Right after I told Netgear support that if their next suggestion was specifically addressing the known DNS issues as detailed in this thread, then I would be returning the router. They did not offer any additional suggestions.
But since that time, it has worked without a disconnect for days. We weirdly have lost the ability to connect to Netflix, but can still stream Amazon Prime without issue. Now I'm worried that I'm getting sucked into thinking it's working, and it will fail again, and then I won't be able to return it.
Thought y'all would like to know that it just started working.
I'm doing an experiment that's worked well so far -- he said with hubris... 🙂
Running 118, I made note of the current settings (in notepad, excel, etc.), reset to default, and then applied all the settings manually as if it were brand new. After loses DNS 4 times in the 2 hours before this, now I've gone 12+ hours with no issues.
We'll see. I'll report back.
Thanks!
OK. So, all is still well. No issues.
While annoying, it seems that a reset and then manually entering the config does the trick, at least for me. My best guess was that somewhere someone was clumsy with the firmware upgrade leaving it in a place where the settings weren't backward compatible. Here's hoping they learned from their mistake 🙂
Yes, I have had similar issues and appreciate your explination of what is going on. My router just lost complete connection again about 5 min. ago. I too have a similar setup but use AX6000 as my WAP. I can still access the GUI and then I have to restart. It is extremely random. I down graded to the hotfix a few months ago, FW V1.0.1.97 to see if it would fix it. It was stable for about 48 hours and then started dropping again. I really wish they would work on a stable FW for such an exensive router.
I got the same issue, came after config by Nightawk app and did some modification over the web UI. Quickly said, RX120 lost is DNS mind, was ok okay for few hours after reboot.
So, do a "factory reset", reconfig it by config by Nightawk app and go to www.routerlogin.net and modify JUST ONCE and ONLY what it need to be modified.
Now my RAX120 is running well since 48 hours, thanks to the commnunity!!!
In case you all were wondering, after a bit of reading and decising on a mesh network instead of this flaming hunk of junk, I ended up with Google Nest. No, it's not OFDMA, nor is it WiFi-6. The router is only AC2200 and the satellites AC1200.
The sad part is that independent speed testing puts the Google Nest almost as fast in close proximity to the router (~500 Mb/s vs. ~600 Mb/s), but at longer distances, I have increased speed 2-3x. Sad that an "old technology router mesh network" can trounce something as allegedly fancy as the RAX120. I'm also noticing less connectivity issues with my Goole Chromecast and Chromecast Audio netowrk. My tune might change when we actually get WiFi-6 devices, but for the next few years, I imagine I'll be quite happy with this setup.
For the record, I was going to get the Orbi mesh setup (reluctantly because it's Netgear too, and their CS has proven to be a joke), but fortuitously Costco was out, and having done enough reading, I learned that Next was pretty damn good, so 1 impulse purchase later, I'm quite happy. Not to mention that I no longer have a giant Star Wars-esque spaceship cluttering my office.
Sorry to hear you never got on with the RAX120. Got to say though I've never had issues with CS, I've always found them helpful when I've needed to contact them.
I just got this router last week and during setup I did a firmware update to the latest (.118). I haven't noticed any issues for the 4-5 days of uptime until this weekend when my fiancée's iPhone 11 Pro remained connected to the network but no websites would load. Turning off her WiFi fixed the issue but reconnected caused the issue again. Other devices were working fine. A restart of the router fixed the issue for her phone.
Is this a sympton of the DNS issues that everyone is having in this thread?
Yeah or an IP assignment issue. Try going to WiFi settings and looking at the IP address, if its fine try setting a DNS manually like 1.1.1.1 (Cloudflare) and see if she can browse websites.
I had an IP assignment issue where some of my devices were getting 172.35.X.X IPs that even survived a factory reset somehow after going from the .114 firmware to .118, despite having the client devices also rebooted and renew DHCPs. Issue is gone now for me after an update to a beta firmware.
I've been a Netgear user for over a decade but something just isn't right with the RAX120. I had issues so decided to try the AX6000 as the WAP(s) and use the RAX120 as the router. That did not help. I was still losing connection on both wired and wireless. This led me to beleive it was the router function.
I ended up getting an ubiquiti edgerouter to use with the Orbi AX6000 as WAP(s). I haven't had a connection error in over a week and my speeds are solid. My wired download speed reached over 900 through the router, netgear switch and AX6000. My wireless speed right now is 637 down and 45.4 up.
I could not get solid download speeds with the RAX120 running as the router either wired or wireless and was using the AX6000 still. I also had connection errors every two days or so wired and wireless. Of which, required a restart. I coudln't take it any longer. Very happy with my current setup. I feel bad because I had my family invest in the RAX120 and they have issues too. Now that I have my RAX120, I may use it as the most expensive WAP ever for my Alexa devices on a seperate network. Any other ideas for use besides selling it?
Honestly I think the latest routers from Netgear have really buggy firmware. I been only using Netgear routers since the 54g days and the last Netgear router that actually worked flawlessly was the R8000. I upgraded that to the R8500 and out of nowhere it started to do this thing where it would disconnect all clients from the wifi randomly 1-2x a day. Being frustrated with that I upgraded to the RAX120. I really hope this weird DNS issue isn't that bad (I only had it for about a week and only experienced that issue once).
Honestly I think the latest routers from Netgear have really buggy firmware. I been only using Netgear routers since the 54g days and the last Netgear router that actually worked flawlessly was the R8000. I upgraded that to the R8500 and out of nowhere it started to do this thing where it would disconnect all clients from the wifi randomly 1-2x a day. Being frustrated with that I upgraded to the RAX120. I really hope this weird DNS issue isn't that bad (I only had it for about a week and only experienced that issue once).
I am keeping the setting as simple as possible with the new updated fw .118
It seems to work ok, with few random disconnection.
@TerryPh What do you mean by "as simple as possible". I haven't enabled anything fancy in the settings. Just using it as a router, the only settings that I care about is MU_MIMO enabled. I have QoS off and guest 2.4 enabled. Everything else is default I believe. I don't use any storage drives or any of the other extra features.
I noticed a new issue. One of my HomePods randomly drops connection from router. Either I have to power cycle the Homepod or reboot the router. It isn't a DNS issue as it is not even connected to it (doesn't show up in the admin page nor a network scan tool). Rebooting the router holds connection for about 2 days before symptoms show again.
Any suggestions? I still need to do the factory reset and never log in again method that some of you have mentioned previously.
@avtella I finally confirmed the issue. My HomePods were saying they couldn't connect to the internet. A reboot of them or the router fixed the issue. I did not understand the issue. Now I noticed my iPad disconnected and when I checked the WiFi connnection info it turns out that the iPad was not given a normal IP address (192.168.1.x) instead it was given one of the ISP ones.
I am running .118 right now but you mentioned a beta firmware. Is there anyway I can get access to one? Or if I should contact support for this issue?
I already did a factory reset and kept the settings to a minimum but it didn't last a day of uptime before another device had the issue. Any solutions are appreciated!
I'm running V.1.0.1.122 firmware and am getting drops consistently, both my wife and I are working today so I can't play with settings yet but it's damn annoying and frustrating.
I dropped back to V1.0.1.114 ever since the 118 driver started causing the disconnect issues for me. I've been stable there for a few weeks.
Others claim they had joy at the newer firmware levels (118 or 122) by factory resetting the router then re-entering any config manually. I've yet to try that because I have a decent amount of config and it would easily cost me an hour or two since i'm using VPN client, static IPs, port forwarding, etc.
[tangential rant] The sad part is that re-configuring from scratch manually could be a MUCH easier and faster process, if they didn't have such a horrible UIX. There is often very poor use of the width of the screen and fields often have gaping vertical margins between them. Info could be far more dense on the screen, and should be especially in advanced mode. Many edit flows could simply be done on a single panel by displaying the info to you in editable fields instead all at once, instead of requiring a handful of clicks and screen refreshes to edit each one by one.
Editing the connected device info is a perfect example...The device list is a table, but to edit a row I have to check a box, click Edit, edit the info, scroll down to see the submit button, and click submit for every device one by one. Somehow they even made the page to edit a single device unfriendly...they show you 4 pieces of info (IP Address, MAC Address, Device Name, Device Type) and manage to take up so much vertical room that I have to actually scroll down to see it all. Four. It's like they outsourced UI to some middleschool CS 101 class.
After a bunch of firmware upgrades, downgrades, resets I finally found the issue to my problem and started a discussion here .
TL/DR if you have a network with a lot of always connected devices (20+ in my case) the router sometimes fails to provide an IP during boot or DHCP license renewal. To fix this use the IP reservation in the router config to set IPs for as many devices as you can. I did not have this issue on my previous R8500 router when I used the Fios router as the DHCP server.
So far has had 2 days of uptime with no issues on the latest .122 firmware. Hopefully it stays stable otherwise I have to try something else.
@evzx The issues that I was facing was that devices would appear to be connected (showing WiFi as connected) but no internet access. Was that the issue you were facing? I would highly recommend looking at the logs for patterns. Look for things like when the device experiencing the issue was first assigned an IP and how often it renewed.
Downgrading the firmware didn't do anything for me (went all the way down to .114).
I was trying to see how much of uptime I would get before the issue would arise but I checked my logs this morning to learn that the router somehow rebooted itself... I hope that was just a one time thing and not a new issue. Hopefully it will keep running with no issues (and especially without another reboot)
@evzx Forget everything I said. All the issues I had came back. I decided to f*** it and just use my old Fios router as the DHCP server. Will see if that fixes the issues. I think I accepted that Netgear's DHCP server is **bleep**. The last time I used the Netgear router for DHCP was with one of their Wireless N routers back in 2009... This really sucks that you spend so much money for a router and it can't handle such simple things.
