Recurrent internet drops at 10:00

[Smasher85]

Talked to the ISP, and they won’t file a fault report unless I can recreate the issue with my computer connected directly to the fiber modem. Since they won’t forward me to a technician, there’s no point in asking support questions like why the DHCP lease time is set to 600 ms (and whether that’s even a problem), because they simply don’t know.

The downside is that connecting my computer directly to the modem means no other device will have internet access, which is a tough sell in this household.

If I connect the modem directly to my computer, can I then share the connection with the rest of the network? If so, how? I guess I might need a secondary network card, maybe I even have an old one lying around from the early 2000s.

 

[dave14305]

If the PC works, try cloning the PC’s MAC address on the router’s WAN page and reboot.

 

[Smasher85]

That’s a good idea, I’ll try that later. I’ve just connected my computer directly to the modem again to see if I can re-create the problem. Usually, the issue only occurs around 10–11, but yesterday I let the PowerShell script run more or less all day and I had a lot more problems. So now I’m running the same script, but with the computer connected directly to the modem, to see if that changes anything.

 

[bluzfanmr1]

Shot in the dark here. I have fiber and to use the modem directly, I have to set a VID of 201 (Brightspeed Fiber) on the IPTV tab for internet to work. It reminds me of the issues I had until I realized I had to do this but like I said, maybe a shot in the dark.

 

[Smasher85]

Thanks, I’ll put it on my list.

I bought a new router today, a TP-Link BE230, just to test if that might solve anything. I set it up the same way as the others, but with one difference: I chose to clone the MAC address of my computer, just like @dave14305 suggested.

After having multiple issues earlier today, I haven’t had any since installing the new router, but we’ll see. My old Netgear router also failed me with similar problems, though it already had known defects (including internet connection issues), so it’s hard to know what that really means.

I’ll let the new router handle the full extent of my network for a couple of days. If it doesn’t fail me, I’ll send in the Asus router for service.

I went with TP-Link because it’s unclear how much hardware different Asus routers actually share, and I wanted a totally different brand to see if it works better in my system. I know that mixing different network brands used to be a problem, but maybe not anymore?

​

 

[Smasher85]

The issue occurred again and lasted for 20 minutes, as it usually does. So the new router was not the solution, which is not really a surprise.

BUT a friend of mine happens to have the exact same problem with the same ISP, even though he lives in another city. He suggested pressing F5 (refresh in Edge) multiple times while trying to load the webpage, and surprisingly, it worked. Once the page loads successfully, I can browse its subpages without any issues.

My guess is that the connection to the DNS sometimes fails for periods of around 20 minutes. It’s probably being blocked on a higher level where we can’t affect it. When the call succeeds, the browser stores the DNS and uses it on subpages. It doesn’t matter if we change to a different DNS, the issue still occurs the same.

I haven’t tried it myself, but apparently, it’s also possible to access the webpage directly via its IP without hitting F5 during a problematic period.

Why it works when connecting the cable directly to the computer I can’t say. Maybe the problem would actually appear there too if I left the computer connected to the router all the time.

So, yet another piece to the puzzle, so what now?

 

[tgl]

Does the restart-the-router hack still fix the problem when using this replacement router?

Also, it's not clear to me whether you are relying on any DNS caching/forwarding mechanism in the router(s), or just letting clients send requests out to the external DNS server. One thing that might clarify this is to look at a client's internet connection details, and see whether it reports the DNS server address as being the router's LAN address or the external server's.

 

[Smasher85]

I will try restarting the new router when the problem comes back. I haven’t changed the factory settings except for the passwords and SSID, so the client uses the router’s URL for DNS, and the router then forwards it to the DNS servers provided by the ISP.