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Stale DNS issues on Nighthawk router connecting to Windows 10 PC's
TLDR: I think that the Netgear firmware is causing Stale DNS entries in Nighthawk routers attached to Windows 10 PC's.
Greetings all, I wanted to post my experiences here in case it provides any value to someone else.
Many years ago, around 2014, I purchased a Nighthawk R8000. I used it for 2 years, without fault, until something heavy fell on it. I replaced it with a Nighthawk R8500 in 2016. This unit worked flawlessly until around 2019/2020. Around this time I started getting constant but intermittent website connection issues on both PC's in my house. After 'dealing with it' for a while I finally gave up and replaced both my Cable modem and my R8500 with two brand new devices. Due to availability I had to downgrade and replaced the R8500 with another R8000, since I like the platform and have had good overall luck with the series. Sadly my issues did not go away. It was at this time that I finally decided to do some official troubleshooting and documenting. Here is what I observed.
Only my Windows 10 PC's were having an issue. My Linux PC, My RaspberryPI, My Android Phones and my Fire TV's did not experience the issue.
The basic issues were observed in four different areas. The fourth area being the one that prompted me to finally start digging.
1) Email would randomly fail trying to reach the IMAP server.
2) Websites would initially fail to load but would eventually either auto reload or load after a few manual refreshes.
3) Minecraft servers would work perfectly fine as long as I was playing the game, but if I logged out and immediately tried logging back in they would fail to communicate with the server for close to a minute of clicking refresh.
4) The Star Citizen game would essentially refuse to load 80% of the time.
While troubleshooting with L3 Star Citizen support we discovered that doing an "ipconfig /flusdns" would temporarily resolve my issue and allow me to connect. Using this command I was also able to also clear issues with minecraft servers. These two were the main ones that failed consistently enough for a reproducer.
So we had finally narrowed down my issue. Stale DNS on Windows 10 PC's was my root cause. But why was it happening? We initially though that the real root cause was with Spectrum, my internet provider. And we know how bad their support is. So first I tried to resolve the issue with a workaround. We tried many different ways of using different DNS servers on both the Router itself and the Windows box. Nothing ever fully resolved it. We tried at least 4 different companies DNS servers. None of them resolved the issue. I was actually about to upgrade my internet contract to one that used their hardware so that I could open a support ticket without them blaming my gear. That was when we had a possible breakthrough.
Star Citizen support recommended trying a VPN. I wasn't going to spend money so I initially declined. This weekend I found a free basic VPN service and decided to give that a try. Before I broke something in my production R8000 router, I decided to experiment on my old R8500 that was only decommissioned because of the DNS issue. I initially hard reset it back to factory defaults and put it back in-service. I then verified that the DNS issue was still present. In fact it was worse on the 8500 than the 8000. Which was why we initially thought it was indeed a hardware issue with our 8500. After seeing the issues was still present, I blew away the factory firmware and installed the newest supported version of DD-WRT. The extra features made this a more attractive option for setting up the router to permanently filter all traffic through a VPN. After doing that I decided to let the router run for a while to verify basic stability.
Well...... three days later, I have not had a single DNS failure yet. And everything seems to run so much faster. No page stalls at all when loading webpages. Now, will it keep this up? We will see. I will try to let everyone if my luck maintains.
Couple side notes:
After initially seeing this possibility, I put the factory firmware back on. It still had DNS failures on the factory firmware.
When hard coding the DNS server in the Windows PC, we still had issues. So it is almost seems like the router was somehow butchering the actual packets themselves. I did see a lot of strange things in the Wireshark traces but mostly assumed it was just some of the fancier new DDOS remediation techniques maybe. Now that things are more stable I might need to do some new captures.
Hopefully if someone else is seeing this it might help. If anyone else is seeing something similar or found additional information I would love to know about it. Thanks.
Re: Stale DNS issues on Nighthawk router connecting to Windows 10 PC's
The beta only fixes IP address reservation issue and a NTP configuration issue. DNS problems are still present in current 8000 FW. I can confirm that if you enable IPv6 (Auto) on the router, this resolves the DNS issues. Same goes for the 8500 FW.
We have make NG aware of the DNS issues and trying to keep pushing it.
Re: Stale DNS issues on Nighthawk router connecting to Windows 10 PC's
If you read in the forums, there's a lot of posts about the firmware on the R8000 causing dns issues. Some downgrade to an earlier firmware to fix it. Others are able to fix it with simple enabling IPv6 (not all). Its a known issue and I've seen a beta firmware that supposedly resolves it but I haven't seen its general release yet. (haven't tried it as I don't have an R8000)
DD-WRT is a good option. Works pretty solid. It has had some issues on slowing speeds through if you're running faster connections.
Re: Stale DNS issues on Nighthawk router connecting to Windows 10 PC's
Thanks for that. My google-foo must have failed me when I was searching originally. The ones I found related to DNS were from the Orbi side. I will search out that Beta version and throw it at my 8000 to see what happens. As long as they at least know about it that makes me feel better anyway. I fought this for so long, thinking it was bad hardware or a spectrum issue.
Re: Stale DNS issues on Nighthawk router connecting to Windows 10 PC's
The beta only fixes IP address reservation issue and a NTP configuration issue. DNS problems are still present in current 8000 FW. I can confirm that if you enable IPv6 (Auto) on the router, this resolves the DNS issues. Same goes for the 8500 FW.
We have make NG aware of the DNS issues and trying to keep pushing it.
Re: Stale DNS issues on Nighthawk router connecting to Windows 10 PC's
Ah, thanks for the info. I guess I may just have to keep riding the DD-WRT wave then. I only have 50M down so I likely won't hit the speed wall mentioned. In fact, with the DNS issues resolved, things seem to be running faster. My 50M connection even gave me a 70M download from speedtest LOL. Probably a fluke I know.
I made the mistake of telling the truth when I registered it just now and the support page gave me the 'F off and die message' that I can Either buy a new one or buy a support contract. Considering I have been fighting the DNS issue for the entire year I have had this router I must admit that my lifelong fanboy status took a hit and I seriously considered throwing these these two routers in a tech shredder. (Been buying their gear since the Nortel/Bay Networks years) If nothing else I think it is time for me to start researching other brands. Which is a shame because until this issue, I have never had any major problems and I love their hardware.
I guess I'll also try the IPv6 option after I let this marinate for a couple weeks to see how stable DD-WRT is. That way I can verify how it compares to having IPv6 enabled.
Re: Stale DNS issues on Nighthawk router connecting to Windows 10 PC's
Yes. I meant I am going to keep DD-WRT for a few weeks to ensure that the system remains stable. If it does then I will try the factory FW with IPv6 to see if it remains as stable. That way I can ensure that the actual underlying hardware is good and solid and compare how the two different firmwares seem to be speed wise.
Re: Stale DNS issues on Nighthawk router connecting to Windows 10 PC's
After staying stable on DD_WRT for about a week, I put the factory firmware on and enabled IPv6. The system remained stable afterwards. Very disappointing that this has been an unresolved and known issue for years now. Sadder still that the support system won't even let me open a ticket to ask them about it and it told me to go buy a new one or buy a support contract.
