RT-N66R WiFi dropping

[mattbooty]

I've had the N66R for a few years now with little problem. I'm on the newest stock firmware. I have around 20-30 devices connected to it (some wifi, some ethernet), most of which are only used intermittently like consoles, streaming boxes, tablets, etc.

Last night I had a few friends over and we were doing a fantasy football draft online with 3 laptops. Every 10-15 minutes, the wifi would drop for about 10 seconds (this happened simultaneously on all 3 laptops so it was clearly the router doing it).

Is this normal for this router? I would think it could handle the 3 laptops (nothing else was actively in use) using minimal bandwidth at the time. Is there a setting that could resolve this? Is it just time for a new router?

Thanks

 

[RMarkwald]

You should log into the router itself and view the System Log. If you know the time frame it happened, look to see what the router reported as to what was happening. Not sure if it'll go that far back for you today, but if you could try to re-create the problem and monitor the System Log, that would help troubleshoot.

 

[mattbooty]

I did look at that before, unfortunately there isn't much information in there that I can make any sense of. It does still go back that far, but all I see are DHCP notices for the wireless clients every 15 minutes or so (basically a new DHCP request every time the wifi restarted).

The only other items i see in the log over the time are:

• a line that its ignoring a domain name for DHCP host (this was one of the laptops which is domain joined from work)
• kernel: eth1: received packet with own address as source address... not sure what is happening here, but its on the ethernet connection, not the wifi (that message is still popping up periodically).
• There are also a few messages that say kernel: br0: neighber 7000.00:<MAC address> lost on port 1(vlan1) followed by kernel: br0: topology change detected, propagating

 

[mattbooty]

Something that seems odd also... in the DHCP settings the lease time is 86400 (so 24 hours), but i'm showing DHCP messages for clients in that log every hour

Sep 3 21:55:00 dnsmasq-dhcp[337]: DHCPDISCOVER(br0) <MAC>
Sep 3 21:55:00 dnsmasq-dhcp[337]: DHCPOFFER(br0) <IP> <MAC>
Sep 3 21:55:00 dnsmasq-dhcp[337]: DHCPREQUEST(br0) <IP> <MAC>
Sep 3 21:55:00 dnsmasq-dhcp[337]: DHCPACK(br0) <IP> <MAC>

Is that normal? I wouldn't expect to see those so often when leases are set to 24 hours.

Thank you again for your help!

 

[binarydad]

Have you tried a full factory reset? Is the device extremely hot? Are you using the N66R just as an AP or as a router?

 

[mattbooty]

Have you tried a full factory reset? Is the device extremely hot? Are you using the N66R just as an AP or as a router?

It is used as a full router. It does not seem to be overly hot. I have not tried a factory reset, other than that one time i haven't noticed any issues similar, but it was the only time we had three laptops connected at once (as i said, lots of other devices connected all the time but i'm not sure how often more than one device is pulling any type of high bandwidth).

 

[binarydad]

It is used as a full router. It does not seem to be overly hot. I have not tried a factory reset, other than that one time i haven't noticed any issues similar, but it was the only time we had three laptops connected at once (as i said, lots of other devices connected all the time but i'm not sure how often more than one device is pulling any type of high bandwidth).

These routers should be fine even with high-bandwidth. I remember running a test of 5 or 6 1080p wireless streams at once and it was fine.

Try a reset first and start from there. What firmware version are you running?

 

[mattbooty]

These routers should be fine even with high-bandwidth. I remember running a test of 5 or 6 1080p wireless streams at once and it was fine.

Try a reset first and start from there. What firmware version are you running?

Not sure the version, but its the latest, i checked for updates very recently.

 

[binarydad]

Not sure the version, but its the latest, i checked for updates very recently.

I'll just reiterate here: latest doesn't mean greatest. Maybe try an older SDK5 build, such as Merlin's .374.35_SDK5?

 

[mattbooty]

I'll just reiterate here: latest doesn't mean greatest. Maybe try an older SDK5 build, such as Merlin's .374.35_SDK5?

True, if I have to factory reset anyways I might as well throw a third party firmware on it and see how it goes. I'll do some research and pick one to try when i have some extra time to reconfigure it.

Thanks!