NETGEAR R6260 randomly crashing/dying (wifi and eth drop)

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

I install the latest snapshot image at random points, but as of lately (seemingly some point this month/Jan 2021), notably on the version I'm on now (SNAPSHOT r15603-23be333401), my router just seemingly dies at random points.

When this happens:

  • My cable modem doesn't report any devices connected to its Ethernet port
  • My PC (directly connected to the router) also doesn't report a connected Ethernet device
  • All wireless devices drop off my 2.4GHz and 5GHz APs

I've done no troubleshooting yet. As far as I know, since Ethernet on the router goes down, I can't SSH into it to get any logs, and I'm unaware of any specific scenario that would cause the router to go down.

I've never had this happen at any point in the past, including with various snapshot builds and even stock firmware.

2

You can try setting up remote logging to another device to see what's wrong. There might be a setting in the buildroot as well to enable saving kernel logs to flash, not sure - but you'd have to compile your own build for that.

I've been running very recent builds off master (like codebase less than a week old - actually the very same r15603 with a few extra patches on top) on two MT7621 devices (DIR-878 A1 en Netgear R6800). They both run fine and both wireless and wired connections are constantly used.

This almost sounds like a hardware problem.