Internet light turns orange or off
Internet light turns orange or off
I have an Archer AX21 that the Internet light randomly turns orange or off at least once or twice per week. When that happens, devices that are connected via WiFi loose connectivity and I am unable to log in to the router, but devices that are connected via Ethernet continue to work. Rebooting the router by powering it off and then back on resolved the problem, but I've been unable to determine why this happens or how to prevent it.
I'm using the router as an access point (and am running it in Access Point Mode) to provide network access and WiFi to my office on the opposite side of my house where WiFi from the main router is on the weak side. I had a similar issue with a Netgear R7000, which is why I purchased the AX21 to replace it. Unfortunately I'm not able to view logs to try and figure out what happened as when this happens I'm unable to log in to the router (it responds, but slowly and never gets to login screen) and rebooting wipes out the logs.
Has anyone else experienced this issue or has a way of preventing it?
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The Internet light going Orange but staying on indicates a communication issue between the Main router and the AX21. The fact that it's going off could indicate a short in either one of the ethernet ports or the cable. Obviously, the easiest thing to diagnose is swapping out the ethernet cable.
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Thank you for the information. The AX21 and the main router are connected via a run of Cat 5e that I ran myself. While my tester verifies everything is wired correctly, unfortunately I have no way of testing the cable beyond basic wiring. The fact that this happens randomly over a period of a several days probably indicates it's picking up some interference on occasion. A bad cable would explain why I experience this issue with two completely different routers. I guess I need to upgrade to a better quality cable.
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If you have to and the conduit is big enough the best thing to do is tie the new cable to one end of the existing cable and then pull the existing cable out from the other end. That should run the new cable through the conduit with little to no effort.
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Easier said than done. It's an older house with no conduit. The cable runs from the router in my basement above the drop ceiling into my garage and up through the garage ceiling into my office which is above the garage. I ran the current one when I was having additional insulation installed, so they had everything opened up making it easy to run. I could probably still run a new one by pulling it using the old one, but it will take a little more effort. I probably should be running at least Cat 6 or better rather than the Cat 5e I have, especially now that I'm running Giggabit speed, but that's what I had available at the time.
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If the Ethernet runs along with a power cable, you want to consider a sheilded Ethernet cable.
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I see that is could be a bit more complicated. Before you go through that effort do you have the ability to connect directly to the router with a short cable and make sure it is the cable? I would hate to see you run cable and then it not actually be the cause of the concern. As @ArcherC8 mentioned if the cable is running near electrical wires or anything putting out a lot of EMI STP cabling would be best. ITs a bit pricier but worth it in the end. Cat 5E can handel Gigabit but for future proofing especially with multi-Gig now a thing Cat 6 would be the way to go.
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Unfortunately this is a difficult one to diagnose as it's intermitent and only happens once or twice per week, if that much. The cable does not directly run near any electrical wires, but as the run is a decent length (a little over 50 feet) and runs the length of my house, there's plenty of opportunities for it to pick up noise. (It runs within a few feet past a washer and dryer as well as the garage door opener, although the times the light turns orange doesn't seem to corespond to the use of any of those.) The cable terminates on both ends with Cat 6 keystone jacks. On the office side there's a 6 foot Cat 6 cable connecting it to the AX21, on the gateway end there's a 1 foot cable connecting it to a gigabit switch (TP-Link TL-SG105) which connects to the gateway (Netgear C7100V). I have a cable tester and I tested the length from where it connects to the AX21 to where it connects to the switch and the tester showed it passed, indicating all three cables and the two keystone jacks are wired correctly. I have 800mbps service and in testing I consistently get slightly over 800mbps, so the cable is good at least 99% of the time and there's no guarantee that the issue is actually with the cable and not something else.
FYI, I'm assuming this is normal, but I see the same message repeated over and over in the logs. A google search of this didn't return anything definitve. My main gateway is 192.168.0.1 and I have it set to always assign 192.168.0.2 to the AX21.
####################################################################
# Archer AX21 System Log
# Time = 2024-06-12 08:17:20
# H-Ver = 3.0.0 ; S-Ver = 1.1.4 Build 20230219 rel.69802
# LAN: I = 192.168.0.2 ; M = 255.255.255.0 ; MAC = 54:AF:97:15:9B:9C
# Clients connected: 15 ; WI-FI : 12
####################################################################
2024-06-12 08:16:53 dhcpc[9378]: <6> 210054 receive ack from server with ip 192.168.0.2, options(subnet=255.255.255.0;router=192.168.0.1;lease=86400;serverid=192.168.0.1;dns=75.75.75.75 75.75.76.76;)
2024-06-12 08:16:52 dhcpc[9378]: <6> 210053 send select request with options(cliid=01/54:af:97:15:9b:9c:;)
2024-06-12 08:16:52 dhcpc[9378]: <6> 210058 1/2 lease passed, enter renewing state
2024-06-12 08:16:17 dhcpc[9378]: <6> 210054 receive ack from server with ip 192.168.0.2, options(subnet=255.255.255.0;router=192.168.0.1;lease=86400;serverid=192.168.0.1;dns=75.75.75.75 75.75.76.76;)
2024-06-12 08:16:16 dhcpc[9378]: <6> 210053 send select request with options(cliid=01/54:af:97:15:9b:9c:;)
2024-06-12 08:16:16 dhcpc[9378]: <6> 210058 1/2 lease passed, enter renewing state
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Do the gateway system logs show anything of importance when the drop happens? Do you see any light changes on the TL-SG105 when the issue occurs? Although rare, I have seen at times when an unmanaged switch between a gateway and router or AP can be the culprit of intermittent connectivity. Because unmanaged switches are broadcast devices sometimes a broadcast storm can occur and lead to such an occurance. If that is the case we can look into that device and find a resolution.
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The gateway logs don't show anything significant when this happens, in fact there's typically no messages even logged around that time period. Unfortunatley when this happens I'm unable to view the logs on the AX21 as I need to restart it to be able to log in which also clears the logs. Both the gateway and the switch are in the basement, so I can only view them after it's happened, but when I do look the lights appear normal on both. The only real sysmptoms are on the AX21 with the orange Internet light, no 5G WiFi, 2.4G WiFi sometimes still works, Ethernet always works, and the AX21 seeming to be running at 100% CPU as it's too busy to successfully respond to a login attempt. (Login screen never fully loads.) Power cycling always resolves it.
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reviewing back to the orginal post i did notice the FW mentioned is not the latest FW for the router. You might want to install this file and see if that addresses this concern. If it doesn't I can authorize a precautionary RMA. I am not sure if that would resolve the issue but we can give it a shot. That is as long as its with in the product's warranty period still. I can't replace items on expired warranty terms.
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