Three 5g broadband random request connection issues - parental controls????

[rickyg1999]

I have had the NR5103E router installed for a couple of months now with no real issues. However in the past week I am having real trouble with random internet requests not working on iphone, ipad and on MacOS which are my main devices.

I am not alone with this, when friends and family visit and connect to wifi they have experienced the same problems.

Such an example is with the National Lottery app. At random times I will get a "Sorry, our app is unable to load for you. It could be that a parental block is set with your internet service provider"

Another example is with the Microsoft Authenticator - when I try to authorise a request it will get knocked back with "Your connection was lost. Check your network connectivity and try again"

When connecting to Santander online backing with the app or browser I get page load failures but on refreshing pages things load correctly.

To say this is infuriating is an understatement. I asked Three to remove any adult content filters some time ago. Has anything extra been activated recently to cause these issues??

Router is NR5103E and connection speed appears fine.

[BrummyGit]

I've been having the same problems as described here and will also run for a day or two on only 4G to see if my connection issues go away. I will report back.

[rickyg1999]

I spent over 3 hours on a chat conversation with Support which involved many reboots and unexpected factory resets of my router by an engineer. I don't want to go into all the details but needless to say it got me absolutely no where to the point of frustration where the engineer was asking me questions about my phone (!) and how close it was to the router and if I could try a different socket (??).

It got to a point where I was expected to take the router into the nearest Three store to get it checked out at which point I escalated to complain to Customer Service who I spent close to another 90 minutes discussing the issue.

Long story short we have arranged to have a doorstep exchange of like for like routers.

Apparently this could take up to 8 days to arrange depending on stock levels (????) - A strange one that considering the same router can be delivered to brand new customers next day delivery if they order before 8pm the same day.

As you can imagine I am not incredibly happy,  although to be fair when I asked for compensation they have credited my account with a month's waiver.

For now I have set the router to be 4g only. No connection issues with this setting and I can manage with the drop in speed until the router is delivered. Still waiting to hear when that will be though.

[AlSeek]

Hi @rickyg1999 , this sounds like a similar issue to what some of us are experiencing in another thread. Did your replacement router resolve the connection issues by any chance? Thanks.

[JonathanB]

Hi @rickyg1999,

Sorry to hear you've been running into this issue it sounds super frustrating. I don't recall spotting any other reports like this. Is there anything other than the message on the Lottery website that seems to suggest this is adult filter/parental control related?

As it seems to only be happening over 5G, are there any indications on our Network Status Checker that we're dealing with a fault in the area?

I'm just wondering if parental controls is a bit of a red herring here, and that the connection is unstable, as the other examples you shared don't seem to be adult content related issues?

Thanks,
Jonathan

[rickyg1999]

National lottery app is just one indication of the problem I am having and I believe the response from it could be a red herring in terms of the cause. Unfortunately I don't think I can rename this Content Item.

I am experiencing connection problems will other apps such as Santander and Nutricheck on IOS

I get intermittent SSL errors when running `brew update` on MacOS and I also I have problems on websites on Dell hardware so this rules out the problem being Apple specific.

The problem seems to be related to 5g as when the router runs with 4g only the problem never happens. 

This was not a problem on 5g either until recently so I am wondering if Three have somehow misconfigured something related to the 5g netowork?

After searching the web and also this community site, other users appear to be having 5g related issues with the same router model.

[Anvil_Iron]

Is the router experiencing intermittent 5G connection? What's the signal strength according to the 5G Interface Status icon on the System Info page in NR5G-NSA/4G mode?

Can you check again to confirm the setting says NR5G-SA/4G (Autoswitch) and not NR5G-NSA/4G (Autoswitch)? Three network uses 4G at its core for its 5G implementation so it should be NR5G-NSA.

[rickyg1999]

Conformed a typo on my part, the default selection is NR5G-NSA/4G - this default selection causes issues.

[rickyg1999]

4G has been stable overnight and no issues with devices as reported before.

I have switched back to the default setting NR5G-SA/4G (Autoswitch) which has re-enabled the 5G signal but the problem has immediately come back.

[rickyg1999]

After testing various settings I think there must be some problem with the 5g signal

I've found a section in the NR5103E Router Broadband settings under Cellular Band for Preferred Access Technology

There are four options

NR5G-SA/NR5G-NSA/4G (Autoswitch)
NR5G-SA
NR5G-SA/4G (Autoswitch).  <--- This was the default
4G

Ive experimented with all four this evening.

With the first option NR5G-SA/NR5G-NSA/4G (Autoswitch) the fault remains
With the second option NR5G-SA there is no connection whatsoever
With the third option, NR5G-SA/4G (Autoswitch). we already know this has the problem
With the fourth option 4G the problem appears to resolve!

I am going to leave this as 4G overnight and see if the connection remains stable on the devices. I will report back tomorrow. According to the router main page this has completely disabled the 5G signal.

I have done a quick search related to the router model and the settings in question which yielded an interesting discussion here