WAN dropping constantly (ASUS RT-AC68U)

[hosemigeru]

I have been having problems with my WAN connection dropping constantly. This has been going on for some time and I am reaching the end of my tether. I contacted ASUS support and my ISP, but both have been unhelpful. ASUS support was particularly useless: their answer was word by word plagiarised from the first two paragraphs of this web page. My ISP is another barrel of laughs, not to mention a total time sink, since I never get to talk to anyone who doesn't want to run me through the very same script every time.

Before contacting the ISP again, I'd like to ascertain whether the problem lies at my end or somewhere along the line outside my flat, and I am turning to this forum for help.

I have been saving the router logs for a period of days and have been focussing on particular events, such as those generating such messages as WAN Connection: Fail to connect with some issues or pppd: LCP terminated by peer or pppd: Timeout waiting for PADO packets, as well as the time that the connection stays up via the messages pppd: Connect time NN.N minutes.

I seem unable to include any code (courtesy of CloudFlare) so perhaps a PDF attachment of a typical connection/reconnection cycle might illustrate the problem. (This time there was no timeout waiting for PADO packets.)

I also have some time plots which might be of interest/help in determining the cause of the error, but I need help in interpreting them. If you think they would help, I'm happy to make them available.

Thank you very much in advance for any help!

 

[kneo]

I am not a networking guy, so please take my opinion at par.

I had similar log entries a few days back and the culprit was the ISP's cable from their switch to my apartment. I researched this issue in the forum and for most of the cases, the cable was at fault. Merlin too advises changing the cable from the modem to the router (in cases where one has a modem in the setup) to a CAT5e or CAT6

 

[ca509]

I changed the cables, but no improvement. With the earliest 376 firmware it's fine again.

Also someone noticed that with Merlins new beta which uses 378 the router doesn't reconnect if the WAN cable is removed and plugged in again, and that's I guess what causing the problems..

 

[ngerasimatos]

I changed the cables, but no improvement. With the earliest 376 firmware it's fine again.

Also someone noticed that with Merlins new beta which uses 378 the router doesn't reconnect if the WAN cable is removed and plugged in again, and that's I guess what causing the problems..

Thats exactly why they call it an alpha or beta. Not stable for daily use.

 

[ca509]

Thats exactly why they call it an alpha or beta. Not stable for daily use.

Thats with the official 378 firmare, not alphas or betas

 

[KGB7]

I and other people have had almost same issue with Comcast ISP.

The resolution was, is to set DHCP query frequency -Normal Mode. I continue to use same setting with Fios to avoid same issue many of us had with cable based internet.