Device disconnections and drop outs but speed is good so why?

[#1]

Thank you for your response, yes it may then be likely that the router has a fault. Let us know how you get on with the new one, and feel free to reach out if you require any further assistance in the meantime.

[#2]

Here's an update. I took everything back to factory settings and set up/connected the new Hub One router over the weekend, disabled its wireless connections and plugged in my mesh network as an access point. Then I reconnected devices one by one with correct labels.

So far it looks like a couple of devices have dropped out for a few seconds at a time but it's difficult to tell if I'm not on a video call - other uses can buffer or pause data download so I'm not completely sure. Today I'm back on my work laptop and there's nothing noticeable so far.

What has remained the same is the pattern of lots of different devices disconnecting every few minutes for no obvious reason, then apparently requesting a lease and connecting again. 

12:40:46, 01 Jun.	(245270.360000) Device disconnected: Hostname: WorkLaptopWiFi IP: 192.168.1.94 MAC: 18:cc:18:9b:bd:d3
12:40:46, 01 Jun.	(245270.350000) Device disconnected: Hostname: Kindle IP: 192.168.1.78 MAC: 94:3a:91:66:a0:32
12:38:46, 01 Jun.	(245150.360000) Device disconnected: Hostname: YaleAlarm IP: 192.168.1.68 MAC: 00:1d:94:06:46:52
12:35:51, 01 Jun.	(244975.360000) Device disconnected: Hostname: NintendoSwitch IP: 192.168.1.86 MAC: 94:58:cb:fa:d6:89
12:35:46, 01 Jun.	(244969.860000) Lease for IP 192.168.1.76 renewed by host StudyAlexa (MAC c8:6c:3d:4c:c0:fd). Lease duration: 1440 min
12:35:46, 01 Jun.	(244969.860000) Device connected: Hostname: StudyAlexa IP: 192.168.1.76 MAC: c8:6c:3d:4c:c0:fd Lease time: 1440 min. Link rate: 1000.0 Mbps
12:35:46, 01 Jun.	(244969.770000) Lease requested
12:33:41, 01 Jun.	(244845.360000) Device disconnected: Hostname: RingDoorbell-​e7 IP: 192.168.1.79 MAC: 34:3e:a4:26:6a:e7
12:32:46, 01 Jun.	(244789.610000) Lease for IP 192.168.1.76 renewed by host StudyAlexa (MAC c8:6c:3d:4c:c0:fd). Lease duration: 1440 min
12:32:46, 01 Jun.	(244789.610000) Device connected: Hostname: StudyAlexa IP: 192.168.1.76 MAC: c8:6c:3d:4c:c0:fd Lease time: 1440 min. Link rate: 1000.0 Mbps
12:32:45, 01 Jun.	(244789.520000) Lease requested
12:28:41, 01 Jun.	(244545.360000) Device disconnected: Hostname: RingDoorbell-​e7 IP: 192.168.1.79 MAC: 34:3e:a4:26:6a:e7

Also, I'm seeing lots of devices reporting these Block messages, which I didn't notice with the previous Hub One:

12:26:23, 01 Jun.	OUT: BLOCK [65] First packet is Invalid (Invalid tcp flags for current tcp state: TCP [192.168.1.66]:56821-​>[17.248.144.235]:443 on ppp3)
12:26:09, 01 Jun.	OUT: BLOCK [65] First packet is Invalid (Packet not in tcp window: TCP [192.168.1.81]:51171-​>[52.46.145.153]:443 on ppp3)

I'll see what happens next and update here - I'll know for certain if I get drop outs when I'm on video calls, of course. When connected, the speed is as good as before - over 70mbps. Any ideas what is causing the above and what to do about it? 

Thanks

James

[#3]

Hi @jamesharding, thanks for getting back to us and I'm sorry to hear the dropping connection issues look to be persisting.
Looking over your description of the drops throughout this thread and that the issue has been present for some time even before your mesh network, I beleive the issues you're seeing could very well be related to a known firmware issue that happens when the 5Ghz wireless frequency is used then it can cause intermittent drop outs across all devices (in some cases wired devices also).

The good news is our products team are aware of the issue and have been working on rolling out a firmware update for the issue that started from March. As it doesn't seem like your router has received the updates just yet then there are a few things that can be done ahead of time to help stop the drops. The first things being to split apart the paired by default 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz wirseless frequencies as we've been advised by several customer this looks to help. Disabling the 5Ghz completely is another step that can be done should the splitting not work.
Steps on how to do both can be seen here:
 

1) To connect to your Hub One, you will need to open a browser and go to 192.168.1.254 If you have any issues doing this via Wireless, we recommend trying to do it via Ethernet cable instead.
 

2) You should come to a page with information about your connection, click 'Advanced Settings' at the top and it will ask you to sign in with a Password. This is located on the back of your router under 'Admin Password'
 

3) Select the option for 'Wireless' followed by '5 GHz Wireless'.
 

4a) To split up the frequencies:
What we want to do to begin with is turn 'Sync with 2.4 GHz Wireless' to 'No' and update the SSID to be different. The easiest way would be to add '-5G' to the end so it is identified as its own connection.
 

4b) To disable the 5Ghz frequency:
On this page you'' need to turn 'Sync with 2.4 GHz Wireless' to 'No' followed by turning 'Wireless network enable' to 'No' also. If worked after pressing 'Apply' a wifi red light should appear on the router and the 2.4GHz standard wireless channel still showing available on your devices.

If you wish to request the firmware update ahead of the rollout then you can do so via this thread and a member of our products team should confirm when the update has been pushed to your router:
https://community.plus.net/t5/My-Router/Hub-One-5GHz-WiFi-issue/td-p/1696363/page/11

As it sounds like you've purchased a pretty impressive third party router however you could also look into purchasing a suitable modem for it (VDLS compatible) as our router can't be set up in bridge mode ( modem only mode).

I hope this helps and please let us know how it goes.

[#4]

Ben, thanks for this. 

Unfortunately I just had a drop-out for about 5 seconds during a video call - task manager was on and showed 0kbps received during that time. Fortunately it reconnected before kicking me out of the call completely. So yes, the problem is persisting.

I can split the frequencies as you suggest but they are both off so I don't see how that would help - my Hub One wireless is turned off completely because I'm using wired only to connect to the external line. I'm using the mesh network as an access point to connect to all devices via Wifi (plus a couple via ethernet). The mesh manages all the traffic, typically using a small percentage of its memory and processor capacity. The mesh hub is the only thing connected to the Hub One, and that's a wired connection.

I'm also not convinced by the idea of using my mesh network as a router and buying an additional modem to replace the Hub One. Surely the Hub One is operating as a modem alone because wireless is turned off.

The event log shows nothing during the time my connection dropped.

My work laptop is alongside my mesh node, which is linked to the mesh hub with a dedicated 5GHz channel, which is wired to the Hub One. It's definitely not a bandwidth problem and earlier today Task Manager showed I received over 50mbps at one point.

Also, my line was tested last year without problems, and the engineer replaced the socket in my house with a new one, so that's all good.

I'll request that firmware upgrade just in case that somehow helps.

I appreciate the effort you guys are making but I'm running out of ideas here, short of trying another ISP, which I'm not keen to do. Ultimately I can't have drop outs leaving me unable to reliably handle work calls.

Thanks

James

[#5]

Another drop out just now during a call. This time it was during 14.56 and followed these event log entries (.94 is my work laptop):

14:56:26, 01 Jun.	OUT: BLOCK [65] First packet is Invalid (Invalid tcp flags for current tcp state: TCP [192.168.1.94]:64138-​>[52.114.133.19]:443 on ppp3)
14:52:15, 01 Jun.	BLOCKED 3 more packets (because of First packet is Invalid)
14:52:14, 01 Jun.	OUT: BLOCK [65] First packet is Invalid (Invalid tcp flags for current tcp state: TCP [192.168.1.94]:52352-​>[142.250.178.14]:443 on ppp3)
14:52:14, 01 Jun.	BLOCKED 2 more packets (because of First packet is Invalid)
14:52:13, 01 Jun.	BLOCKED 3 more packets (because of First packet is Invalid)
14:52:12, 01 Jun.	BLOCKED 2 more packets (because of First packet is Invalid)
14:52:11, 01 Jun.	OUT: BLOCK [65] First packet is Invalid (Invalid tcp flags for current tcp state: TCP [192.168.1.94]:61074-​>[142.250.180.10]:443 on ppp3)
14:52:07, 01 Jun.	OUT: BLOCK [65] First packet is Invalid (Packet not in tcp window: TCP [192.168.1.94]:52593-​>[20.54.37.64]:443 on ppp3)
14:52:06, 01 Jun.	OUT: BLOCK [65] First packet is Invalid (Packet not in tcp window: TCP [192.168.1.94]:59777-​>[172.217.169.10]:443 on ppp3)
14:52:03, 01 Jun.	BLOCKED 1 more packets (because of First packet is Invalid)
14:52:02, 01 Jun.	OUT: BLOCK [65] First packet is Invalid (Invalid tcp flags for current tcp state: TCP [192.168.1.94]:50662-​>[52.108.56.22]:443 on ppp3)
14:52:01, 01 Jun.	OUT: BLOCK [65] First packet is Invalid (Packet not in tcp window: TCP [192.168.1.94]:62117-​>[195.20.225.164]:443 on ppp3)
14:51:59, 01 Jun.	BLOCKED 1 more packets (because of First packet is Invalid)
14:51:58, 01 Jun.	OUT: BLOCK [65] First packet is Invalid (Invalid tcp flags for current tcp state: TCP [192.168.1.94]:59250-​>[13.107.136.9]:443 on ppp3)
14:51:55, 01 Jun.	OUT: BLOCK [65] First packet is Invalid (Packet not in tcp window: TCP [192.168.1.94]:61316-​>[13.107.136.9]:443 on ppp3)
14:51:50, 01 Jun.	OUT: BLOCK [65] First packet is Invalid (Invalid tcp flags for current tcp state: TCP [192.168.1.94]:54866-​>[52.114.133.16]:443 on ppp3)
14:51:47, 01 Jun.	BLOCKED 1 more packets (because of First packet is Invalid)
14:51:46, 01 Jun.	BLOCKED 2 more packets (because of First packet is Invalid)
14:51:45, 01 Jun.	OUT: BLOCK [65] First packet is Invalid (Packet not in tcp window: TCP [192.168.1.94]:63530-​>[178.249.97.70]:443 on ppp3)
14:51:44, 01 Jun.	BLOCKED 1 more packets (because of First packet is Invalid)
14:51:43, 01 Jun.	BLOCKED 4 more packets (because of First packet is Invalid)
14:51:42, 01 Jun.	OUT: BLOCK [65] First packet is Invalid (Packet not in tcp window: TCP [192.168.1.94]:57674-​>[13.107.6.171]:443 on ppp3)
14:51:37, 01 Jun.	OUT: BLOCK [65] First packet is Invalid (Packet not in tcp window: TCP [192.168.1.94]:56657-​>[52.114.128.254]:443 on ppp3)

Again, I'm not sure if this is relevant or coincidence.

James

[#6]

Hi @jamespharding 

Surely the Hub One is operating as a modem alone because wireless is turned off. This is NOT the case.

A matter of interest the LAN cable between the Hub One and the Asus mesh router is it a fully wired (4pairs) 8 wires? A fully wired cable is required to fully support a 1Gb/s  connection. Cat5e or above.

Have you considered turning the DHCP server off on the Hub One and using the DHCP server on the Asus device? 

Dan.

[#7]

Thanks Dan - I didn’t realise that about the modem function.

The cable is a Cat 5e, yes.

I’ve looked through it and so far can’t find how to change the DHCP settings but I’ll give that a go when I do. Perhaps just turning that off on the Plusnet Hub will do the same thing. I did have the problem when using the Plusnet hub alone.

Thanks for the suggestion - I’ve pretty much run out of things to try.

James

[#8]

Hi,

A brief check of Asus ZenWifi XT8 setup guide, DHCP setup is found under >Advanced Settings >LAN

You needs to give the device a static IP in the 192.168.1.0/24 network, I's suggest 192.168.1.1

DHCP pool can be your choice but you could replicate the Hub One range 192.168.1.64 to 192.168.1.253.

The default gateway is 192.168.1.254 and your choice of DNS, google is 8.8.8.8

Once the Hub One DHCP is turned off it will be just be a gateway to the internet, if you have any port forwarding setup on the Hub One you will need to forward to the device IP Address and not the hostname.

Hope this helps

Dan.

[#9]

The events being reported in the log around the time that the user perceives an issue are firewall activity reports.  There is a lot going on in these boxes we refer to as a router.  I'm sure that the following is incomplete, but it helps to illustrate the point...

• xDSL modem
• DHCP server
• DNS server
• NAT service
• Firewall
• Network routing
• WiFi AP(s)
• FTP services (if a device is plugged into the USB port)

Switching off just the WiFi AP still leaves a lot of essential services running on the "router".  If one wished to totally eliminate potential issues with the Hub One ... it needs to be switched off and some other device used to provide the above services.

[#10]

Thanks Dan and Townman for the advice - I've been flat out today and unable to look at this, but it's no surprise that the drop outs have persisted regularly today. Your knowledge is way more techie than my skillset! But I'll give your tips a go, then consider the point re a replacement modem.

More news when I have it. 

Thanks again

James

[#11]

DUh oh. I was in the office all day yesterday so unable to test anything but today, sadly things have got worse. Multiple drop-outs with the same pattern - roughly 10-15 seconds at a time affecting some but not all devices. 

@Dan_the_Van I tried changing DHCP set up but there is no DHCP set up tab under >Advanced Settings >LAN in my mesh hub's GUI. My guess is it would have that available in router mode but not in access point mode.

@Townman it seems like there is a lot of router/firewall activity but as I'm getting 70+mbps most of the time, I think it should handle this without a noticeable drop, let alone 10-15 seconds at a time 3-4 times in 30 minutes as it was earlier today. It's also only affecting some devices - my wife's work laptop rarely or never drops out at all and she has as many video calls as I do.

A check of AbuseIP shows addresses from Roblox (the kids' games), Amazon (Kindle, Echos) and Google (laptop websites) so nothing untoward. 

It's been a persistent problem with two Hub Ones, various devices and whether the Hub One or my mesh devices is managing the device traffic.

Unfortunately I'm still stumped. 

[#12]

Hi @jamespharding 

It might be an idea to view the Event Viewer of your work pc .

Windows Key + r in the open box enter eventvwr. Open Event Viewer (Local)

In summary of Administrative Events, expand Warning and Information and see any network events have been logged. 

Hopefully there will be a clue of what's happening.

Dan

[#13]

Thanks again to all of you who have helped me to this point - @Dan_the_Van , @Townman , @Gandalf. Sadly I'm no further forward as yet.

I have investigated the Event Viewer, Dan, but I'm not sure what I'm looking for. See attached. I am seeing a few errors in Event Viewer, in particular Zscaler. Is anything in there relevant or could be the cause? Does the event log attached look wrong?

To help, here's a recap:

• I'm having regular internet connection drop-outs on my work laptop and have on previous work laptops. It's only a major problem during Zoom calls, where the connection drops and either leaves me unable to communicate for 10-20 seconds or kicks me out completely.
• I have a fast fibre connection and a high-end mesh set-up (and I did a factory reset on it recently to check it), and the bandwidth is excellent. My router/modem has 79mbps download/25mbps upload speed.
• Last year the line, sockets and so on were all good.  I tried a new router/modem (Hub One). Same problem.
• Lots of devices on my home wifi seem to disconnect regularly (ie with a few minutes between them), then request a new lease and reconnect. These don’t match the timing of my work laptop drop outs but the temporary outages seem to affect quite a few (but not all) devices.
• I do get blocked packets in my router’s Event Log which I think is the firewall doing its job – if a devices disconnects, it’s not surprise that I get errors saying: First packet is Invalid (Invalid tcp flags for current tcp state). They are regular and often but not enough overwhelm the connection or hardware.
• A check of AbuseIP shows addresses from Roblox (the kids' games), Amazon (Kindle, Echos) and Google (laptop websites) but nothing untoward.
• The problem was in place before I got the mesh network so that hasn’t changed anything. The mesh manages all the traffic, typically using a small percentage of its memory and processor capacity.

I think it's reaching the point where I'd have to ask Plusnet to log this as a fault and investigate further.

Thanks

James

[#14]

Hi @jamespharding 

Regarding the Windows Event View, a suggestion would be to view >Windows Logs >System. See if you can find any events at the time of the disconnect. In the Source column I see Netwtw10 for network events, might be the same on your laptop.

I have Ring devices and they regularly disconnect from the network, other posts on the forum have also reported this and this behaviour appears to be normal !?

Your issue could be devices switching between 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks or may even be a result of the wireless signal changing the channel they use.

So there may be some value in splitting the wireless network names and possible using a fixed channel, the recommendation is to use channels 1, 6 or 11 for 2.4GHz and a free 5GHz channels. Try downloading  a WiFi Analyser app, there are Windows 10 based ones if required.

Unless your broadband connection is dropping I am not sure what Plus Net can do other than advise.

This must be a frustrating time for you and I sympathies. If I was you I'd be looking to use a wired connection, but this might be something you can't achieve due to your house layout. 

Dan. 

[#15]

Hi @Dan_the_Van 

Thanks again for helping out. There's nothing in the Logs that ties up with the drop outs (I've been keeping a note when I see it happening so even if I miss some, I'd notice when it coincides). I get warning/errors after drop outs (eg timeouts) which makes sense if there was a drop out, of course.

Overnight I restarted the Hub One to try to apply the firmware update Bob pushed to me but I now notice he said to power it off and back on, so I haven't been able to do that yet. So far no change at this end - regular drop-outs during calls, which isn't a sustainable position for me/work.

On the lease/disconnection thing, all the devices are set up with the default period (1440 minutes) but the Ring doorbell, for instance, seems to disconnect every 5 mins on the dot. 

Today I've also had my remote log in to the Hub One blocked a couple of times. Again, I've no idea if any of this is relevant. The next thing I can try is using a very long ethernet cable to wire in the connection, but I'm not sure if it will be better because the speed is still excellent via wireless. Will keep trying things!

James