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]

Oh, in addition to my post above, I discovered that the same behaviour (Ethernet link being dropped intermittently) exists when there is a bug in the EEE feature implementation (EEE = Energy Efficient Ethernet, a feature now part of the 802.3 Ethernet standard) of some Ethernet devices/routers/switches. The fix is to disable EEE on at least one of the two connected devices on the same cable. For example see: https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/issues/17351

The Three engineers and/or the Greenpacket engineers (manufacturer of the outdoor hub) may want to add an option in the GUI to disable EEE, since the EEE implementation may be buggy in either the outdoor hub or the router connected to it on the PoE.

p.s. I am now using my own router (instead of Eero) connected to the outdoor hub, and can disable EEE on that. I haven't disabled it yet in order to see if my changes above address the issue. Will disable EEE if the issue appears again. Others reading this may want to try disabling EEE if they connect a different device to the outdoor hub instead of the Eero (either a different router or directly a laptop/pc).

[DaedalusEH]

Same issue here. A week after I activated the account, I started having internet disconnections every single hour for a couple of minutes each time, weirdly the disconnection times where timed perfectly (eg 21:00 then 22:00 ... ). The disconnections persisted for a week. I still have the occasional disconnections now which are annoying but not as annoying as before. 

[adl999]

I've had this issue for a few weeks - at first I thought it was the router, so I swapped the provided eero device for an ASUS BT8.  Then a couple of weeks ago it started happening again and always on the hour (e.g. at 12:00, 13:00, 14:00 etc).  The eero's logs are not detailed, but on the ASUS it's showing the same error happening at the same time.  I was about to send the ASUS router back to have the fault investigated so  reconnected the eero - which is now showing the exact same issue.  Looking in the ASUS log file, there's an error occurring at the same time reporting that the ethernet connection to the router is down.  Digging into the Y5-210MU logs (which are very very long) there's a 'daemon.notice easycwmpd: add event '2 PERIODIC' event happening at the start of every hour, so coincides with the disconnection.  Looking in the settings, the only thing set to 1 hour (3600 seconds) is the TR069 'Periodic Inform Period', which is followed by several *hundred* lines of error codes over the next two minutes (which is as long as it takes for the modem to reconnect).  I have disabled this in settings (Advanced > System > TR069) - TR069 is also known as CWMP, so ties in with the message in the log file.

The hour has just passed and no disconnection!

[MymsMan]

@adl999 are you still error free?

@declare_flare has reported the same in another thread

Given the issue with updating the settings reported by @JohnR I will ask you the same questions

Can you confirm whether or not:

1. see a red notice at the top saying "cmd execute failed"
2. the display shows the updated values after a page reload
3. you still see easycwpd log messages in the system.log 
4. what level of hub firmware you are running 

I am currently on Software Version130.00100.113.024 and I do not see hourly loss of connection but when I do lose connection it is usually on the hour when easycwmpd is running.

eero-Jul 23, 7:02 pm
Living room eero 6 system LED changed to solid white (online)

eero-Jul 23, 7:00 pm
Living room eero 6 system LED changed to solid red (offline)

eero-Jul 23, 4:01 pm
Living room eero 6 system LED changed to solid white (online)

eero-Jul 23, 4:01 pm
Living room eero 6 system LED changed to solid red (offline)

eero-Jul 22, 7:01 am
Living room eero 6 system LED changed to solid white (online)

eero-Jul 22, 7:01 am
Living room eero 6 system LED changed to solid red (offline)

eero-Jul 22, 12:01 am
Living room eero 6 system LED changed to solid white (online)

eero-Jul 22, 12:01 am
Living room eero 6 system LED changed to solid red (offline)

My hypothesis is that it is not easycwmpd per se that is the problem but that sometimes when it is  asked to make a configuration change that can fail and cause a connection outage.  Next time it runs it tries to make the same change and fails again ... ad infinitum

I could try to look at the logs but don't know whether I could make head to tail of them!

[adl999]

Hi @MymsMan sorry for the delay I was away a few days.

As part of the troubleshooting process. I ordered a new SIM card (which didn’t arrive) but Three disabled the existing one when the new one was dispatched!  I ended up having to go to the local Three store to get a replacement.

On the old SIM card (before it was disabled) I was successfully applying the updated settings - with a green banner message when applied.  Following JonathanB’s comment, I settled on leaving TR069 enabled but disabled periodic inform.  Both changes to disable TR069 and to the Inform interval were successfully applied while the previous SIM was working.  Interestingly once my old Sim had been disconnected I noticed the Inform interval had changed to 86400 (1day).  Now I’ve installed the new SIM it’s gone back to 3660, but remains disabled.  On the new SIM any changes to the main TR069 setting no longer get applied successfully (red message).  I don’t want try any changes to the Inform Interval setting in case I can’t change back.

I am no longer getting the hourly drops in connection.  I had a couple of drops in the middle of the night after installing the new SIM but by the time I got to download the modems SysLog the relevant entries had long gone as it only holds a few hours worth of data.

I’m now on software version 130.00100.113.024 - not sure if this changed when i swapped the SIM though.

[MymsMan]

Thanks for update,

What a mess with SIM!

Your results match mine.

To get around Red message on TR069 clear the Request User Name field.

I have had no success changing the inform interval to anything other than 3600

I did catch the syslog for a disconnect at an odd time and it was connected to a easycwmpd session so I have now disabled TR069 service and will see how long I can go without a disconnection!

[JohnR]

I don't think you disabled it, because the Y5-210MU doesn't allow TR069 to be disabled ... if you look carefully at the GUI when you press Submit, you should see a red notice at the top saying "cmd execute failed" and if you refresh the page (or navigate away and come back to the TR069 page) you should see that it's still Enabled.

Just another "gift" from Three -- as long as you use their router, they will have complete remote access to it and to all the data that the router sees, which is quite a lot. Preventing the customer from disabling this is not OK in my book. If it was just remote update of firmware then it would be different, but this exposes a lot more data.

This should be disabled by default, and the customer can choose to enable it on request (the customer asks for help, the provider requests they enable remote access) ... imagine if Windows or MacOS was like this.

@JonathanB how does Three justify this forced choice?

[MymsMan]

@JohnR 

I was also getting the cmd execute error message but when I examined the logs more closely I discovered a "request user name is invalid value" message

After clearing the user name field I was able to successfully disable the periodic inform

I did try updating the Periodic interval but although I did get a success message it reverted to 3600 when page was refreshed

[JonathanB]

Hey adl999 thanks for sharing your experience. I've checked this out with a colleague and I wanted to clarify a couple of points here — not to shut down the idea, but to add some context that might be helpful:

1. TR-069 Doesn’t Directly Affect Performance
   TR-069 (also known as CWMP) is a protocol used by ISPs for remote management of your router — firmware updates, diagnostics, config changes, etc. It doesn’t run constantly or consume significant resources. Disabling it is unlikely to provide any measurable performance boost in terms of speed, latency, or stability.
2. Disabling It Can Backfire
   If you disable TR-069, your device will not be able to:
   • Push important firmware updates or security patches.
   • Diagnose and fix connectivity issues remotely.
   • Provide certain services that rely on remote provisioning.

We're continuing to look into feedback shared by our Community, but we'd recommend against making this change.in the meantime.

Thanks,
Jonathan

[MymsMan]

I have had the outdoor hub and eero router for almost a month now and hadn't noticed droputs until yesterday evening when I had several 😥

While the eero app reported "Internet Offline, Wired Connection Not connected" the eero event log does not show any LED change events for yesterday which is a pity because I was hoping to be able to report more accurately how frequently dropout were occuring.  The eero events do show quite a number of unexpecte Led change event for other days. Unfortunately AFAIK eero dont allow the event logs to be downloaded which seems to be a major deficiency.

I know I can download the hub logs but I don't know what I should be looking for.

Are there any messages that indicate when an ethernet or internet connection has been established/dropped by the hub.

I did noticed during one outage I could still connect to the hub web page and the 5G signal strength was better than usual, 84 vs 74-76 normally.  This would seem to indicate an issue with the hub connecting to the internet rather than with the ethernet connection between hub and eero.