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R9000 dropping LAN connection entirely after a while
I am having a similar problem to this thread but I can't reply there for some reason, so I'm starting a new thread.
I have the R9000 X10 with the 1.0.2.40 firmware (latest from Netgear site as of this writing). The network topology is:
- WAN: Gigabit Ethernet from Verizon FiOS ONT directly into the Netgear Nighthawk X10. Can't access settings or customize the ONT; it is Verizon property and not customer accessible (external unit).
- Computers: Several PCs/Macs (various specs) connected to Ethernet, and some more devices connected via 802.11ac 5 GHz. 2.4 GHz and 60 GHz bands are disabled in the R9000 firmware settings.
The only customizations I've made to settings in the firmware is the WiFi password, admin password, disabling 2.4 and 60 GHz bands, and configuring Dynamic QoS.
The problem is that the LAN occasionally drops entirely, refusing to route any traffic, DNS lookups fail, etc. -- After that point, attempting to renew the DHCP for any host on the LAN fails and I get the invalid local IP of 169.254.x.x and all traffic is not routable (even to the router itself).
In fact, even before manually attempting to renew IP via DHCP, trying to access the router via routerlogin.net or 192.168.1.1 fails with connection timed out.
Unlike the poster in that other forum, mine appears to be happening on WiFi too, but not at the same time. Meaning, I could have one Ethernet computer that's totally offline with a 169.254.x.x address and another WiFi computer is still working, but if I leave the router in this configuration for an extended period of time, eventually that second host connected via WiFi will also drop and get a 169.254.x.x address.
This can't be my ISP, because the router is refusing to give my hosts a valid IP address via DHCP on the router's own DHCP server. It should be able to do this correctly even if the ISP connection drops out. So please do not blame my ISP; this problem is completely orthogonal to the WAN side of the link, this is just the router itself dying and refusing to route even LAN traffic (which it should be able to do even if nothing is plugged into the Internet port on the router!).
Once I reboot the router, all is well again for another 10-14 hours or so. Then the cycle repeats.
I think it is related to the DHCP server. Next time I will try a static IP and see if that fixes it.
Can Netgear please at least acknowledge this problem? This is a serious problem to have on a $500 router which has already had multiple stable firmwares released for it, but where the latest firmware has basically a fatal flaw that makes this router completely unsuitable for daily use.
15 Replies
Welcome to the community, b5gvjmdxdi
Have you tried resetting the router after firmware update?
It seems that the DHCP is the problem.
Did you try downgrading the firmware of the router?
Hi,
It looks like disabling the DoS protection stabilized the router. So I guess the DoS protection might falsely be detecting a DoS from inside the network or something - I am not sure.
Let's observe your connection for another 24hrs to see if it's resolved.
- Netgear,
The issue most certainly lies within your firmware and you need to have your team work on addressing it. I couldn’t go a few days much less week without my wired connections dropping. I’ve been running a third party firmware, DD-WRT to be exact, and I’ve had no random drops going on 11 days now. It’s extremely poor publicity for a corporation such as Netgear, which is one of the leading networking manufacturers out there, to have an issue such as this exist for so long and yet they can’t or don’t want to fix it.
At this point, unless the issue is addressed at Netgear, it’s safe to say your option is to either deal with it or flash a third party firmware onto your router.I think it could possibly be related to the power electronics inside the router... either poor filtering of the input power, or poor filtering of the signal from the Ethernet cables.
Not 100% sure, but when I switched my R9000 over from a bog standard power strip to being plugged into my R9000, most of my problems went away. Now, with the 1.0.3 firmware that was released recently, it seems to finally be stable.
- But a third party firmware eliminated all of my issues so how is it power related? I’m genuinely curious because simply removing the default Netgear firmware did the trick for me. Hell, even my download speeds seem more consistent.
