Argh - having major issues with a 2850N (firmware 3.6.3_232201) intermittently rebooting after 2-10 mins. I have tracked it down to a possible wireless issue...

The 2850N has been working fine for about a month until today. It's setup as an AP in our office, with a mix of about 10-15 portable devices (Android and Apple phones, some laptops and tablets) connecting, but today it started to reboot randomly. If I run the router with the AP turned off or with the SSID set to a test name with just my phone and tablet connecting to it everything is fine (2 hours and no reboot), but if I set it back to being the corporate Access Point it falls over within minutes.

At this point, I presume that either:

1) There's a fault with the radio (unlikely as it works when reconfigured?)
2) A device connecting/trying to connect is somehow behaving badly
3) ??

If it's #2, any thoughts apart from reconnecting everything one device at a time until something breaks again?

Anyone else seen this type of behaviour and, if so, any advice!?

I have a second 2850N router arriving tomorrow, so that may help troubleshooting.

Thanks

@linker3000 Spooky, been recently experiencing similar issues here but with my 2920n. Could this be due to the Mayan calendar? ;-)

Perhaps my initial investigations may provide some help for you?

Some background... I have a pair of Drayteks that I previously had issues when trying to use WDS: the 2920 would reboot as soon as the other router (an older 2930) connected via wireless. Draytek support could not recreate the issue so I opted to run a cable between them. I ended-up with the 2920 doing the WAN connections and just the 2930 providing WiFi to avoid any issues. The 2920 has been faultless over the last 6 months+.

Over the holidays I rewired a few things and now have the 2920n providing the WiFi access point. Immediately the router started to reboot. I then tried to simplify things from a clean machine config and re-flashing. Quickly run into the same rebooting. Until I turned off my only Windows laptop at bedtime when it stayed up. Running various mobiles and mac laptops is fine. As soon as the Windows laptop connects it reboots.

The symptoms are that the WiFi drops while the router continues to run for a few minutes. Sometimes the WiFi LED stays on (normally it's flashing). I have a few SSIDs and these disappear before existing connections are dropped. I tried changing the WiFi adapter config on the (Windows 7) laptop. At one point, manually fixing the IP address (rather than DHCP) which allowed it to connect without router reboots but this no longer works.

Q: Can you tie-down the reboots to when a particular Window machine connects?

You mentioned that Android devices are OK using it (similar to my setup). It could be that you have a similar issue with particular Windows machines? Are they running Windows 7? Would be good to see if there is anything in common.

Chris

Hi Chris,

I am going to check out a few things in early Jan, but it's not a priority as the 2850's AP is going to replace an older one, so I have just turned that one back on.

I have had some feedback from Draytek support, but nothing useful.

One theory I am working onis that the router reboots when the AP is set with the same SSID/wpa2 key as the one it is intended to replace and from experience i have seen client PCs refuse to connect properly using their stored settings when APs are changed, even if their setups are identical, so i am wondering if a rogue device is misconnecting under these circumstances.

The only way to rule this theory in/out is to ask everyone to delete and then re-create their settings for the AP, but we have a number of in/out engineers and a couple of sales people that are only in for a few days a month so this will take time. Yes, we have a number of laptops running Windows 7.

I also hope to try looking at some syslogs, but there's a pain-in-the-ass hadware firewall in between me and the router; when I open port 514 (syslog), I'm still not seeing anything so I'll have to configure the 2850 with a second LAN for me to hook directly into, bypassing the firewall.

The fallback plan is to just setup the AP with a completely new SSID and migrate people over to it until either everyone's done, or one device makes the 2950 start to reboot.

Hi @linker3000, thanks for the update.

In my case I've already tried a new SSID and my Windows laptop still causes reboots. I've tried from a factory reset of the router using the default SSID which the laptop will not have previously seen and I'm pretty sure it fails.

I'll test again with a factory reset with no/minimal config changes except a new SSID. I'll also see if I get anything in syslog; I hadn't thought of that. (sys ver dbg shows nothing: "!!!Exception debug info is empty!!!")

Chris

Hello,

I'm getting pretty much the same problem in that my 2850 goes into a continuous loop of rebooting. This problem has started happening since I got an update to my Android phone (HTC One X) to version 4.1.1.
I have contacted HTC about this and my phone went back for repair just before Xmas. I got my phone back yesterday but the problem still ocurs so, HTC have requested that I send it back again, which I am doing today.
However, if I connect to another router with my phone, it does not cause this reboot issue so, I'm guessing something isn't compatible with the latest version of Android I have and the router. I updated my router firmware to 3.6.3

Any ideas how to fix this? and does it help with the above issue, maybe it helps pinpoint the problem a bit more?

Hello again,

My problem may or may not be related to the above but, Draytek just sent me a new firmware for my 2850Vn and it seems to have solved the problem I was getting.