fraser]

They're all normal devices, it could be that they're Apple devices and they all sync together which is causing it. Let us know how you get on with the guest network.

[pteroptikon]

Try going into your settings on the router and disabling the traffic meter. I’ve been having a similar issue to yours, with the intermittent disconnects and only certain devices being affected, and disabling the traffic meter completely eliminated the issue for me.

[wakkoroti]

Traffic Meter was not enabled.

Today when I got home, my iPhone12 would not connect to the 5ghz network but it would connect to the 2.4ghz network. Other devices would connect to both. I tried power cycling the iPhone12 and no change, 5ghz bad, 2.4ghz good.

So finally I tried turning off this function: The Private Address (MAC) function in the wifi network config on iOS/iPadOS. Turning this off on all my apple iOS devices for my home network so far has not produced any problems. I have all my devices on and I'm streaming 4k on a couple devices and I'm having no issues for at least an hour now. We'll see if this holds.

[wakkoroti]

Sadly this did not work. I still get intermittant lockups of the internet and it now also happens on LAN connected computers too, sometimes. Going to try defaulting out the whole router before I go buy a different one. Super.

[Netduma-Fraser]

I've sent you a PM, please take a look.

[wakkoroti]

Before defaulting, I'm trying one more thing. I have given all of my iOS devices an IP reservation for their permanent MAC address. Verified that both the 2.4 and 5 ghz networks are all set to have that private address turned off. I then verified in the device manager that all seven of my iOS devices received their permanent IP address and then fully rebooted the router.

[wakkoroti · Accepted solution]

It has now been a week and turning off iOS Private Address for both 2.4 and 5ghz networks AND reserving an IP address for any iOS device as made the router happy. I kept the release version of firmware on the router.

[Netduma-Fraser]

That's great to hear, thanks so much for the update!