nighthawk r6700v2 losing internet connection periodically

[eligia]

Writing this message for the second time as my post failed because the router required a reboot. Pretty frustrating... 

---

@Kidsmakeyoucraz wrote:

Sometimes it will go days and work fine, sometimes I have to reset it 2-3 times in a day.  

---

I have noticed similar, sometimes 2 days will pass without a reset, but then 2 or 3 resets in a day are quite common.

I am still curious whether the routers DNS service is related, as I've noticed when I'm unable to open a new connection e.g. visit http://www.google.com in a browser on my tablet or macbook, because name resolution fails my childrens active netflix streaming sessions seem to continue unaffected. 

ElaineM is the cause of these issues unknown? Is this issue currently under active investigation? I would really like know if relief is coming or should simply return this router for one that works. I repeat I'm willing to work with your dev team to resolve, I'm quite proficient and provide any required information, logs. 

[Kidsmakeyoucraz]

---

@eligia wrote:

---

I have noticed similar, sometimes 2 days will pass without a reset, but then 2 or 3 resets in a day are quite common.

I am still curious whether the routers DNS service is related, as I've noticed when I'm unable to open a new connection e.g. visit http://www.google.com in a browser on my tablet or macbook, because name resolution fails my childrens active netflix streaming sessions seem to continue unaffected.

---

When mine dies, it dies.  Any active streams, online gaming etc all go down.  I'm not even able to ping my NAS via it's IP from the PC and they are both plugged directly into the router.  I've also noticed that both the 2.4 and 5ghz wireless lights turn off when it locks up.  What's really strange is sometimes even though the lights are off, my wireless devices still see the router, but it won't pass traffic.  It's very frustrating.  The wireless coverage and speeds of the router are amazing when it works.  I'm about ready to dust off my linksys wrt-54g.  It might not be fast by todays standards, but it's rock solid.

[clee1978]

---

---

When mine dies, it dies.  Any active streams, online gaming etc all go down.  I'm not even able to ping my NAS via it's IP from the PC and they are both plugged directly into the router.  I've also noticed that both the 2.4 and 5ghz wireless lights turn off when it locks up.  What's really strange is sometimes even though the lights are off, my wireless devices still see the router, but it won't pass traffic.  It's very frustrating.  The wireless coverage and speeds of the router are amazing when it works.  I'm about ready to dust off my linksys wrt-54g.  It might not be fast by todays standards, but it's rock solid.

---

This is exactly the problem that I had.  I gave up on this device and returned it for a competitor's product.  I have had no issues with my new device.  Honestly, I wanted this device to work.  As others have said, when this device works, it is extremely fast, and the wireless coverage is excellent.  I have a friend who purchased the exact same model, and has had no issues, even using the latest firmware; thus, I am wondering if there are some of these devices that simply have hardware issues that cannot be alleviated via firmware.  I hope for those who do not have the opportunity to return this device receive a resolution from Netgear soon.  Best of luck to everyone in this thread and many thanks for sharing your experiences.

V/r

cle1978

[Lbeagley79]

About 2 months ago I had posted about firmware version 1.1.0.34 fixing many of the connection issues I was having with this router. Performance with that firmware and the latest version (1.1.0.38) is definitely better, but not solved unfortunately. It runs solid for a few days, then I start getting dropped connections again. Will continue watching this thread and hope for a fix soon because the hardware is great when it is working correctly. 

[GFOviedo]

My story, I had a Motorolla modem comabined with a ASUS R66U router.  Everything worked fine until 8 months ago, I started having connectivity issues.  I was told by XFinity techs that my modem was the issue.  Since my modem and router were kind of old, I decided to buy a Netgear cable modem CM400 and the Netgear R6700v2.  Everything has been working okay.  I was having some connectivity issues, but it only happened twice or three times a month.  So, I thought it was my ISP.

For the past 2 months, I have had issues to were I completely lose internet connection.  The only way to gain it back is to reset the modem and/or the router.  Thereafter, the internet connection works fine.  For the past 3 weeks I've had to reset the modem/router at least 3 times a day.  I have called XFinity and they've sent two different techs.  They've replaced all the exterior / interior cables, and the issue still persist.

I've called Netgear customer support, and I've been waiting for hours to talk to someone, and I am just tired of waiting.  So, I Googled this issue, and I found this forum.  It is good to know that I am not alone with this issue, but now I've got an obsolete Netgear Modem and router.  Furthermore, I've got 3 Netgear switches as well.

It doesn't appear that Netgear has a solution for our connectivity issues.  Now, I've got to explain to the wife that we need to spend more money on a new modem, router and switches.  I guess I'll be going back to Linksys or Asus.

[GFOviedo]

Well, I just finished talking to Amazon customer service.  I explained to them what's going on with my modem / router.  My returned window was over in March, but the customer service rep. went ahead, sent me a return label and gave me credit so I can buy a different router.  Amazon is pretty awesome.  No wonder why I spend so much money with them.

[dctec12]

Having the same issue here. I am also out of my Amazon return period but this is encouraging. I might hold out a little longer to wait and see what comes up but my patience is running thin. It's a real shame really, would be such a nice router if it was working reliably.

[ElaineM]

I apologize for any inconvenience.

You may contact support and get a free hardware check to verify if it's faulty or not.

How do I get assistance for my product that is still within the hardware warranty but outside of the...

[Lbeagley79]

Hi Elaine, 

Appreciate the response, but my router too is just outside the warranty period. Purchased March 28th, 2017 via Amazon.  Ended up ordering a different manufacturer's router and performance is now rock solid. Guess I'll just hang on to the netgear r6700v2 in case the performance issues get resolved. 

[stottad87]

I am the original poster. I have noticed that from the start of my post i have gotten a few questions that were clearly answered in my original post. The problem is not with me ISP. When ethernet is plugged directly to PC the internet works just fine with no loss.

I have had my firmware up to date. I have done a factory reset. I have tried MAC spoofing. The problem still persists. Seems like atleast once a day i have to power reset my home network to get internet to work through the router. Lately i have had to do it 2-3 times aday, just today i have had to do it 4 times now. When the internet loss happens all lights on router stay the same except the internet light with turns into solid amber. The wifi and LAN lights still flash or stay solid just like if there was internet.

My questions before i ultimately believe i picked the wrong router:
Will an older ethernet cable have anything to do with the random internet loss connected to a new router?
Is this router somehow limiting data on my network and when i reach the cap it stops until its reset?

[GFOviedo]

Older Ethernet wired sucks as Cat5 will only limit you up to 100 Mbps I believe to approximately 50 meters. It should not affect your router getting disconnected.
I've switched to a Linksys A5400 and so far everything works well. I've noticed some sleep gains working my network as well for WiFi. I've got another router Netgear R2600 for $170 on sale at Staple. I'm going to test it out for a week and how it performs. If it works well I will return the Linksys since it cost me a little over twice the price of he R2600.

[dctec12]

I know this isn't the solution you wanted to hear but, I finally got in touch with support and they issued an RMA. The confirmation email said I'd be getting an R7000 which is encouraging. I also called them about 10PM and only waited on the line for 5 minutes. I will say the representative was very helpful and didn't force me to go through all of the troubleshooting steps since I already told them what I had tried. Hopefully the new holds up better than this one did.

[GFOviedo]

Last time I attempted to contact Netgear Customer Support, I waited for about one hour.  When I finally got someone on the line, we got disconnected.

Another good thing I've noticed about the Linksys A5400 is that it comes with a 3 year warranty / 3 year customer support.  I've contacted them once, and my wait time was less than 2 minutes.

[eligia]

---

@ElaineM wrote:

I apologize for any inconvenience.

You may contact support and get a free hardware check to verify if it's faulty or not.

How do I get assistance for my product that is still within the hardware warranty but outside of the...

---

I came here to say this, I spoke with Netgear L2 Support and shared screen shots of slow connection speed, test results and constant loss of internet connections.  The support rep suggested proceeding with an RMA and the replacement R7000 is currently Out for Delivery. 

[ElaineM]

@eligia Thank you for the update!

[annirun]

Brand new R6700v2 Firmware V1.1.0.38_1.0.1 drops everybody in our house from remote desktop every 1-5 minutes.  No real issues with anything else.  Switching back to old $20 TP-Link router causes the issue to go away and the issue reproduces with every device in the house, so it's probably the router.

Sounds like the concensus of this thread is that you've all tried a bunch of different firmware versions none of which worked and to just shoot for that RMA?

[Lbeagley79]

Hi annirun, 

Yes those are exactly the same symptoms I experienced. Switching routers fixed the issue as well in my case which points to something faulty in the 6700v2.

[Lbeagley79]

Elaine, 

Could use your help getting an RMA issued. I called customer support twice today, both times waiting over 30 minutes without an answer. I have a case # ready, but don't plan on spending more time waiting for an answer. Would be happy to send you the case # and contact info directly if you can help. 

[Janitorial]

Taken when no connectivity problems presentTaken after DNS_Probe_Finished_Bad_Config errors

I too had a similar problem shortly after purchasing this router. After the initial setup I was able to successfully connect devices via wifi and wired for ~3 days with no issues. Then at an (apparantly) random time of day all devices on the network would lose the ability to browse the internet via Chrome, Firefox, IE, etc. and would come up with a "DNS_Probe_Finished_Bad_Config" error when trying to reach a web address (e.g. www.google.com). However, the websites could still be accessed using the IP addresses, lending to the hypothesis that the issue is with where the router is looking to for the DNS servers. Additionally, the devices all showed they were still connected to the internet (internet never dropped), for example, a youtube video would not get interrupted unless we navigated away from it. We then went into the router settings and configured it to specifically use set DNS IPs (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) rather than automatically using what the ISP gave, to test whether the issue had to do with the router receiving the IPs from the ISP. This didn't resolve the issue. Power-cycling the router, as others have said, did resolve the issue and all devices were again able to browse the internet until the issue appeared again. After power-cycling, we inputted the ipconfig /all command in cmd to confirm the router was indeed using the correct DNS server IPs (Capture1). We then left the window open and when the DNS errors began again, we ran ipconfig /all and it showed the router as using its own IP as the DNS server IP: 192.168.1.1 (Capture2). This leads us to believe the router is experiencing some problem with the DHCP service that causes the DNS server to be incorrectly updated/switched.

[ElaineM]

@Lbeagley79 Did you successfully reached support? If not, PM me your case number.

@Janitorial Did you try reinstalling the firmware?

[MargaretB]

After some weeks, I can now report that the unit will go for days or even a week but then require a power off and on cycle as it loses connection to the internet. Today, it happened twice. No changes to our service during this period and no changes to the cableing. We like the unit but compared to the many others we have used in the past, this one is far from stable. Sadly, our return period at Amazon is over a month ago so we are stuck with it. 

[Lbeagley79]

@ElaineM

No luck reaching a customer support rep today. Sent you a PM with more details and case number. 

[ElaineM]

@MargaretB Have you submitted a case with support?

[MargaretB]

@MargaretB Have you submitted a case with support?

[ElaineM]

@MargaretB I suggest that you submit one then I'll make a follow-up with support.

By the way, how long have you had the router? Make sure as well that you register it.