Every 15 minutes my RT-AC1900P is acting weird

[ColinTaylor]

I think I'm approaching a scorched earth resolution because of how frustrating this is...... might just buy a new cable modem, new router and new switch.

A standard procedure for situations like this is as follows:

1) Save your current settings (Administration - Restore/Save/Upload Setting).
2) Factory reset the router with initialise (Administration - Restore/Save/Upload Setting).
3) Do a minimal setup of the router and see if the problem is still present.
4) Restore your previous settings and test again.

But again, an important part of any testing is to disconnect all clients from the router other than the one you're testing from.

Of course none of this will matter if the problem is actually with your cable modem or your ISP's network.

 

[road hazard]

A standard procedure for situations like this is as follows:

1) Save your current settings (Administration - Restore/Save/Upload Setting).
2) Factory reset the router with initialise (Administration - Restore/Save/Upload Setting).
3) Do a minimal setup of the router and see if the problem is still present.
4) Restore your previous settings and test again.

But again, an important part of any testing is to disconnect all clients from the router other than the one you're testing from.

Of course none of this will matter if the problem is actually with your cable modem or your ISP's network.

I might be able to skip some of those steps as I think I narrowed down the problem to 1 (or more?) wireless devices;

Apple TV 4 in bedroom (wireless)
Apple TV 4 in living room (hard wired)
iPhone 8Plus
NVidia Shield TV (2019)* (wireless)

Previsouly, when the spike would happen, one of my iPhones showed up in the router logs (an iPhone 7Plus). I have since disabled wifi on that phone yet the problem continued. Next up (and the reason for the asterisk) was the Shield TV. I tried unplugging it before and it didn't make a difference but I unplugged it again along with two other Apple TVs and the new iPhone 8Plus and AMAZINGLY, I was able to do a ping test for a solid hour and never saw the spike!!!

The reason I started down this path was because of something I saw in the System->Wireless log: (ignore the Fire TV stick....left that in for reference)

Device            Associated Authorized    RSSI     PHY    PSM    SGI    STBC    Tx rate    Rx rate    Connect Time
Shield TV        Yes        Yes        -49dBm     ac      No      Yes     Yes       866.7M    702M     00:04:56
Apple TV Bedroom    Yes       Yes        -50dBm    ac    No    Yes    No    866.7M  526.5M    00:05:14
Fire Stick        Yes        Yes        -49dBm    ac    Yes    Yes    Yes    866.7M    6M    02:44:46
Roku            Yes       Yes        -51dBm  n       No    Yes    Yes     117M    130M    09:17:20

Sorry for the bad formatting but I saw that some of the devices were connecting at the theoretical max speed of 802.11ac. (Who knows....maybe this is just the router saying...."hey, I'm connected at the max speed for some of your 802.11ac devices....") Maybe this doesn't mean that these devices are Tx at 866.7Mbps every 15 minutes but it got me wondering. So I disconnected the 2nd iPhone, the Shield TV and both Apple TVs and no more every 15 minute spike.

Now, I plugged back in the Shield and both Apple TVs and am getting the 15 minute spike again so right now, it's down to one of those Apple TVs I think. (Since powering off the Shield a while back in another experiment didn't fix things, I really don't think its causing the issue.)

But this leads me to question.... maybe my router can't handle all those 802.11ac connections? Because I'm down to one of those Apple TVs being the culprit. Whenever I find which one, I'll leave it ON and power the other one off and see what happens but I think I'm really close to being able to finally put this issue behind me.

 

[road hazard]

Looks like I can finally put this issue to rest, it was a 2 part combo. As crazy as it sounds, it came down to the Shield TV and the Apple TV in the family room.

Shield TV powered up (wireless) and the family room Apple TV (wired)=internet crushing spikes every 15 minutes

Shield TV powered off and family room Apple TV (wired)=internet crushing spikes every 15 minutes

Shield TV powered off and family room Apple TV on wireless=perfect internet

So at this point you might think..... well power the Shield back up because it looks like the Apple TV being hard wired was the problem? Well....... when I did that:

Shied TV powered up (wireless) and family room Apple TV on wireless=........internet crushing spikes every 15 minutes

How does that make ANY sense?

Long story short, the Shield is in my upstairs bedroom by another Apple TV. I'm going to maybe move the Shield into the family room (and hard wire it) and replace the Apple TV down there with it.

 

[cooloutac]

I got a similar issue with vizio cast tv. It absolutely floods my logs when its off. and I mean floods it. Every fkn second. it can't be good and I wonder if its what's eating away at my router memory. It seems to be way way worse now that I just got an ac86u, then it was on my ac66u. What I just tried to do was shut off the smartcast in the tv. I have an LG tv that doesn't have this issue, but my LG is using ethernet and has more options to toggle. like literally shutting off smartcast, remote wake, making tv totally turn off and not standby etc.. The wireless Vizio has only one option which is to turn off "viewing data" whatever that is. gonna see if it makes a difference.

Turning off airtime fairness, beaming, toggling igmp snooping, hiding unhiding ssid, mac filtering. band channel frequencies, nothing made a difference. I'm also thinking about putting the vizio on an isolated network because its so creepy. The thing has excellent connection so I know that is not that issue. a factory reset didn't help, and it only happens when the tv is "off".

 

[cooloutac]

turning off 'viewing data' in the vizio tv didn't help. but turning off eco mode did the trick1 holy cow i was losing my mind. i guess when the tv is in eco mode or some low power state the wifi keeps trying to reconnect or some bug. but now it is essentially always connected. still wish there was a way to totally turn the fkn thing off, but this is the world in 2020 lol. essentially, my lg with smartcast enabled does the same thing but it is on ethernet. so i'm thinking he vizio had some bug where when in eco mode power to the wifi chip was not working correctly. or who knows. but now i can sleep again. it was literally destroying my logs i thought it was attacking the router lol. unreal...

 

[W1F1]

Could this be as simple as needing to reboot the cable modem? I didn't see that suggestion in there but it's the crown jewel in fixes for most cable ISPs.


Sorry, I missed there was a 2nd page to this thread. Glad to see it was resolved. That said, I also miss the days of dumb TVs. I much rather have a dumb TV and a streaming box if I have the choice.