WAN Drops

[02m]

Hi,

for quite some time, over a year now, I keep noticing WAN drops on my RT-N66U. I have been upgrading to the latest Merlin F/W and now I am running on 378.54_2. It happened today as well. LAN is fine. I can ssh to the router or other LAN machines, but WAN is inaccessible.

My WAN connection is DHCP. And when WAN disappears Router GUI is still reporting that WAN connection is fine. I would like to get some pointers on how to debug this issue.

I have asked for help once on the IRC channel and got a suggestion to check /tmp/syslog.log file. When WAN dropped today I took a look at the file and there was no log entries corresponding to the WAN drop.

Could anyone give me some advice for actions to do on the next WAN drop?

 

[Sujay Sarma]

Is the WAN drop at your router or is it at ISP level? Can you check (if you havent already) by connecting a computer (PC/Mac/whatever) without the router?

 

[02m]

Great advice. This issue is quite rare, so I have to use a different router for a week or two to see if the issue is no more.

 

[john9527]

Log into your modem and check the signal levels, error counts and modem log. You can do a search in this forum or over in dslreports to get info on interpreting the data.

 

[L&LD]

Alternately, you could also power down your network, including the modem and leave it off for at least 10 minutes (half hour or more is better) and see if this simple resync to the ISP is all it needs.

After the power is off on all network equipment, plug in the AC to the modem (wait 5 minutes), plug in the AC power to the router (wait 5 minutes), plug in any switches (if any) and then turn on each client.

This has fixed many glitches in networks over the years.

 

[DaveMishSr]

Alternately, you could also power down your network, including the modem and leave it off for at least 10 minutes (half hour or more is better) and see if this simple resync to the ISP is all it needs.

After the power is off on all network equipment, plug in the AC to the modem (wait 5 minutes), plug in the AC power to the router (wait 5 minutes), plug in any switches (if any) and then turn on each client.

This has fixed many glitches in networks over the years.

Great advice. Remember to disconnect the coaxial cable from cable modems also when powering down. I leave everything disconnected for at least 20-30 minutes and then bring everything back up in the following order:

Modem (wait for it to fully reboot & proceed)
Router (same deal as above)
Clients

Good luck!

 

[DaveMishSr]

Is the WAN drop at your router or is it at ISP level? Can you check (if you havent already) by connecting a computer (PC/Mac/whatever) without the router?

He means to connect a computer directly to the modem with no router at all. Just a single computer with an Ethernet connection to your modem (or USB I guess, but not sure).

Great advice. This issue is quite rare, so I have to use a different router for a week or two to see if the issue is no more.

No I think you misunderstood. Do not replace the router, eliminate it. One computer, one connection, no router.