WRT3200ACM - WAN connection dropped, router won't recover

Hi there everyone :slight_smile:

I've had OpenWRT installed for a couple years now, but I'm having some annoying issue with my router no longer recovering from a dropped WAN connection. The only time my internet connection drops is usually in the wee hours of the morning (1:00am - 4:00am) when Rogers / TekSavvy is doing some kind of system maintenance around that period of time. It can happen two or three times a month. The modem itself is a Technicolor DCM475 and it has NEVER failed to recover from a dropped signal. When my ISP brings the connection back up, the modem has always reconnected me without any user intervention. The same can also be said for the WRT3200ACM as once the modem reconnected the router would reconnect all my wireless and wired devices without fail.

The problem I have now though is that the router won't reconnect my devices when the modem comes back online anymore. I have to either reboot the router or turn it off and on again. This was never necessary in the past, and I'm beginning to suspect that something in OpenWRT is preventing this from happening automatically like it did before. I've had OpenWRT on this router since version 17.x and have never encountered this problem before. I can't say exactly when this started happening but it may have began somewhere around the 19.x branch. This really doesn't help identify anything.

What should I do?

Thanks for any help you guys may provide me with.
Cheers!
~Dustyn~
OpenWrt 19.07.6 r11278-8055e38794 / LuCI openwrt-19.07 branch git-21.022.31068-7129723

Can you please explain what you mean with this, please?

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Sorry about this, I will try to.

What I mean is that although my modem comes back online automatically and the "Internet" light is on and flashing rapidly on the router, their is in fact no internet connection on any device connected to the router. Be it a wireless device or a wired device. Only way to restore internet connectivity is to reboot the router.

When this happens, can your devices reach the router?

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The devices can reach the router (android smartphones, wired windows pcs) but complain that their is no internet connection available. As an example, I can navigate to 192.168.1.1 through either my WI-FI on my connected smartphone or on my wired Windows PC device... but the amount of time it takes to load the Luci GUI login page is very slow. The page will eventually allow me to log into the router so that I can click on the reboot button under the system menu, but this takes time to load and is very slow. I would say for each link I click to access the router settings takes about 10-15 seconds before each page loads and I am able to click reboot. After rebooting, all is well and very snappy until my ISP drops my internet connection for system maintenance.

Are you sure as to the ISP outage, verified. Wondering if it isn't just a router issue. Can you ssh in and check load (top, htop) when this occurs, check how things look.

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Can the router itself cause my internet connection to drop?
I can ssh in when the issue occurs next, sure.

I ask because when the internet stops working I look at the modem lights and it's clearly lost sync and will not resync the connection until anywhere from 15minutes to hours later. But the modem will always resync the connection successfully. The only things I've tried is to is to manually intervene by disconnecting the router and checking if I can get the modem to come back up sooner by cutting power to it and plugging the power back in. The connection will not come back up until my ISP brings service back online from their end. Is the ISP outage verified? Not verified, but almost certain it's the ISP as other people who use the ISP have complained about this issue before. :worried:

My only point is that your description above would indicate that the rango is pegged under load (takes forever to get to LuCI). I would not expect this regardless of the Rogers modem having a connection, but...

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On one side, it looks like your router just fails to maintain / recover the WAN connection. On the other hand, that should not make it hard to reach from inside.

How is your WAN interface configured?

WAN interface is WAN and WAN6 using DHCP client and DHCPv6 client, using built in IPv6 management.

Please let me know if you need more detail about the WAN interface.

On a side note: I'm assuming in advanced settings using "force link" and "use broadcast flag" is completely irrelevant to ask about in regards to this issue? They are both DE-selected by default and have always been just in case.

A DHCP connection should "just work" when the upstream router recovers, and it should never cause any issues to the internal network... I am a bit lost here.

Please run the following commands (copy-paste the whole block) and paste the output here, using the "Preformatted text </> " button:
grafik
Remember to redact passwords, MAC addresses and any public IP addresses you may have

cat /etc/config/network
cat /etc/config/dhcp
ip -4 addr ; ip -4 ro li tab all ; ip -4 ru;

Thanks for the reply eduperez,
Hopefully I executed the commands correctly.
I tried to filter out anything that shouldn't be public.

BusyBox v1.30.1 () built-in shell (ash)

  _______                     ________        __
 |       |.-----.-----.-----.|  |  |  |.----.|  |_
 |   -   ||  _  |  -__|     ||  |  |  ||   _||   _|
 |_______||   __|_____|__|__||________||__|  |____|
          |__| W I R E L E S S   F R E E D O M
 -----------------------------------------------------
 OpenWrt 19.07.6, r11278-8055e38794
 -----------------------------------------------------
root@STARGATE:~# cat /etc/config/network

config interface 'loopback'
        option ifname 'lo'
        option proto 'static'
        option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
        option netmask '255.0.0.0'

config globals 'globals'
        option ula_prefix 'redacted::/48'

config interface 'lan'
        option type 'bridge'
        option ifname 'eth0.1'
        option proto 'static'
        option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
        option netmask '255.255.255.0'
        option ip6assign '60'

config interface 'wan'
        option ifname 'eth1.2'
        option proto 'dhcp'

config interface 'wan6'
        option ifname 'eth1.2'
        option proto 'dhcpv6'

config switch
        option name 'switch0'
        option reset '1'
        option enable_vlan '1'

config switch_vlan
        option device 'switch0'
        option vlan '1'
        option ports '0 1 2 3 5t'

config switch_vlan
        option device 'switch0'
        option vlan '2'
        option ports '4 6t'

root@STARGATE:~#
root@STARGATE:~# cat /etc/config/dhcp

config dnsmasq
        option domainneeded '1'
        option localise_queries '1'
        option rebind_protection '1'
        option rebind_localhost '1'
        option local '/lan/'
        option domain 'lan'
        option expandhosts '1'
        option authoritative '1'
        option readethers '1'
        option leasefile '/tmp/dhcp.leases'
        option localservice '1'
        option port '53'
        option resolvfile '/tmp/resolv.conf.auto'

config dhcp 'lan'
        option interface 'lan'
        option start '100'
        option limit '150'
        option leasetime '12h'
        option dhcpv6 'server'
        option ra 'server'

config dhcp 'wan'
        option interface 'wan'
        option ignore '1'

config odhcpd 'odhcpd'
        option maindhcp '0'
        option leasefile '/tmp/hosts/odhcpd'
        option leasetrigger '/usr/sbin/odhcpd-update'
        option loglevel '4'

config host
        option name 'PAVILION'
        option dns '1'
        option mac 'redacted'
        option ip '192.168.1.100'
        option duid 'redacted'

config host
        option name 'APC'
        option dns '1'
        option mac 'redacted'
        option ip '192.168.1.101'
        option duid 'redacted'

config host
        option dns '1'
        option mac 'redacted'
        option ip '192.168.1.102'
        option name 'ASPIRE'
        option duid 'redacted'

config host
        option mac 'redacted'
        option name 'NPI590BDE'
        option dns '1'
        option ip '192.168.1.161'

root@STARGATE:~#
root@STARGATE:~# ip -4 addr ; ip -4 ro li tab all ; ip -4 ru;
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN qlen 1000
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
15: br-lan: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP qlen 1000
    inet 192.168.1.1/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global br-lan
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
17: eth1.2@eth1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP qlen 1000
    inet redacted/27 brd redacted scope global eth1.2
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
default via redacted dev eth1.2  src redacted
redacted/24 dev br-lan scope link  src 192.168.1.1
redacted/27 dev eth1.2 scope link  src redacted
broadcast 127.0.0.0 dev lo table local scope link  src 127.0.0.1
local 127.0.0.0/8 dev lo table local scope host  src 127.0.0.1
local 127.0.0.1 dev lo table local scope host  src 127.0.0.1
broadcast 127.255.255.255 dev lo table local scope link  src 127.0.0.1
broadcast 192.168.1.0 dev br-lan table local scope link  src 192.168.1.1
local 192.168.1.1 dev br-lan table local scope host  src 192.168.1.1
broadcast 192.168.1.255 dev br-lan table local scope link  src 192.168.1.1
broadcast redacted dev eth1.2 table local scope link  src redacted
local redacted dev eth1.2 table local scope host  src redacted
broadcast redacted dev eth1.2 table local scope link  src redacted
0:      from all lookup local
32766:  from all lookup main
32767:  from all lookup default

Everything looks as expected, I have no explanation to the behavior you are experiencing. I think you should do more tests when the issue happens.

1 Like

Hi eduperez,

Okay well I would like to thank you for looking into this and confirming things look okay.
So because I am unable to pin-point the exact reason why this is happening, I have decided to perform a Luci GUI reset on the device, followed by "firstboot" and "reboot" ssh command to be sure erasing all custom settings, downloaded files and packages. Then proceeded to reconfigure the router without any additional downloaded and installed packages to see if things behave the same or differently come the next cable modem dropout. No dropouts since the initial thread creation.

I will post back (if thread isn't locked) on the next modem signal drop to report how the WRT3200ACM handled the event.

Cheers! :slight_smile:

1 Like