Hi,

I recently flashed my new TP-Link WDR3600 from the original firmware to the OpenWrt Attitude Adjustment 12.09. Everything is running fine and I am pretty happy with the upgrade but there is one thing that is bothering me for which I do not know whether it is a problem in the router or the firmware or something in between.

Every 30 or so minutes (it is not a regular interval) the connection to the router drops. Firstly, it was when I was connected via 10/100 ethernet on my iMac running OSX 10.9.2. I thought it might be some software issue and cleared PRAM etc but it continued to drop every now and then. Then I thought it might be something with my wiring and decided to move to Wi-Fi on the Mac but it is still happening. It lasts only 10-20 seconds until it reconnects but it is a bit annoying when you are trying to load a page and the moment you click on the link the connection drops.

On the last drop I got this from the log:

Mar 23 06:54:04 OpenWrt daemon.info hostapd: wlan0: STA 10:9a:dd:9f:46:80 IEEE 802.11: disconnected due to excessive missing ACKs
Mar 23 06:54:34 OpenWrt daemon.info hostapd: wlan0: STA 10:9a:dd:9f:46:80 IEEE 802.11: deauthenticated due to inactivity (timer DEAUTH/REMOVE)

I looks like it explains the disconnect but I am not sure whether this is only for the Wi-Fi or could explain the ethernet drops as well. I read about it and changed the disassoc_low_ack=1 to disassoc_low_ack=0 in the config file but as far as ethernet goes is there a setting for it as well?

Let me add to my problem. Now on ethernet when the connection drops the log shows:

Mar 24 13:23:08 OpenWrt daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[25672]: DHCPINFORM(br-lan) 192.168.1.100 c8:2a:14:29:fc:b6
Mar 24 13:23:08 OpenWrt daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[25672]: DHCPACK(br-lan) 192.168.1.100 c8:2a:14:29:fc:b6

Could it be something with the DHCP?

Have you searched bugs?  Generally advice would be to try trunk builds.

I installed the latest one I found on the site for my router:

http://downloads.openwrt.org/attitude_a … actory.bin

I even added the anti-dhcp flood fix for the Win7 found here:

http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/dhcp. … rm.dhcpack

None of this worked. I narrowed it down to the Dnsmasq server because for some reason I get DHCPINFORM / DHCPACK every 20-30 minutes, sometimes even in an interval of 3-5 minutes which is very disturbing...I restarted the dnsmasq on the router a few times but this does not help either

Do as ryts said. AA was marked stable, but there are unfixed bugs, broken wifi is one, but probably not the only one of those confirmed

http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/ … pgrade.bin

I upgraded to OpenWrt Barrier Breaker r40017 / LuCI Trunk (svn-r9961). Will see today if that would help.

No, the upgrade to BB didn't help. Still dhcp resetting the connection every few minutes:

Wed Mar 26 16:06:41 2014 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[1243]: DHCPREQUEST(br-lan) 192.168.1.170 c8:2a:14:29:fc:b6
Wed Mar 26 16:06:41 2014 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[1243]: DHCPACK(br-lan) 192.168.1.170 c8:2a:14:29:fc:b6
Wed Mar 26 16:08:51 2014 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[1243]: DHCPREQUEST(br-lan) 192.168.1.170 c8:2a:14:29:fc:b6
Wed Mar 26 16:08:51 2014 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[1243]: DHCPACK(br-lan) 192.168.1.170 c8:2a:14:29:fc:b6

There's nothing unusal in the log, I have plenty of these too, but not experiencing disconnects or resets. I have leasetime 10 minutes on wr1043nd v2 and wr841n, both devices seem to be fine. Connection is resetting how and on what OS/device?

The connection drops on my 2012 iMac running OSX 10.9.2 Mavericks. A few days ago I couldn't pinpoint to what was causing it but when I started checking the system log of the router the drop happens on every DHCPREQUEST / DHCPACK. It just drops the connection and then a few seconds later gets an IP and connection is reestablished. It is not a drop of a Internet connection but rather connection to the router. I checked the WAN, its connection is uninterrupted.

What I do not understand is when I go to the DHCP section in the router all my devices have leases ending in a few hours. My iMac currently have "Leasetime remaining" of 11h 57m 29s yet it dropped a few moments ago. I guess the leasetime is for 12 hours but for some reason the devices or the router wants to release/renew the lease beforehand..

In the previous post the same device is asking for a new lease in an interval of 2 minutes. I guess this is what is causing the issue.

I do not know whether it is connected to the issue or not but my mobile devices - an iPad, AppleTV and an Android phone do not get that kind of a problem but a Windows laptop does...pretty weird!

So windows laptop drops, imac drops, but everything else works fine? Sorry, I'm running out of ideas here. Pretty weird indeed

Sadly, I moved from DD-Wrt which was working just fine to try openWrt with its multitude of packages and options but with these issues I guess I will have to go back to the previous firmware

You can yet try firstboot, which should reset everything to defaults, then reboot and config again. I don't have exactly your model, but openwrt is working fine for me on a range of other tp links, well except for the wifi bug, whcih has been present on AA. Btw. I've been with dd-wrt too two years back, but I'd not change it back, ever DD-wrt has nicer gui, but that's the only benefit I see, which I don;t mind, because I don't use web gui at all

(Last edited by nozombian on 28 Mar 2014, 10:01)

I have a similar problem with a WDR3600 and 12.09 as well as the latest snapshots.

However, my wifi never appears to drop, whereas my ethernet connections all drop for exactly 3 seconds randomly - sometimes every couple of hours, sometimes every minute or two.  It seems to be somewhat, but not completely, related to traffic volume.  I get nothing that correlates in the logs - see no relation to DHCP so far.

It also seems possibly related to uptime on the router - fresh reboot gives fewer drop outs.

I'm about to give up on OpenWRT too. Random 3 second drop-outs makes gaming impossible.

(Last edited by wiley on 28 Mar 2014, 14:13)

No such issue here, WDR3600 Attitude Adjustment, r38863
uptime of 76 days.

In my case it is surely not related to traffic, I even think it has something to do with inactivity because when I do not download anything at the moment and just browse the net it happens more often.

I did a quick patch which will work for now until I find a solution. On my iMac which I have connected via the ethernet I turned on the Wi-Fi. Because the DHCP drops each of the interfaces at different times when I have my ethernet dropped I still have connection via the Wi-Fi and the other way around...works fine so far but it is a stupid patch )

Are there hardware versions of this router like on some LinkSys routers...I am starting to think it is connected with my router rather than a global problem because of the specifics of the issue. On my router home page in OpenWRT it says "TP-Link TL-WDR3600 v1" - does this imply there is v1.1 or v2?

What version is shown on your router?