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?

[Alxtitude]

After months of lurking and frustration, just wanted to chip in and report I'm in the same boat.

I'm on software version 130.00100.113.024 and tbh, I've had this connection loss issue on and off for almost a year. I got this hub shortly after it launched. When it works, it really works, fabulous stuff. But much like everyone else, I'll wake up and find the internet dead / eero red light etc and need to reboot the hub.

Trouble I'm finding these days is that, when rebooting, the hub takes well over an hour to reestablish the 5G connection. The LED just reads 'ON' for ages and ages and then one moment will suddently spring to life and start giving me numbers.

I've done all the usual stuff. Full reset, power cycles, SIM out, SIM in, disabled Scheduled Reboot and TR069. Won't lie, I can't face Three Technical support as they'll just tell me to do everything we've already been through.

What is up with this dang thing??

[MymsMan]

I addition to the frequent disconnection problem there is another problem with no/slow reconnections and it appears from PM and posts here that Three are investigating involving the Eero software?   Has @JonathanB been in touch with you to collect details of your Eero?

I created a little utility to help monitor the state of the outdoor hub https://community.three.co.uk/t5/Broadband/InquireHub-3-Three-Greenpacket-Outdoor-router-Y5-210MU-In...

It might help you determine whether the hub thinks it has an internet connection when the the eero is not showing connected and to download the hubs system logs for further analysis

[Alxtitude]

Hello! It was an age ago that you gave this reply, but just wanted to give a little update.

You are definitely onto something with the TR069 business. When I eventually got it disabled, I had a near record 45 days of connectivity. It did eventually succumb to the Red Light of Doom, but rebooting the hub did its business and it went for yet another 30 days.

I will say that sadly the really slow reconnection is still an issue. If I reboot the hub, it takes just over an hour for it to start showing strength numbers - it'll just display 'ON' for the entire time leading up to that.

Also annoyingly, I got the Red Light of Doom last night, rebooted, all fine, but a mere 24 hours later I'm having to reboot again. All the settings I tweaked as per your instruction have stayed the same. Here's hoping I'm not in a 'disconnecting every 24 hours' cycle now!

[MymsMan]

The 24 hour rebooting usually occurs around 4am and can be disabled by changing the Scheduled reboot settings on the Advanced->System->Maintenance page

I am currently up to 45 days without reboot.

Note: Only change one setting at time, when I changed Interval and set Disabled at the same time the display showed Disabled as set but it still rebooted every 7 days!

Touch wood, I have never experienced the slow reconnection issue so haven't had the chance to look at the hub logs to compare with a normal reconnection.

I enable TR069 during the night and disable it during the day,  and so still see occasional reconnections but only when I am asleep and only, on average, once a week

[Davida1992]

This is an interesting thread, one that I think I can relate to.

A used to have the THREE indoor hub, and it worked pretty good, but I moved to the outdoor hub on a new contract because the mast is across the street from me.

I switched to the outdoor hub and im finding that websites are slow to load, streaming buffers, and it's just not an enjoyable experience. 

I'm getting 92% signal on 5g and my speeds tend to be around 200mbit/s. The issue for me is random packet loss. I've had pings running to internal devices, both wired and wireless with no packet loss. However, any internet bound data such as pings to Google.com and 8.8.8.8 are loosing about 5% of packets within an hour window on average.

I've replaced the ethernet cables, moved the device to a different location, reset the device, tried wired and wireless devices and its all the same issue.

I had the device and PoE injector replaced today, and for 30 mins, it was fine, but then back to the same issue of packet loss.

I may need to go back to the indoor hub, because this outdoor thing seems unreliable.

I dont use the Aero thingy. I switch the hub to routing mode as my house uses ubiquity for WiFi.

[Davida1992]

Another update... still going strong, no drops, no network outage alerts from various IoT devices, all is looking good and positive. 

[Davida1992]

So just an update on this... I've disabled the auto reboot feature, and also the TR069 features, and I've had a clear run for about a day now... Prior to this, it was a problem constantly... Will continue to monitor, but things are looking promising! 

[Miki1960]

Hi David,
I also had an indoor NR5103E hub which worked fine for two years and then my speeds dropped dramatically in April this year from 700 Mbps to lower than 100 Mbps. After Three refused to exchange my hub I ended up cancelling my contract and started again with the outdoor hub.
I was delighted with the performance but angry with the restarts not least because I'd get it in the ear from my wife when her tv streaming was interrupted. Disabling TR069 fixed the problem for me, and then I took a leap of faith and carried out the factory reset yesterday evening and despite TR069 being enabled I've had no problems since.
On your prompting I ran Pings to 8.8.8.8 this morning for an hour and am pleased to say There was no packet loss.
Kind regards, Mike

[Davida1992]

Hopefully it keeps working for you... Fingers crossed. Something tells me that you'll end up having to disable the TR069 options again.

[JonathanB]

Hi everyone,

We're continuing to investigate the issues mentioned on this thread. I will note that there's a few different permutations in the comments here, in terms of frequency of drops, and whether the connection recovers by itself, so it's very likely that there's more than one issue, and that these aren't necessarily connected.

In cases of hourly drops, we'd recommend a factory reset the Greenpacket Outdoor Hub. Please let me know if the issues persist after doing this.

In some cases, there could be an issue with the EERO 6 software (I appreciate that not everyone is using these). We'd like to take a closer look at this aspect, so I'll send some of you PMs to ask for info to identify your EERO device.

Thanks,
Jonathan