Router dropping connection / Apple Airplay / Loss of speed

[Andrew1000]

Hello.  I've recently moved over to Vodafone Broadband and in general it's going ok.  

One issue however is that Airplay (used for communication with all my Apple devices) no longer works on the network.  My Amp (which is the Airplay end-point is no longer detectable by any of my devices.  For reference I've turned off the amp & made sure that it's otherwise fully connected to the network. Everything looks fine, but Airplay no longer works.

Please help.  Is there something that needs updating / changing on the router ?

[Andrew1000]

Next Day --  Still no reply from Vodafone Tech support.  Pretty safe to say they have forgotten me and it will now be down to me to chase them again and waste my time explaining to 1st line support.

I was just looking on the router and as I was examining the logs....  The WAN dropped..!  Below is the log information.

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18.03.2017 12:03:30 WAN connected, WAN type: VLAN Physical Device, service type: data, IP: 90.255.0.135, device: ppp2 WAN
18.03.2017 12:03:30 WAN connected, WAN type: VLAN Physical Device, service type: data, IP: 90.255.0.135, device: ipsec3 WAN
18.03.2017 12:03:29 PPP authentication successful System
18.03.2017 12:03:28 PPP CHAP authentication started System
18.03.2017 12:03:26 PPPoE PADS received System
18.03.2017 12:03:25 PPPoE PADR sent System
18.03.2017 12:03:25 PPPoE PADO received System
18.03.2017 12:03:25 PPPoE PADI sent System
18.03.2017 12:02:22 PPPoE PADI sent System
18.03.2017 12:01:49 PPPoE PADI sent System
18.03.2017 12:01:33 PPPoE PADI sent System
18.03.2017 12:01:25 PPPoE PADI sent System
18.03.2017 12:01:21 PPPoE PADI sent System
18.03.2017 12:01:19 PPPoE PADI sent System
18.03.2017 12:00:58 WAN disconnected, WAN type: VLAN Physical Device, service type: data, device: ppp2 WAN
18.03.2017 12:00:58 WAN disconnected, WAN type: VLAN Physical Device, service type: data, device: ipsec3 WAN
18.03.2017 11:54:21 User sucessfully logged in to UI from LAN System

[Andrew1000]

Called Vodafone.  25 minutes on the phone.

They have lost all information about yesterday's call and noone was ever going to call me back.

They won't look into the source of the issue (the router) until I 

1. Go buy or borrow a land-line phone.  As I don't own one.  Then "test that the line works".  I'm sat here getting 60/18Mbs!  Of course it works !
2. Take the faceplate off my (pretty new) Master Socket with built in filter to isolate the Broadband / Phone line and test using a filter in the Test socket.  This is massive pain in the ##~## (due to location) and I really can't be bothered with Vodafone anymore.

I've had enough.  For now I'm just going to try to live with it.  Can't waste any more time on this.  If it gets too bad I will just have to go back to BT.

Please bear in mind here (as I've explained to Vodafone support several times.  I have been on BT Infinity since the day they started the service.  Never had it go down like this.  There are no hardware faults in the home, this is a Vodafone issue with either the Router or something at the back end.

[Andrew1000]

Paul.  Hi.

What exactly did you "turn off" ?  I'm happy to try anything at this point which actually might make a difference.

[paulcormack]

Andrew - hey there - how new is the master socket ?  It doesn;t coincide with the disconnects does it.

So I have everything turned off... absolutely everything.   No Wifi, no dhcp, no upnp, nothing, no firewall, no media sharing, etc..  I do it all via my better router I love....   Just go through each of the tabs and turn off everything you do not need.

Then I turned on the exposed host option (DMZ) , plugged in my good router wan port to port one of the VF router and gave my router WAN ip address in the same subnet as the routers internal side subnet

So my VF router internal is 192.168.2.101 and my WAN port of my good router is 192.168.2.103

My DMZ/exposed host I made 192.168.2.103 (yup my good router is then effectively exposed to the internet) and on my good one I turned on Firewall, DHCP (used a different range/subnet 192.168.1.0) So all my internal devices connect on a 192.168.1. and all internet traffic is routed through to 192.168.2.103   

Then I turned on a couple of option - I used googles DNS so the DNS option I set to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 and I also setup a DDNS option in the vodafone router so I could connect back into my home VPN when away.

So far so good.

[Andrew1000]

When I say "new".  It's 5/6 years old, bit of a loose term...  Since it's been fitted the service with BT has been solid and it's in a hard to reach place where noone can go near it, kick it, or even touch it without an effort.

I see.  I hadn't realised you were using your own device too.  I really want to avoid doing this as the office is so neat and tidy with just one device.  And I know I need many of these services running, like DCHP for instance.

Did you used to have daily / bi-daily WAN drops before you turned off all the services and routed them to your other device ?  If I really need to I will consider doing this and I'm lucky to have a good router sat in the desk drawer but far from ideal 😞

Thanks for the reply.  At least some of us realise how important the internet is, even if Vodafone don't.

[paulcormack]

Andrew I had a loty more drops before disabling uPNP - I remeber it was the same on my old sky router when I first got it years ago uPNP caused the router to drop and die, so I have always worked around uPNP.

Try just disabling uPNP at the very least.  It is on the Settings->Configuration page near the botton of the page.

Let us know if it makes any difference.

[Andrew1000]

Cheers Paul.  I will try that this evening.  Hopefully it doesn't effect too many things I do and has some effect.  Certainly worth a try.

Had to step away from it on Saturday as it was starting to ruin my weekend.

[Andrew1000]

I'm updating this topic here and will see how things go.  This is FAR too early to draw ANY conclusions.

1. Yesterday evening --  I disabled uPnP
2. I updated the Router to the latest version.  The snappily named 5.4.8.1.291.1.30.1.6  (I kid you not)
3. Once all the above was fully complete I turned the router off and on.

One thing that I find interesting (but by no means conclusive of anything yet) is that my Sky Apps were having issues communicating with Sky HD box at the weekend.  Tonight those same devices are working fine.

Airplay / etc still working. 

I'll continue to monitor.

[Andrew1000]

Thursday Update

1. Exactly 3 days since I made the above changes the router is still up and running.  Too early to draw any conclusions, but this is the longest I can remember the external connection staying up.  I need to monitor it for several more days before any conclusions are drawn.
2. I've done nothing different (regarding usage) in the last 3 days, in fact I've watched a fair bit of HD content via streaming (Sky & Netflix).
3. Broadband support called me this evening.  The gentlemen seemed fairly clued up and on the ball.  Due to point 1 we've agreed not to change anything for now and he's going to call back in 2 days to check latest status.
4. Broadband support have taken an action to speak to 2nd-line to see if the connection speed can be reset, to allow the speed to go back to that I was originally acheiving.  I'd like to try this once because the vast majority of the 10Mb/s I've lost (since installation) was when I had ancient firmware installed on the router.

So, fingers crossed.  Will continue to update.

[Andrew1000]

Monday Update

1. Not wanting to tempt fate, but I'm now under an hour away from 1 Week since the router last dropped the WAN connection.
2. Although Vodafone called me.  Their promised call back on Saturday never materialised. 
3. Because of the above there's no progress / news on getting my 10Mb/s back that I've lost due to constant disconnections.

Still... Overall the news is good and I'll keep watching.

Out of interest has anyone with issue been monitoring the Router utilisation stats at the bottom of the status page ?  I've taken a few random readings and seem to get :-

• CPU Usage  --  Usually stays below 15%  (haven't monitored whilst streaming HD Netflix)
• Memory Usage --  Seems to remain steady at 31%

I'm just curious if eiher stat climbs higher when there's an issue.