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FIOS connection keeps failing

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ali.

Occasional Visitor
Hello all,

My internet connection is for most part stable, however, it keeps dropping every few weeks and I have to use the FIOS app to fix it and bring the net back online. I wanted to put this on the forum here before I got Verizon involved. The dropped connection happens enough time and some times during work hours that it is an annoyance. And every single time the FIOS app fix internet issue option resolves the problem.
I have set my ASUS router to restart every weekend just as a best practice. Has anyone else who has faced the same issue been able to login to their FIOS ONT and schedule a reboot to alleviate this problem? Or if you have faced this issue, what resolved this intermittent dropping of connection?

Any help/advise is greatly appreciated.
 
There's a fair amount of lore on these forums that connecting ASUS routers directly to Verizon ONTs doesn't work terribly well. Maybe somebody inside ASUS or Verizon knows the reason, but if so they're not telling. However, it has been reported that sticking a plain-vanilla Ethernet switch in between will fix it. I see things like Netgear GS305s going for $15 on Amazon, so it's a pretty cheap fix (oh, don't forget you'll need one more ethernet patch cable ...)
 
Hello all,

My internet connection is for most part stable, however, it keeps dropping every few weeks and I have to use the FIOS app to fix it and bring the net back online. I wanted to put this on the forum here before I got Verizon involved. The dropped connection happens enough time and some times during work hours that it is an annoyance. And every single time the FIOS app fix internet issue option resolves the problem.
I have set my ASUS router to restart every weekend just as a best practice. Has anyone else who has faced the same issue been able to login to their FIOS ONT and schedule a reboot to alleviate this problem? Or if you have faced this issue, what resolved this intermittent dropping of connection?

Any help/advise is greatly appreciated.

There was an issue in the firmware causing DHCP requests from Guest Wireless 1 to be sent to the ONT with a VLAN tag on them, and the ONT strips that tag off, forwards the request upstream, and causes an outage.

This may not be the issue in your case what firmware are you on) but if you're using Guest Wireless 1 it may be.

I have Verizon FIOS off my RT-AC1900 (RT-AC68U variant) and it works fine, can go weeks or months without rebooting the router.

You cannot access the ONT to reboot it unfortunately, and it probably wouldn't help anyway, it is just a bridge device. When you use their app to do "fix" it does several things within their network such as clearing out DHCP leases.
 
There's a fair amount of lore on these forums that connecting ASUS routers directly to Verizon ONTs doesn't work terribly well. Maybe somebody inside ASUS or Verizon knows the reason, but if so they're not telling. However, it has been reported that sticking a plain-vanilla Ethernet switch in between will fix it. I see things like Netgear GS305s going for $15 on Amazon, so it's a pretty cheap fix (oh, don't forget you'll need one more ethernet patch cable ...)

That issue should be fixed, the "dumb" switch was blocking the rogue DHCP requests since they had a VLAN tag on them, but at least on my router 386.7_2 has eliminated the bug where tagged DHCP was being sent out the WAN (may have been a previous version, don't recall exactly).

I'm tempted to buy one of the GS305e switches on sale for $15 right now (or the 8 port for $27), they support port mirroring, cheapest ethernet tap out there for those that want to do sniffing.... save me having to pull out a cisco switch when I need to. But my hatred of netgear has me conflicted.
 
There was an issue in the firmware causing DHCP requests from Guest Wireless 1 to be sent to the ONT with a VLAN tag on them, and the ONT strips that tag off, forwards the request upstream, and causes an outage.

Oh, interesting ... I wonder if the "stick a switch in between" hack worked by blocking that traffic, if you happened to pick a switch that drops tagged traffic? That would help explain why the hack only worked for some people.

You cannot access the ONT to reboot it unfortunately, and it probably wouldn't help anyway, it is just a bridge device.

I've had FiOS service for over a dozen years, and I can firmly state that power-cycling the ONT sometimes does fix things. But of course that's not the answer you want for repeated outages.
 
Oh, interesting ... I wonder if the "stick a switch in between" hack worked by blocking that traffic, if you happened to pick a switch that drops tagged traffic? That would help explain why the hack only worked for some people.



I've had FiOS service for over a dozen years, and I can firmly state that power-cycling the ONT sometimes does fix things. But of course that's not the answer you want for repeated outages.

Most unmanaged switches will drop the VLAN tagged frames as errors unless they've been specially designed to recognize the ethertype of tagged frames and can handle the 1504 byte frame size, at which point they might as well just make it a smart switch. A smart switch should never forward a tagged frame unless you configure it to. So yeah that was what fixed the issue most likely. This is also why having a switch in the path between wired AiMesh nodes now breaks AiMesh, due to the use of tagging.

Honestly I've never had to reboot my ONT. Even when I was having the above issue, the only thing that would fix it was rebooting the router (cycling WAN and rebooting ONT would not do it, I'm assuming because it was requesting the IP it already had on the WAN port but that IP was now in use by another device). I think I may have rebooted it a couple times for good measure after a speed upgrade. I know some of the real old ONTs were more problematic, but mines a 10 year old one (big white one) and just chugs along.
 
Honestly I've never had to reboot my ONT. Even when I was having the above issue, the only thing that would fix it was rebooting the router (cycling WAN and rebooting ONT would not do it, I'm assuming because it was requesting the IP it already had on the WAN port but that IP was now in use by another device). I think I may have rebooted it a couple times for good measure after a speed upgrade. I know some of the real old ONTs were more problematic, but mines a 10 year old one (big white one) and just chugs along.
Hm ... maybe I had a lemon, but my 2010-vintage ONT needed it once or twice a year. I do have to say that the replacement they gave me a couple years ago (the more or less 8x10x2 black thingie) has been more stable.
 
Update:
I have placed a pfsense appliance between the ONT and the router (which is now an AP) and after the initial setup. The internet still jammed up, and I had to use the FIOS app to refresh the ONT. I am going to give some additional time for this setup to work and see how it goes.

This is becoming a recurring annoyance, and It is really frustrating.

Thanks for all the input so far.
 
Update:
I have placed a pfsense appliance between the ONT and the router (which is now an AP) and after the initial setup. The internet still jammed up, and I had to use the FIOS app to refresh the ONT. I am going to give some additional time for this setup to work and see how it goes.

This is becoming a recurring annoyance, and It is really frustrating.

Thanks for all the input so far.

Given that I'd say it is something on their end most likely.

Keep in mind with FIOS you have to release your WAN IP before you change the connected device, so maybe that is what happened this time (did it not work at all after inserting the pfsense or did it work for a while)?
 
Given that I'd say it is something on their end most likely.

Keep in mind with FIOS you have to release your WAN IP before you change the connected device, so maybe that is what happened this time (did it not work at all after inserting the pfsense or did it work for a while)?
It worked briefly and then the internet jammed up. I had to do the same FIOS app routine to get the net working again. I made sure, because the LAN was working fine: I could access both the asus and pfsense portals.
 
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