Huawei HG630b drops connections to Windows 7

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Huawei HG630b drops connections to Windows 7

Gyroglm

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#189367 26-Dec-2015 14:09

I've seen several posts about the HG630b, but not exactly this problem.
Right from day one with Spark VDSL, this has been happening - we were with Vodafone VDSL for a long time, and it never happened once. And there were ABSOLUTELY no network changes (as a retired IT pro, I've heard that before :-) except the ISP/router change.
The router is running firmware V100R001C55B021 which seems to be the latest available from Spark website.
The only config changes made were the password, the wifi SSID/passphrase, the DHCP range from 64-253 to 2-99, and NTP settings to use NZ Servers.

The LAN is in two parts -
1. 1 W7 PC, 1 iPad, several iOS & Android phones all on wifi, and 1 wired Vista PC, all with DHCP
2. wired via a Netgear switch - 3 XP, 2 W7, 3 linux, 1 WD NAS, 1 printer, 1 Samsung TV all wired with fixed IP in the 200+ range, and 2 android phones on wifi (different from above)/dhcp.

On LAN 2, the W7 boxes lose connection to the router daily. XP & linux don't. There is a suspicion that the TV might, but its internet use is only occasional and it's difficult to test. When this happens, the affected PC can ping every other device except the router, and every other device can ping it. The cure is to log on to the router, go to Maintenance > Diagnose > Ping Test and enter the IP address.
The result is usually 'fail', but occasionally it is 'pass'. Normally it takes a 2nd test to pass, but sometimes it needs 3 and once it took 4. However I have learned to not trust just 1 'pass', and always ensure it does 2 in a row. After this the PC can ping the router and all is well (until the next time!). On a good day, this might happen once per PC, on a typical day, this happens 5-6 times (once it was 3 times in 5 minutes!) - and that's every day. Needless to say, this is frustrating!
I tried changing 1 W7 from fixed IP to DHCP, but there's no difference. And immediately after changing, ipconfig showed a new IP from the router, but guess what - the router would not respond to a ping!

My assumption is that the router is, for whatever reason, blacklisting the MAC addresses of the W7 boxes. I know that W7 spits a whole lot of garbage onto the network, but it's not exactly a heavy load. Maybe the router is objecting to something. (There is no homegroup set up).

On LAN 1, the W7 is less frequently used, but this still happens. The user fixes it by going into Control Panel & re-establishing a new network connection. She also says that the iPad will drop off the internet, but reconnects by itself a short time later.

I have not yet reported this to Spark, VDSL was meant to be a stop-gap until UFB is installed, and I can put up with it for a short while.
However, I have just learned that the little man in the green jacket who came round two weeks ago and convinced the house owner that Spark could offer a better deal (although the initial offer was only for ADSL, and we are paying more for VDSL in the meantime), has not advanced the UFB order & is not answering his texts!

I have just enabled syslog on the router, so will see if anything is logged (Why does the router insist on needing two log servers?)

PeterReader

6028 posts

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Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#1457397 26-Dec-2015 14:09

Hello... Our robot found some keywords in your post, so here is an automated reply with some important things to note regarding broadband speeds.

If you are posting regarding DSL speeds please check that

- you have reset your modem and router

- your PC (or other PCs in your LAN) is not downloading large files when you are testing

- you are not being throttled by your ISP due to going over the monthly cap

- your tests are always done on an ethernet connection to the router - do not use wireless for testing

- you read this topic and follow the instructions there.

Make sure you provide information for other users to help you. If you have not already done it, please EDIT your post and add this now:

- Your ISP and plan

- Type of connection (ADSL, ADSL2, VDSL)

- Your modem DSL stats (do not worry about posting Speedtest, we need sync rate, attenuation and noise margin)

- Your general location (or street)

- If you are rural or urban

- If you know your connection is to an exchange, cabinet or conklin

- If your connection is to a ULL or wholesale service

- If you have done an isolation test as per the link above

Most of the problems with speed are likely to be related to internal wiring issues. Read this discussion to find out more about this. Your ISP is not intentionally slowing you down today (unless you are on a managed plan). Also if this is the school holidays it's likely you will notice slower than usual speed due to more users online.

A master splitter is required for VDSL2 and in most cases will improve speeds on DSL connections. Regular disconnections can be a monitored alarm or a set top box trying to connect. If there's an alarm connected to your line even if you don't have an alarm contract it may still try to connect so it's worth checking.

I recommend you read these two blog posts:

- Is your premises phone wiring impacting your broadband performance? (very technical)

- Are you receiving a substandard ULL ADSL2+ connection from your ISP?

I am the Geekzone Robot and I am here to help. I am from the Internet. I do not interact. Do not expect other replies from me.

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Gyroglm

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1468107 12-Jan-2016 01:24

Well, logging is interesting, though not helpful. All that is logged are:
1. a once-every-24-hours 'here-I-am'
2. Every successful login (there's quite a few :-)
3. Every explicit logout (but not when it times out)
4. Dropped packets when someone from the internet tries to SSH in
The interesting thing is that while 4 is a 'kernel alert' (I think 'notice' would be a more appropriate level),
1,2,&3 have a severity of 'emerg' - WTF! These should be the lowest 'info' level, not an indication that the router is unusable (although, come to think of it...)

As well, every 2 seconds the router broadcasts a spanning-tree packet which tcpdump reports as having an invalid CRC.

Anyway, the UFB install is underway (but there's a delay, the scoping visit showed a need to lay a new underground conduit, who knows how long that may take.
I was worried that the existing router might still be used, but a new one has arrived. It's a Huawei HG659B.
Funnily enough, the old Vodafone one was a HG659, and that had a major problem with broadcast storms. At random times (I could not discern a pattern), it would start broadcasting ARP 'who has this IP' packets at about 60 pkts/sec, for the same IP addresses over & over again. These storms could be as short as 1 minute (the limit of my resolution), mostly less than 1 hour, but sometimes 2,3,5,10,12 hours straight. Rebooting the router sometimes, but not always, stopped this behaviour.
Interestingly, while this would cripple browsing (which is how it got noticed), file downloads were not affected. They still reached 2.5MB/s.
I hope the 'B' version doesn't have this foible.

Gyroglm

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1495692 19-Feb-2016 14:57

Connection dropping has been resolved for several weeks now by using LAN port 2.

Another minor (by comparison) problem we had was YouTube lagging, and in another post someone said to use LAN port 2, not 1, to solve that. I'm not sure which port was originally being used, because before I could check the owner decided to re-arrange the room and disconnected everything.

Fibre installation is now waiting for the ONT to be installed. In the meantime, I connected the new HG659B to the LAN (had to first change the existing HG630 IP address) to check out its settings and pre-set the WLAN info.

Alarmingly, about 20 secs after the LAN ports became active, this began storming the LAN with gratuitous ARP packets at the rate of 200-300 /sec!!! And the HG630 was replying with 'who are you' ARP packets. Sheesh. Browsing slowed to a crawl. This did not change when using port 2. I can only hope this behaviour won't continue when it is connected as intended.

Two other points about the HG659B:
1- The login alert has changed to user.notice (as it should have been)
2- If SNTP is turned off, there's no option (or I couldn't find it) to set the time/date manually