@Tamas71 

Yesterday I caught an episode in the daytime in which the router was able to go online again.

(Cable modem went offline or rebooted, then the led lights stabilized and after a while the router was able to go online.)

 

But this morning, it lost it again without being able to go online.

I caught this too, and I noticed that the internet led was orange, then it turned off for a few seconds, it was orange again.

The router did this a few times, then my scheduled boot happened and after the boot everything was okay.

 

I am sending today's log as I have found it in the router. This is strange too, because the dates in the log are not from today.

(The time setting on my router is correct at the moment.)

 

I experienced these wrong log entry dates already a few days ago. I do not understand why this is happening.

I try to avoid this by setting up a mobile phone with a working ntp server and set the router to take time information from this phone on my lan.

But in spite of this, I know again having these wrong entries. Anyway, I am sending the log to you as I have found it right now.

 

I will try out your suggestions and also monitor the situation and get back if I have any new developments

 

@Tamas71 

 

try setting the MTU Size to 1448 and observe if it still drops the internet.

 

other than that, it might be the lan cable, make sure to use a cat6 or better lan cable connecting the modem to the WAN port on the AX50.

 

i noticed that the AX50 is very picky with cat5e cables but with cat6, cat6e, cat7 or cat8 it works immediately and does not drop the internet access.

 

i hope this helps.

@CHIBOMAN 

Thanks for the tips!

Just bought a quality Cat 7 ethrnet cable online. Going to pick it up soon. Also I will try to change the MTU setting if the cable is not enough.

Hopefully the problem will be solved!

Will be back with the result...

@CHIBOMAN 

Well, I got the cable, tested it:

While modem and router is on and online, I switched off the modem for a few second, then turned it back.

After the modem went online, the router internet led remained orange. 

In the internet settings, the Default Gateway still showed 0.0.0.0.0

I released and renewed the configuration and as usual it resolved the problem. (Also does switching off and on the router while the modem is online)

 

I am attaching the log of this event.

I repeated the test with the updated MTU settings, but the result is the same. :-(

 

@Tamas71 

 

that is weird, one thing i noticed though is that you mentioned that you have 2 lan cables coming from the modem, one going to  the  WAN port of the AX50 and the other to a TV set top box ....

 

how about trying with just the modem connection to the WAN port on the AX50, it could be that the modem won't automatically give an IP to a device if it detects 2 devices trying to get a public IP.

 

if you could ask the ISP who provided you the modem if there's a setting on the modem you need to change for it to automatically give public IP to multiple devices since it looks like the modem prioritizes the set top tv box internet access then forgets about the router connection when the internet is interrupted.

 

aside from that, it could be a device compatibility problem which is very rare to see now adays.

 

another thing you could do is use (clone) the mac address of the set top tv box on the AX50 router, assuming that the modem prioritizes the set top tv box, the cloning of the mac address might trick the modem to automatically give internet to the AX50 when the internet is interrupted.

 

usually you can find the mac address of a device underneath it, just look for a sticker where it says mac address, model no. etc ...

@CHIBOMAN, @Kevin_Z 

You know what, I was thinking about this as well :-)

- I tested this scenario with only the router plugged into the cable modem but unfortunately the result was the same.

-MAC address cloning did not help as well. I entered the mac address of the tv set top box but again, no joy.

 

But when I was watching these two gadgets booting I noticed something.

It seems, that the Vodafone cable modem boots very very slowly. It takes around 2:40 minutes to go online fully. (Madness!!)

Meanwhile, the AX50 router boots faster and I noticed the inerenet led turn off and go orange four times while the modem was still booting.

After the fourth cycle the led remained orange (around 1:46 in the video). So I think that the router tries to go online for times and then it just gives up and leaves it at that.

(This is why MAC address cloning also does not work: the other device can also go online very late.)

 

I made a youtube vide out of this, the link is here. What do you think?:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXjoTpNuL0Y

 

I wonder what the tp-link people who are reading posts here would agree to my assumption.

Maybe it would be worth modifying the firmware so the router would try to detect the internet more times or even adding an option in the firmware so the user could set the number of tries or a timeout limit.

 

There were one thing I was asked by Kevin, a tp-link guy, that I should try to connect a computer to the cable modem directly and test that.

Well I did that, but there was no internet connection, although the computer received a wan ip address. I try to do a ipconfig /renew but it turned out that the computer was not able to detect a DHCP server. Do I need to configure something to make the computer connect?

If static configuration data is needed to do so, then this test is not appropriate as my isp gives me dynamic ip.

 

 

 

@Tamas71 

 

your computer not getting online when directly connected to the modem could be a clue, it might mean that you have to register the mac address of the device (in this case the PC) to the ISP for them to allow your PC to get online when directly connected to the modem.

 

another way of checking is to clone the mac address of the tv set top box on the PC lan adapter.

 

if your using a windows pc, you can do it thru the device manager > network adapter > right click properties > advanced and look for network address

 

by the way, is your internet connection a new connection or was it working before and you just added the AX50,

 

if it was working before with just the modem,  meaning the modem was in modem/router mode, you could just have that setup and just add the AX50 as an access point.

 

but if you want to take advantage of the AX50 advanced features, then we really need to have the modem in bridge mode.

 

can the ISP provide a different modem ?

@CHIBOMAN 

 

I am using the TG3442DE cable modem in bridge mode. I had to ask the technician call their support to have it switched to bridge mode remotely as I the user cannot do it alone.

 

So the whole thing started when our two year loyalty period was up so a Vodafone representative called us and offered a new, faster internet connection for the same price.

We accepted the offer. Because of this, they changed our old cable modem with this new one and I bought the AX50 router.

So both devices and the internet connection are new. This modem is our first Vodafone device as Vodafone bought our ISP (called UPC)

 

My previous router was a TP-LINK Archer C5. I still have it so I am planning to test the new cable modem/connection with that too.

 

Unfortunately, I was told that currently, Vodafone has only this cable modem device for our new faster internet package

 

I still think that the cause of my problem is that the modem is booting so slow that the router timeouts going online.

(Although it is weird that it cannot detect that the cable modem is finally online and get online too.)

I really hope hat a tp-link forum user will read this and advise me.

 

I will post the test result of using my old router. 

 

 

@CHIBOMAN,  Kevin_Z

 

I tested my scenario with my old and trusty Archer C5 router.

The result is the same! It behaves exactly as the Archer AX50

 

But I stand corrected. Now I think that the routers does detect the modem going online, but the received DHCP info is wrong!

(The default gateway parameter is missing!)

I made another youtube video that demonstrates that and I also discovered somethig strange.

Here is the link: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD9T3G6a2tE

 

In this video I was monitoring the WAN settings continously, and it seems that when the modem was almost online (internet led is white and blinking), the router receives some really weird data:

IP Address: 192.168.100.32

Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0

Default Gateway: 192.168.100.254

 

The router has this really weird info for almost 45 seconds, then all parameter goes 0.0.0.0 for a few seconds, then it receives the final (and wrong) configuration: 

IP Address: 80.98.178.145

Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0

Default Gateway: 0.0.0.0

 

I am also attaching a log for this test run.

It is interesting to note that the final two entry in the log: 

Aug 14 09:24:53     DHCP          INFO       DHCPC:GET ip:5062b291 mask:ffffff00 gateway:0 dns1:d52ef635 dns2:d52ef636 static route:0
Aug 14 09:24:53     DHCP          NOTICE     Dynamic IP(DHCP Client) obtained an IP successfully
 

So the router thinks that it got proper DHCP info!

 

I believe I reached the end of the line with this.

I think the routers are fine and the problem is with either Vodafone's hardware or software configuration

I will contact their technical support and try to request help (I suspect it won't be an easy feat to do that.)

 

One more note:

The log information of the Archer C5 is so much better!

While the AX50 is superior in many ways, the log info certainly devolved... :-(

 

I will post follow ups when I news

 

One more thing: with static IP, it works fine: the router can go online without a problem.

But I think I need to request a static ip address for my subscription to make this a permanent solution.

I wonder if Vodafone would accept and grant my request... It is either that or they need to find out what causing this whole mess!