Have to reboot 3800HGV-B once a day. Airplay, filesharing and wifi mysteriously die

[brettnem]

Hello All,

I've had horrible horrible trouble with my Uverse setup. I have internet only service on a 3800HGV-B. This is my third router. The second one was a 3801 (?). The last installer who came out to check on my issues said that router wasn't quite ready for prime time and switched me back to a 3800. All routers have had basically the same problems.

First let me preface by saying that I'm reasonably technical. I understand IP routing and how networks work very well. What I don't understand is what's going on under the hood of the 3800 that makes it so darn unhappy.

So here are my problems:

Wifi is horribly unrelable. On my network I have 2 iMacs, several iphones/ipads, 2 kindles, a lexmark wireless printer and 3 Apple Tvs. If I reboot the RG, everything comes up great. Runs for about a day then things start to crap out. First, wifi just dies. But not on every device. It may start out that nothing can print. Then my phone might not get online. Then my apple Tvs just can't connect to the network. Normally when this happens I'll have a few devices work and few not work. The devices that don't work vary all the time. I do a lot of filesharing so I can see if the devices can talk to each other. When I was using Wifi, I'd normally need to forget the network completely and reassociate to get the devices to work. That worked about 50% of the time. 

So I decided that the RG just has a bad Wifi interface. So I got powerline interfaces for all my fixed devices. Wifi drop outs are a lot less frequent, but still occur now. The wired devices continue to function when this happens! However, one horribly weird thing happens.. Airplay dies. No devices can see each other. Also anything requiring SMB or AFP just doesn't work at all. The ONLY solution to this is to reboot the RG. I reboot the RG and suddenly Airplay, SMB and AFP work. It's like the router goes into some sort of "limp" mode and only allows browsing. I'm 100% sure that AIrplay suddenly working after a reboot is tied to the router. It's not a coincidence.  Oh, also I have a MicroCell and it will sometimes show me "No-Service" on my phone when all this is occurring.

Now, I do all of my TV with online streaming, so I pass a lot of high bandwidth over the link. I don't have any reason to suspect that the DSL line itself is causing problems. But I have seen issues with even Netgear routers spontaneously rebooting because of high traffic on them. Maybe something like that is happening? and if so, what can I do about it?

Like I said, it's usually once a day. Sometimes more than once a day. Rebooting the RG fixes the problem 95% of the time.

The only thing I can even think of that would cause this would be Wifi interference. I live in a neighborhood. I can see 3 wifi networks from most areas in my house. I'm not overly saturated with 2.4 or 5.0G as far as I know. I've also tried adjusting the Wifi channel and disabling WPS.

Browsing for the most part always works

Does anyone have any ideas? I'm about to switch into bridge mode and just get an Airport Extreme router. :/

Located in Lakeway, Tx near Austin, Tx

Thanks,

Brett

[texasguy37 ACE - Champion]

Take a look at the thread below:

http://forums.att.com/t5/Features-and-How-To/How-to-Minimize-Wireless-Interference/m-p/2303003

[brettnem]

Unfortunately this doesn't really address my problem. The majority of my devices are no longer wireless and now use powerilne adapters. They are essentially hard wired now.

Still non port 80 traffic seems to regularly fail requiring a reboot. Does not seem directly related to the wifi issues (which your post is probably relevant.. )

[texasguy37 ACE - Champion]

I directed you to that thread because of this comment in your first message:

The only thing I can even think of that would cause this would be Wifi interference. I live in a neighborhood. I can see 3 wifi networks from most areas in my house. I'm not overly saturated with 2.4 or 5.0G as far as I know. I've also tried adjusting the Wifi channel and disabling WPS.

[brettnem]

I appreciate the help.. The wifi issue is a separate issue. I'm willing to accept the fact that there may be wifi interference. That's why all my devices (except iphone/ipads) are wired.

The wired devices are having the issues; which pretty strongly suggests that it has nothing to do with wifi interference.

Any other ideas?

-Brett

[JefferMC ACE - Wizard]

---

brettnem wrote:

I appreciate the help.. The wifi issue is a separate issue. I'm willing to accept the fact that there may be wifi interference. That's why all my devices (except iphone/ipads) are wired.

The wired devices are having the issues; which pretty strongly suggests that it has nothing to do with wifi interference.

Any other ideas?

-Brett

---

Oops, never mind.  Re-reading the post tells me this is an Internet only customer.

[cori87]

Brett, if you ever get this resolved, please post an update.  Our problems seem to be exclusively tied to wireless, but it doesn't seem to be related to interference.  I've invested in switches to keep computers and networked printer consistently accessible, but iPads, phones, laptops, etc that connect wirelessly are unable to unless we power cycle the router.  This happens at least once a day and I suspect that there's some sort of "suspend mode" for lack of a more technical term that happens with inactivity overnight or when we're out during the day.  Once I've rebooted, connection is fine but it's frustrating.  My post is here:
http://forums.att.com/t5/Wireless-Access-Points/My-2wire-modem-wifi-keeps-resetting/m-p/3047457#M259

Cori

[patscherer]

Brett -

I second the request to please post if you find an answer to this.

We have a much simpler setup than yours: TVs, wired desktop, a couple of laptops and a smartphone. From day one of having the 3800HGV-B set up under Uverse, we have had intermittant issues that the desktop computer will not see/access the shared folders on the laptop. This happens on both wired and wireless configuration of the laptop. One thing that appears to trigger the issue with regularity is to switch the laptop between wired and wireless mode. As you found, nothing short of recycling the entire network beginning with the GW appears to fix the issue...and even that doesn't always fix the issue.

I have a communications background and have methodically worked through every point of failure from software configurations through to upgraded switches. I am pretty sure at this point the problem is in the GW. Does anyone know if upgrading to the 3801HGV would address the problem? We need the ability to switch between wired and wireless with the laptops.