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

[Psmithson]

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.

[Simon1402]

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. 

[Spud]

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.

[Simon1402]

This problem affects wired as well as wireless connections.

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

[Psmithson]

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.

[Gricharduk]

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).

[Psmithson]

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!

[Psmithson]

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.

[georges]

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:

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

Hope this works for someone else as well.

[Spud]

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.