5G hub (Greenpacket Y5-210MU) dropping wired connection after a few days every few minutes

[JohnR]

First, it seems I'm not alone: https://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/threads/drop-out-problems-with-new-three-outdoor-hub-y5-210mu.42890...

tl;dr - I've only had the Three 5G broadband package for 1 week. I didn't alter the 5G outdoor hub  configuration, which is running firmware 130.00100.113.024. After 6 days of flawless operations with minimum 300/20 Mbps downlink/uplink, the 5G outdoor hub started closing the ethernet connection intermittently every few minutes, and the only fix (so far) is a reboot of the hub. I'm willing to help the Three engineers debug this (I have networking experience), but if it can't be properly fixed (firmware update?) or if they aren't interested, then I'll have to cancel the contract as this is a deal breaker. 

Details:

The outdoor hub (Greenpacket Y5-210MU) seems to intermittently close the ethernet connection. I've debugged this several ways: with a laptop directly connected to the hub via the PoE, via the eero, via its own web GUI (192.168.0.1).

I've only had it for 1 week. Worked fine for 6 days. Then last night I noticed intermmittent dropouts. Pinging google.com continuously revealed the dropouts last 30-60 seconds, and happen every few minutes, from 5 to 10, but especially if there is any network activity from some connected client (phone, laptop, etc).

I used several methods to discover this:

1. the web gui's advanced > system > ping (which pings directly from the hub, independently of any connected router/eero/device); this always works fine, so I know the 5G connection is working 
2. a laptop connected directly to the hub; when it happens the laptop OS reports ethernet disconnected
3. the supplied eero 6 router; when it happens, the eero's led turns red, and the eero app says "Internet Offline, Wired Connection Not connected". 
4. The syslog logs don't show anything suspect, which to me suggests a memory leak of a process running on the hub (syslog logs downloaded from web GUI > advanced > system > maintenance > syslog > download) 

I waited for almost 24h, during which it lept happening continuously, then I rebooted the Greenpacket outdoor hub and voila ... came back to normal.

From experience with modems and routers, this is a symptom of a memory leak of a process that runs on the Greenpacket hub, which builds up over time until it fills the entire memory, and then all services get affected, causing interruptions everywhere.

Are there others experiencing this?

Are there any Three employees here willing to help with this?

[JohnR]

If you could connect to the hub during an outage then it wasn't an outage (or at the very least the hub didn't drop the Ethernet link, else you wouldn't have been able to connect to it)

Right now I'm testing an aftermarket PoE injector - a more expressive and higher quality injector than the cheap Chinese one provided by Three.

[MymsMan]

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@JohnR wrote:

If you could connect to the hub during an outage then it wasn't an outage (or at the very least the hub didn't drop the Ethernet link, else you wouldn't have been able to connect to it)

Right now I'm testing an aftermarket PoE injector - a more expressive and higher quality injector than the cheap Chinese one provided by Three.

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I agree,  I don't think I have been suffering from the problem described in the OP, instead my outages were caused by a period of terrible latency.   I have now installed PRTG and being tracking ping response times - normally I get ping responses of around 25ms but at 5pm on May 8 the hub picked up a new WAN address and ping times went through the roof, Other sympoms were the same as my previous post, The eero event log shows numerous Led light changes during the period, When I reset the hub in the morning another WAN address was assigned and normal service resumed.

[JohnR]

A new WAN address may also (but not necessarily) be the result of the 5G hub connecting to a different tower or different cell than the one it usually connects to. If you happen to catch this event in time again (not more than 4h after it happens), then you can download the logs from the 5G hub and look in the syslog (both current and old) for a change of cell id or plmn id and correlate the times with the latency you noticed ... it could explain the behavior you saw. Still unacceptable, but at least you have something to go on when reporting it.

Note that, as I mentioned above, the 5G hub doesn't seem to store logs for more than 4h, because whoever designed its firmware has made it vomit a ton of (irrelevant) data that fills it up very quickly ...

[MymsMan]

I extracted the LED light chage events from the eero* and there are several unexplained 1 minute outages when I wasn't doing anything with network,  but not at the tmes when I noticed problems connecting to internet

eero—Apr 27, 4:33   am 
Living room eero 6 system LED changed to solid white (online) 

eero—Apr 27, 4:32   am 
Living room eero 6 system LED changed to solid red (offline) 

eero—Apr 25,1:19  pm 
Living room eero 6 system LED changed to solid white (online) 

eero-Apr 23, 8:01   am 
Living room eero 6 system LED changed to solid white (online) 

eero—Apr 23, 8:00 am 
Living room eero 6 system LED changed to solid red (offline) 

eero—Apr 22,1:57 am 
Living room eero 6 system LED changed to solid white (online) 

eero—Apr 22,1:56 am 
Living room eero 6 system LED changed to solid red (offline) 

eero—Apr 20,  4:22   am 
Living room eero 6 system LED changed to solid white (online) 

eero—Apr 20,  4:21  am 
Living room eero 6 system LED changed to solid red (offline) 

* extracting logs is a real PITA,  filter events for word LED, screen capture each screen,  OCR images, save text to file, edit to clean up

[JohnR]

Seems similar to what I had too, except in my case the online/offline were every 5-10 minutes when it started. In your case it seems they were every few hours/days.

If you read my last messages above you'll notice I did the following, which you may try as well (see my post for details):

- disabled IPv6 on the 5G hub
- replaced the cheap PoE injector with a high quality one
- replaced the Eero router with one I trust more in terms of reliability and which offers far more control
- haven't yet disabled EEE (you may want to if none of the above help)

Dropping the ethernet link can also be the result of a memory leak or space fill-up, where the hub's Linux subsystem freezes or hangs, so it may be the 5G hub firmware itself that is at fault ... too many of us reported this problem for it to be happenstance, it feels almost certain it's an issue with the provided equipment (5G hub, PoE injector, Eero) and not with the 5G connection itself.

[JonathanB]

Hi @JohnR,

I've sent you a PM to confirm a bit more info for our investigation. Please get back to me when you have some time.

To view your private messages on the community, click on your avatar image in the top right of any community page, then "Messages".

Thanks,
Jonathan

[AndyFSSmith]

Hi Jonathan,

Is this an issue the rest of will need to live with or do you anticipate a resolution to be rolled out through a firmware update. 
The reason I ask is that I’m within cooling off period but I don’t really want to have to look at other options but with my broadband so unstable it’s impossible to use of any meetings. I’m having to hotspot to my mobile for each remote meeting I have and I’m burning through data.

Thanks in advance

[sargentdel1]

Same issue for me. I’ve had to lock mine to 4G only and that seems to have stabilised it for me, but defeats the purpose of having a 5G router. 

[AndyFSSmith]

Found it in the settings, thanks. I’ll see how I get on

[sargentdel1]

Sorry. I’ve only just seen your message. Hope it works out for you.