XR700 Dropped Packets

[twalls]

Hello,

Just replaced an XR500 with an XR700 this afternoon. I shared some thoughts and concerns in the "XR700 Thoughts and Questions" thread. However, I'm having a frustrating issue that might warrant a separate thread for it.

I have been working remotely today using Remote Desktop on Windows to connect to my work machine. It was working fine on the XR500. I use a wired connection. I installed the XR700, messed around with new settings, tried some stuff, did a factory reset, and went back to work.

I'm now finding myself periodically being disconnected. As a test, I started continuous pings to several domains (including work) and the router IP itself. Whenever the RDP session would cut off, I'd see that one or two packets were getting dropped during the ping sessions at the same time for all domains. The router ping never lost a connection.

Here's the messages I would see:

- Reply from 192.168.1.1: Destination net unreachable.
- Request timed out.

The failure rate is somewhat low, but it has really gotten on my nerves for remoting to work. It does not tolerate dropped packets at all. But yeah, think 8 packets dropped out of 4,800. Not a lot, but enough to cause things to disconnect and reconnect.

Here's where it gets rather weird. My roommate tried from his machine. He is connected via guest Wi-Fi, and I had him ping the same domains (he can't ping the router from the guest network though). He's not seeing any disconnects at the same time I'm seeing them.

My next steps are to install the firmware from a fresh download from the Netgear site, followed by a factory reset. I know that lots of things could cause this, but this situation seems pretty cut and dry. Everything worked fine for the first half of the day, the router was swapped out, and now I've had problems for the rest of the day.

Any other troubleshooting steps that anyone can think of?

Thanks,

Travis

Edit: Scratch that. Roommate is seeing dropped packets as well. Just didn't wait long enough I guess. 😞

Edited October 25, 2018 by twalls

[twalls]

Adding a new finding to this:

I checked the statistics before doing another reset and noticed that the WAN is only showing up for 13 minutes. I looked at some other stuff and came back, and it said it was only up for a few seconds. Now, I'm trying to watch and see if the dropped packets lines up with the WAN interface going down.

The modem should be fine, seeing as it worked peachy with the XR500 hours before, but I did swap for the new Ethernet cable included with the XR700. I could try swapping the cable back. Seems like either that or something going on with the WAN port on the XR700?

Edit: Okay, the dropped packets definitely coincide with the WAN port going down and coming back up.

Swapping network cable didn't help. Flashing firmware from download didn't help. Factory reset didn't help. WAN interface goes down every 20 minutes or so.

Any chance of this being solvable through a firmware update? I'm willing to try beta firmwares, etc. to see if this can be fixed.

Otherwise, I'm looking at returning both an XR500 and an XR700 for being defective in different ways. This is very frustrating.

Edited October 25, 2018 by twalls

[crunkjuice1]

I know I'm going to earn the black sheep label here but I keep saying it's an netgear issue. They been having this problem for years now. Over on the netgear community forum not even a tumble weed in sight on the hype train for the xr700 being released in the wild. 

Good luck I hope they do figure it out but I have a feeling this is the calm before the storm of issues related to the xr700. 

[Guest Killhippie]

My XR500 is doing fine tbh. Annoyed that the speedtest is not working though. Apart from that and a few bugs ive reported and lack of Hybrid VPN which really gets under my skin a little its working fine, saying that its based off a R7800 which is a great router.

On 10/26/2018 at 12:09 AM, twalls said:

Adding a new finding to this:

I checked the statistics before doing another reset and noticed that the WAN is only showing up for 13 minutes. I looked at some other stuff and came back, and it said it was only up for a few seconds. Now, I'm trying to watch and see if the dropped packets lines up with the WAN interface going down.

The modem should be fine, seeing as it worked peachy with the XR500 hours before, but I did swap for the new Ethernet cable included with the XR700. I could try swapping the cable back. Seems like either that or something going on with the WAN port on the XR700?

Edit: Okay, the dropped packets definitely coincide with the WAN port going down and coming back up.

Have you set time out to 0 and always on to 'always on' tbh Never buy the first revision of anything, and with routers wait 6-months for price drops and more stable firmware. <cough> Netgear have dropped the ball on the Ookla speedtest API I think. Also to those buying in the UK the XR700 is not released according to the netgear website yet, so these must be grey imports I would imagine. November must be official release maybe?

On 10/26/2018 at 4:55 AM, crunkjuice1 said:

I know I'm going to earn the black sheep label here but I keep saying it's an netgear issue. They been having this problem for years now. Over on the netgear community forum not even a tumble weed in sight on the hype train for the xr700 being released in the wild. 

Good luck I hope they do figure it out but I have a feeling this is the calm before the storm of issues related to the xr700. 

R9000 still has issues and that's  basically a XR700 without DumaOS. There is a Qualcomm issue with connections though which is causing intermittent dropping of wifi on the R7800. The XR700 uses Qualcomm QCA9984 wifi chips for 2.4 and 5Ghz and a QCA9500 for the mostly unused redundant 802.11ad spectrum, and a Qualcomm QCA8337N switch. So it may need a few updates. This router came out last year so you would think it would have had more bug fixes. Loads of complaints from R9000 owners unfortunately, and that's after 12 firmware updates!

[crunkjuice1]

My X8 never got it right either. Look at how long that one has been out. 

[xr500user]

You never really said what ISP you're using?

Things I'd try..

First.. disable 60ghz radio if enabled, no need for it.. unless you use it.. I'm doubting that you do, so that may add to issues crashing the chip

If Fios type, reset the NID, reset the modem if doing a double nat (not preferred), after everything is booted up, then turn on the XR700.. note if you power cycle the NID your IP may change

If cable type .. reset the cable modem,  turn on XR700 after modem booted

Check if MAC may not be registered with ISP, try changing it to the XR500's MAC and see if it still occurs.

If it's occurring on the dot like clockwork could be a MAC registration script on the ISP -- could give them a call to add it to their network as authorized or it may auto authorized after a while being on the network.

[twalls]

I downgraded the firmware to the last version (yeah, I lose the Hybrid VPN lol sigh...), which is really the only other version that exists, and did another factory reset. XR700 has been up for over an hour with no WAN disconnects.

Edit: Forgot one other observation. The log was getting spammed pretty bad on the latest version. I forget the exact wording, but it was something about bad metadata for DumaOS. It filled the log for page after the page, with only a little bit of other activity in bursts in between. After the downgrade, none or far fewer of those messages appear. Probably not related, but thought it was interesting to note.

9 hours ago, Killhippie said:

My XR500 is doing fine tbh. Annoyed that the speedtest is not working though. Apart from that and a few bugs ive reported and lack of Hybrid VPN which really gets under my skin a little its working fine, saying that its based off a R7800 which is a great router.

My XR500 was fine for the most part, especially if I left all of the QoS and Geo-Filter settings alone. Otherwise, I had random times where the Wi-Fi or all connections would cut off until a router reboot.

9 hours ago, Killhippie said:

Have you set time out to 0 and always on to 'always on' tbh Never buy the first revision of anything, and with routers wait 6-months for price drops and more stable firmware. <cough> Netgear have dropped the ball on the Ookla speedtest API I think. Also to those buying in the UK the XR700 is not released according to the netgear website yet, so these must be grey imports I would imagine. November must be official release maybe?

What timeout and always on settings are you referring to?

I know... I usually don't get a router until it has been out for a bit. I was hoping that because this basically seems like an X10 R9000 that has been re-badged for gaming that it wouldn't be as bad. I've also had good routers where one bad update ruins it, and another update later on patches things back up. Feels like no real rhyme or reason sometimes.

Yeah, I have to say this has been a weird product launch. Netgear's product page still said "pre-order" last time I checked. However, it feels weird to think Amazon and Newegg would be doing shady deals to release a product early. I'm not talking about a random shop selling through Amazon either, I'm saying sold directly by Amazon themselves.

6 hours ago, xr500user said:

You never really said what ISP you're using?

Things I'd try..

First.. disable 60ghz radio if enabled, no need for it.. unless you use it.. I'm doubting that you do, so that may add to issues crashing the chip

If Fios type, reset the NID, reset the modem if doing a double nat (not preferred), after everything is booted up, then turn on the XR700.. note if you power cycle the NID your IP may change

If cable type .. reset the cable modem,  turn on XR700 after modem booted

Check if MAC may not be registered with ISP, try changing it to the XR500's MAC and see if it still occurs.

If it's occurring on the dot like clockwork could be a MAC registration script on the ISP -- could give them a call to add it to their network as authorized or it may auto authorized after a while being on the network.

I'm using Charter Spectrum 400/20 (which is cable). I appreciate the suggestions. So far, a firmware downgrade is proving helpful. I'll keep these other ideas in mind if the problem returns. Thanks so much!

Edited October 26, 2018 by twalls

[FQs19]

1 hour ago, twalls said:

I downgraded the firmware to the last version (yeah, I lose the Hybrid VPN lol sigh...), which is really the only other version that exists, and did another factory reset. XR700 has been up for over an hour with no WAN disconnects.

Edit: Forgot one other observation. The log was getting spammed pretty bad on the latest version. I forget the exact wording, but it was something about bad metadata for DumaOS. It filled the log for page after the page, with only a little bit of other activity in bursts in between. After the downgrade, none or far fewer of those messages appear. Probably not related, but thought it was interesting to note.

My logs were getting spammed with those messages too. I believe my router was getting flooded so hard, it killed my connections. 

Which firmware did you go back to? 1.0.0.20?

[twalls]

2 minutes ago, FQs19 said:

My logs were getting spammed with those messages too. I believe my router was getting flooded so hard, it killed my connections. 

Which firmware did you go back to? 1.0.0.20?

Yeah, not many options, so went back to 1.0.0.20 and disabled auto-updating.

[FQs19]

I'm going to update the firmware on my replacement when I get it. I'll be sure to let you know if i'm seeing the same packet loss as well. 

If I do see the packet loss, i'll down-flash to the original firmware and see if the packet loss stops like you've seen. 

[Netduma Fraser]

Not sure why this is firmware specific, we certainly haven't changed anything that could have caused that. FQs did you mention that in your support case?

twalls I would highly recommend calling the Netgear support line, as its a very new router you should get help very fast or the issue escalated higher up

[FQs19]

2 hours ago, Netduma Fraser said:

Not sure why this is firmware specific, we certainly haven't changed anything that could have caused that. FQs did you mention that in your support case?

twalls I would highly recommend calling the Netgear support line, as its a very new router you should get help very fast or the issue escalated higher up

I never noticed packet loss with my first XR700. I just lost total connection, both lan and wifi. 

The dashboard was a little slow until I did a factory reset. 

[FQs19]

23 hours ago, twalls said:

Yeah, not many options, so went back to 1.0.0.20 and disabled auto-updating.

Got my replacement. No packet loss or weird issues with 1.0.1.2 firmware and a factory reset after. 

[Netduma Admin]

That's good news. Is the heat ok now too?

[FQs19]

Just now, Netduma Admin said:

That's good news. Is the heat ok now too?

Yes. Though I would like to know when the internal fan should turn on. I'm waiting to hear back from Netgear about that. And hopefully, you'll add that feature soon. I posted about it in Features and Requests. 

[twalls]

Glad to hear your replacement is working well, FQs19. I'm still running fine with the downgraded firmware. Going to leave it at that for now, and I'll try upgrading when a future update comes out. I'm looking forward to the new milestone's features. 😃

[Netduma Admin]

8 hours ago, FQs19 said:

Yes. Though I would like to know when the internal fan should turn on. I'm waiting to hear back from Netgear about that. And hopefully, you'll add that feature soon. I posted about it in Features and Requests. 

I'm not sure on the answer myself. I would assume when the CPU usage is high would be the most likely point, but I'm guessing.

[Guest Killhippie]

9 hours ago, twalls said:

Glad to hear your replacement is working well, FQs19. I'm still running fine with the downgraded firmware. Going to leave it at that for now, and I'll try upgrading when a future update comes out. I'm looking forward to the new milestone's features. 😃

Good luck with the milestones, after the initial flurry of bug fixes Netegar only put out 4 updates a year. Also they are going to have to release aa AX version of this router for the 2019 market, and I bet that's based on the AX12, which has a 2.2Ghz quad core CPU and at least has the latest hardware unlike the XR500 and XR700 which are basically 2016 routers in new shells.

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/netgear-nighthawk-ax12-router-outed-by-qatar-isp.49386/

[FQs19]

Ran Pingplotter for 24hrs to Twitter.com, results aren't good. Was trying to stream Tivo to my cellphone, signal dropped every couple minutes. 

I'm seeing packet loss at the XR700 as well @twalls. This is with the latest firmware, 1.0.1.2.

I'm going to reboot everything, check my cables, run another test. If the results are still the same, i'll down-flash to the original firmware and see if it improves. 

 

 

[Zennon]

Is 10.0.0.01 your modem? the PL looks like it is starting from there, definitely change out the Ethernet there or even RJ11 to your wall socket.

[FQs19]

9 minutes ago, Zennon said:

Is 10.0.0.01 your modem? the PL looks like it is starting from there, definitely change out the Ethernet there or even RJ11 to your wall socket.

10.0.0.1 is my XR700, 192.168.1.1 is my Verizon Fios Gateway. The XR700 is DMZ'd in the Fios Gateway. 

I'll switch out the ethernet that connects them and try again. 

[FQs19]

21 minutes ago, Zennon said:

Is 10.0.0.01 your modem? the PL looks like it is starting from there, definitely change out the Ethernet there or even RJ11 to your wall socket.

Only 5 mins. in and already have packet loss with new ethernet cable. 

[Netduma Fraser]

Switch to the previous firmware and see if it continues

[FQs19]

1 minute ago, Netduma Fraser said:

Switch to the previous firmware and see if it continues

Okay Fraser. I'll down-flash today and run another ping plotter.

This is was I ended up with after switching ethernet cables:

In the log you can see the router disconnect along with 'error parsing line in ARP table'.

[Netduma Fraser]

Okay thanks for the info, hopefully a downgrade resolves it for now