topic Re: Occasionally lose the internet but there's no indication of a problem. Have to reboot. NR5103EV2 in Broadband

Occasionally lose the internet but there's no indication of a problem. Have to reboot. NR5103EV2

Psmithson — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 11:23:11 GMT

Hi,
I've had this NR5103EV2 router for a month or so. Recently it has developed a new fault. All connected devices lose access to the internet. They have the WiFi connection but no internet. All the indicator lights on the router are good and if I log into the router it says it has a good signal. My Smarty phone is working fine on 5G during this problem.

I have to re-boot the router and then it works fine.

Not sure what I can do about this. I'm considering buying another router but they are expensive.

Re: Occasionally lose the internet but there's no indication of a problem. Have to reboot. NR5103EV2

Simon1402 — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 04:04:53 GMT

Exactly the same thing here. I was considering reporting the hub as faulty but it sounds as though I would get the same issue with a replacement. @JonathanB, any help?

N. B. Signal is fine and wired connections are affected same as wireless so it's definitely a device/configuration issue.

Re: Occasionally lose the internet but there's no indication of a problem. Have to reboot. NR5103EV2

Spud — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 08:35:27 GMT

But do you have to reboot? The v1 I have has an option to turn off WiFi. I have it set to got off an 23:30 then come on at 05:00. Try setting a scheduled WiFi shutdown for a few minutes at a convenient time to see if the WiFi resets nicely.

Re: Occasionally lose the internet but there's no indication of a problem. Have to reboot. NR5103EV2

Simon1402 — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 09:51:25 GMT

This problem affects wired as well as wireless connections.

Not signal in + not Wi-Fi out = hub hardware, firmware or configuration.

Re: Occasionally lose the internet but there's no indication of a problem. Have to reboot. NR5103EV2

Gricharduk — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 10:18:39 GMT

Have you tried increasing the DHCP Server Lease Time in the router network admin page? Try setting it to a much longer time, say 31 days. Reboot the router after you have made this change. Some DHCP renewal requests can cause this behaviour on version 1 of the NR5103E router (the version I have).

Re: Occasionally lose the internet but there's no indication of a problem. Have to reboot. NR5103EV2

Psmithson — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 10:39:25 GMT

It's worth a try but the thing that prompted my post this time was - I rebooted at about 9am as otherwise my VPN for work is slow. Then, during my 10am zoom call, I lost the internet in the way described. I've set it to 31 days anyway - can't do any harm!

Re: Occasionally lose the internet but there's no indication of a problem. Have to reboot. NR5103EV2

Psmithson — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 10:45:00 GMT

Yesterday was really bad for this issue as it happened another two times. I rebooted on one of those extra times but on the third one, I left it a bit longer because my wife was watching Netflix on the TV while this was happening. Very strange - that device managed to keep a connection but my laptop and a bunch of Alexa dots and smart plugs had issues. It eventually managed to recover after about 5 mins so I didn't have to reboot.

I had a look at other routers. There's quite a few on Amazon but not one of them has a USB connection for me to put me hard drive in. I found a Nokia one on ebay which not only had the USB connection but had 4 ethernet connections which is nice. It was cheap as it's second hand. I think the only way to get one is via an ISP so people sometimes sell them if they don't want them. No doubt it will be a different set of problems but I'll see! I can always sell it again if it's worse.

Re: Occasionally lose the internet but there's no indication of a problem. Have to reboot. NR5103EV2

Psmithson — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 10:48:12 GMT

I see someone tells us this impacts wired connections too - not something I have tested. The thing is, I had just done a re-boot one hour before this failure so I don't think resetting everything regularly would help. I have considered a time switch on the plug to get over VPN problems - I have to re-boot it every morning or the VPN is slow. This is a really poor router! It happened 3 times yesterday. I wonder if it happens even more and I don't happen to notice as I'm not using the internet at the time.

Re: Occasionally lose the internet but there's no indication of a problem. Have to reboot. NR5103EV2

georges — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 16:51:47 GMT

I had the same issue where multiple times per day I would lose internet connection. Everything else seemed fine (eg. 4G, 5G, wifi connection, ethernet connection), but no devices would have access to the internet. It would never automatically reconnect and I had to restart the router.

Saw a possible fix on another thread (can't find the specific one now) and seems to work for me. It's been two weeks and my connection has been mostly stable, except for some dns issues I'm having today, but I think that's unrelated.

Possible fix is to manually set the cellular bands. Might be that this avoids the router switching to another tower? This is not an area I know much about, so not sure why it works, but it did for me.

When on auto mine lists these on the Cellular Info page: B3, B1, n78, n78 (don't know why n78 is listed twice).

To change:

go to Network Settings -> Broadband -> Cellular Band
disable "Band Auto Selection"
manually select bands. n78 for 5g and one or more other bands. I chose B3.
restart router

Hope this works for someone else as well.

Re: Occasionally lose the internet but there's no indication of a problem. Have to reboot. NR5103EV2

Spud — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 17:04:17 GMT

The listed bands show your Carrier Aggregation - it improves your speed. I have the same bands from "auto" (B1, B3, N78, N78) but if I set the bands to "manual" e.g. B1, B3, N78, it only seems to connect once to N78 (I then see B1, B3, N78). If you get a reasonably strong signal your household won't notice a drop in speed, a decent trade-off for stability.

Re: Occasionally lose the internet but there's no indication of a problem. Have to reboot. NR5103EV2

Psmithson — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 21:47:31 GMT

I'll give it a go. It's been fine for two days now so hard to tell if a fix works. I'll see in a few weeks!

Re: Occasionally lose the internet but there's no indication of a problem. Have to reboot. NR5103EV2

Psmithson — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 10:50:41 GMT

Amazing - I followed suggestions to set the band and the DHCP timeout and rebooted. One hour later, just as my zoom meeting started, I lost the connection! Had to use my phone for the 20 min zoom meeting. Sometime during that meeting, the router sorted itself out.

Re: Occasionally lose the internet but there's no indication of a problem. Have to reboot. NR5103EV2

Spud — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 12:57:59 GMT

Router lights may show connected to the Internet but I wonder if it really is? Can you ping sites, or at least the DNS server from maintenance->diagnostics?

Setting the Cellular Band to 4G then back to 5G/4G may be enough to reconnect rather than a reboot.

Re: Occasionally lose the internet but there's no indication of a problem. Have to reboot. NR5103EV2

Psmithson — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 08:52:52 GMT

Last night, I heard my wife having trouble with Alexa at 2.30am (she's not sleeping well!) so I looked at the router and it said there was a problem with the SIM. I rebooted and that error went away. This morning, it's now doing the original trick of claiming there's a signal but not sharing it with any connected devices. I'm sure this router is a duffer. I dare not contact customer services after hearing how they reduce the speed down to fix problems and then deny it! Or I could try unplugging my USB hard drive - perhaps that's bothering it somehow.

Re: Occasionally lose the internet but there's no indication of a problem. Have to reboot. NR5103EV2

Psmithson — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 09:07:37 GMT

I'll try that next time that it's convenient. Often I just need to get the thing working and don't have time to investigate

Re: Occasionally lose the internet but there's no indication of a problem. Have to reboot. NR5103EV2

Psmithson — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 16:22:31 GMT

I bought an oldish Nokia Fastmile 5G router from ebay (the older one has a USB port but it turns out it's next to useless).

Plus points: The kindles can connect to it without issue (had to use a guest network for the Three router). It seems a little quicker - not surprising since the thing weighs 2.1kg (600g for Three router) and uses more than twice the power. 4 ethernet ports.
Minus points: no file sharing on the USB port. Higher power consumption. Locked down UI (these Fastmiles are from some other network operator so some settings are greyed out).

It still has the odd VPN issue I have. I must re-boot the router to get a decent speed. After a while it slows right down. Both routers do that so must be some strange network issue.

So mainly downsides really. I'm hoping that it will be reliable in which case it will be worth the downsides.