XR1000 - DHCP issues?

[fourspoons]

Hi guys hope you can help me, I'm really struggling getting a new XR1000 to work correctly. I updated to 1.0.0.64_1.0.49 before starting

My network is : modem (in bridge mode) -> XR1000 -> Switch -> Wifi through 3 TPlink APs and wired devices into the same switch. Overall I have about 60 devices connecting, 15 or so wired and the rest wifi.

It seems like a lot of the devices (both wired and wifi) are getting IP addresses issued from somewhere else, seemingly external IPs like 169.209.xxx.xxx and not internal IPs from the XR1000. Those devices don't get internet access and I can't see them on internal network at all. Then eventually after a period of anything from 10 minutes to 6 hours the XR1000 will disappear from the network entirely. Sometimes a power cycle will bring it back and sometimes a factory restore is the only way. Any ideas whats going on?

 

 

[Netduma Fraser]

Is the switch a dumb or managed switch? When the issue happens do you have access to the interface? If so is it getting a WAN IP on the System Information page?

[fourspoons]

It's a simple unmanaged switch. No, when it goes, I can't even ping the router, even if I manually assign my machine a 192.x.x.x address, it's like its disappeared from the network entirely even though the lights on the front don't change.

 

But right now, I can get to the router and everything looks fine in the interface and yet half the devices are getting weird IPs from somewhere and no internet or local network access.

 

[Netduma Fraser]

Did you do a factory reset after the update as that is recommended to eliminate issues carrying over from the previous version.

I think if that doesn't work then you would need to reserve IPs for some devices on the interface and some on the devices themselves and make sure the reservations are outside the DHCP range (so would suggest changing that to start at a higher value e.g. .100) then it should prevent that happening again. I do realize that's not ideal given the amount of devices you have.

[fourspoons]

Yes I did a factory reset after the update. I have done several is I've been going through troubleshooting as well.

I could manually assign IPs to a few of them, but most of the are light switches and home control devices where I don't even think that's an option on the device. I don't really understand how that would help? Surely the device can cope with DHCP requests from 50 devices? Is it the fact they are calling all at once?

When you say some - do you mean 5 or 50? Is there some kind of hard limit on DHCP connected devices?

[Netduma Fraser]

Reserving IPs on the interface id limited to around 17/18 I believe so the rest would have to be on the devices themselves. Of course if you can't do it on some devices those should be done on the router. The amount of devices isn't the issue, NG have an issue where DHCP renewals can cause some disconnects, it's not as prevalent on the XR1000 as much as the XR500 for example but I believe that is what you are experiencing. In that case setting IP reservations outside the DHCP range seems to resolve it.

[fourspoons]

I don't really see how this can be workable. We're not talking about like a few seconds internet dropout and then it springs back to life. It's completely just disappearing and not coming back without a reboot and its within minutes of booting up not like once a week or something. And even when it's working fine for the half the devices, the other half are getting bad IPs.

Even if I assigned fixed IPs for every device I own, what happens when I want to add a friend's phone or something? It's going to either not work or kill the router?

[Netduma Fraser]

Yeah that is all expected behavior when it happens, some peoples issues happen daily, sometimes a few times an hour but it all stems from that. 

Regarding a friends phone for example that's why you leave DHCP still enabled so new devices can get a connection to the router still, even if the issue happens the devices that have their IP set either on the router/on the device themselves should retain a connection which is what we've seen since the issue began.