Dodgy home network

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whio

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#295469 31-Mar-2022 08:21

I've been having problems with dodgy internet since I moved here years ago, and I'm now almost certain the problem is in the house. The two culprits I'm most looking at are the chorus bridge, or the ethernet cabling, and I'm not sure how to diagnose further.

Setup

Fibre -> Wireless router -> (some wireless devices)

-> unmanaged switch -> unmanaged switch -> some ethernet devices

Issue

About once a fortnight and typically overnight, my house loses its network connection. The LAN is not fully down, some pings still make it to the router and with trouble I can sometimes load its web interface.

Restarting just the wireless router sometimes fixes this.

Restarting just the Chorus bridge sometimes seems to fix this (uncertain).

Restarting both the router and the bridge does seem to fix it

This morning I had a bit of a breakthrough. I confirmed that restarting the bridge and the router fixed wifi devices but not ethernet devices. Restarting the unmanaged switch brought them back.

Thoughts

I'm stumped. What can cause an ethernet network to go down, such that rebooting an unmanaged switch brings it back?

The router has been replaced. The switches have been replaced. I've tried replacing the ethernet cables.

I'd previously ruled out the ethernet network being the issue because when it goes down, Wifi struggles too. However there is an ethernet cable between the router and the bridge, and maybe ethernet being down just makes the router very sick.

I wrote a program to ping the router and ping my ISP and left it running 24/7. It wasn't very well written but seemed to show random packet drops and occasional longer outages, and that if it could reach the router then it could almost always reach the ISP.

I remember many years ago a dodgy ethernet card was sending bad packets onto the network and causing something a little similar. We ended up throwing out that card.

How can I diagonse further? I can't see how an ethernet cable can cause this - how could a cable start working after a reboot?

I've been wondering if I'm overloading the max connections of the switches. They're little netgear ones https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/SWHNGR3083/NETGEAR-ProSAFE-GS108-8-port-Gigabit-Switch-8x-GbE?qr=GShopping&gclid=Cj0KCQjw_4-SBhCgARIsAAlegrXiJ5qz0z3T_vZZYYYCQg8LQOmZ1C71BPv1IbLWOpiRA7phs_Jd4WgaAic2EALw_wcB so ~200kB of buffer.

The symptoms are almost like I'm doing an internal DDOS on myself.

Question

What now? To be honest, rebooting the network once a fortnight is not too onerous. It's mainly professional pride that wants to get to the bottom of this.

How can I diagnose further?

cyril7

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#2894484 31-Mar-2022 08:39

Hi what router is being used

Cyril

whio

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#2894534 31-Mar-2022 08:56

Google Nest Wifi.

I was using an (ISP supplied) ASUS router connected to an older Google Wifi, but I swapped ISPs in an attempt to simplify the network and fix the issue.

My theory at the time was that the issue was relating to the double-NAT that I couldn't work around (Chorus -> router -> Google Wifi -> LAN). However swapping IPSs and fixing this didn't seem to make any difference. I also tried with an old Draytek I had lying around rather than the ASUS without luck.

When I changed ISPs they gave me a couple Google Nest Wifi routers and I tried swapping one for the other in case it was a faulty unit, but it did the same thing. They have since asked for the second Google Nest back, so I only have one now.

One thing that might be useful... Back when I had both Google Nest routers, I added the second one (via ethernet) to create a mesh, and it seemed like the problem happened more often.

cyril7

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#2894544 31-Mar-2022 09:04

Hi, just confirming in all this tme the google wifi is in place, when you have it setup with double nat and say the draytek, when you loose internet can you confirm if you connect via a lan port of the draytek directly you still have internet?

Cyril

whio

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#2894557 31-Mar-2022 09:21

> Hi, just confirming in all this time the google wifi is in place

Old setup was

Router (asus or Draytek) -> unmanaged switch -> Google Wifi (old version) -> wireless devices

-> unmanaged switch -> ethernet devices

New setup has replaced Router and Google Wifi with a Google Nest Wifi (essentially the same thing but also does VLAN injection so lets me remove the router.)

> when you have it setup with double nat and say the draytek, when you loose internet can you confirm if you connect via a lan port of the draytek directly you still have internet?

Hmm, I don't remember. I'm not sure I ever tested this. I did try connecting to the Draytek directly via Wifi when the network went down it didn't work well, but maybe not 100% packet loss. However I don't remember ever plugging directly into the draytek via ethernet from a laptop.

My current working theory is that something on my LAN is dodgy. Perhaps a faulty device or even simply faulty ethernet wiring. That fault doesn't get triggered often but when it does, it breaks all devices connected to Ethernet. Rebooting then fixes them.

cyril7

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#2894566 31-Mar-2022 09:41

Hi, its quite possible that there is an issue in your LAN, but I would very much look at the Google WiFi, I have found them to be an appaling device that seems to lockout users due to crazy queing policies and the only solution is to reboot them, and only for them to do it again a few days later. I spent waaayyy too much time trying to sort out a Google WiFi issue for a freind a year ago that I no longer will spend any time working with gear that wont help itself. Good luck with finding your solution.

I know the above is not very helpful but honestly, life is too short to deal with gear thats simply is unfit for purpose.

Cyril

freitasm

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#2894599 31-Mar-2022 11:19

I wpuld also remove the switches where possible. They do have some internal ablrs that can become overloaded with time.

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eonsim

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#2894813 31-Mar-2022 14:49

There seems to be some bugs with Google Wifi routers at the moment which result in them losing connection to the internet sporadically and needing to be restarted. There were a pile of reports around the end of last year, then it seemed to improve but still occasionally seeing similar issues.