ntp update never succeeds

[Cycle Mycle]

I have an RT-N66U and found it won't stay alive for longer than about 6 weeks. I thought scheduled reboot would sort it but sometimes following the reboot there is no internet access.

I don't know about firmware from Asus, but I've used Merlin's and John9527's and they both show the same problem: syslog is full of the message "ntp: start NTP update". All the versions up to and including Merlin's 380.58 and John9627's 374.43_2-17BAj9527, i.e. pretty recent, behave in this way.

Has anyone else seen this and know of a workaround? I can post the logs of a good and bad boot if it would help.

 

[mstombs]

John's fork at least has a tick box in web gui to "log NTP updates", default is updates every hour.

 

[Zirescu]

Could try using a different ntp server.

 

[Cycle Mycle]

Thanks all for the replies.

More logging of ntp is a good idea. I'm running 380.58 at the mo' but I'll load up John's f/w and give it a go.

The message seems to appear in groups of three with two spaced at intervals of 2 or 3 seconds then the third about 30 seconds later. It doesn't report any kind of error. The reboot is scheduled for 0400 and when it fails it stays failed like this until I cycle the power (or reboot from the GUI) .

I hadn't thought of trying a different ntp server but because it recovers as soon as I reboot it makes me think it's not the server at fault.

 

[Cycle Mycle]

I think I've found a solution for this: the fact that it only happens on reboot set me thinking and since setting DNS1 to the fastest available DNS server and DNS2 to my ISP's fastest DNS server the problem has not recurred.

Have a look at http://www.snbforums.com/threads/di...ovisioning-of-dns-services.36087/#post-294118 for more discussion about whether or not to use DNS servers other than those provided by your ISP. Searching "DNS performance" brings up several useful resources for tinkering.