Archer C5 causing trouble in private network

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Archer C5 causing trouble in private network

This thread has been locked for further replies. You can start a new thread to share your ideas or ask questions.
Archer C5 causing trouble in private network
Archer C5 causing trouble in private network
2016-01-09 20:56:52
Model : Archer C5

Hardware Version : V1.2

Firmware Version : 150428

ISP : Unitymedia (Germany)

My Archer C5 (V1.2 non-US model, running latest firmware Archer C5_V1.20_150428 ) causes big trouble in my private network. It took me some considerable time to pinpount the C5 as root cause of my problems, but now I am stuck as there seems to be no firmware updates done for the 1.2 model since months and I can no longer use the C5 ... . Bare with me, the following description is quite lenghty but I try to provide all relevant info from the beginning...

Network topology:
My private network is connected to the internet via a cable modem. Attached to this modem is a TP-Link WDR 3600 (used as router, NAT translation and DHCP server 192.168.0.1, 255.255.255.0). On this private network I have a wide variety of network devices attached via Ethernet cables and wireless (PCs, notebooks, mobile phones, TV, 2 additional WLAN access points ...). The C5 is one of these WLAN access points.

Initial problem
Everything worked fine but once in a month the internet become no longer available since 3-4 months. The clients reported that there is no internet connection, but not even the private network was accessible because the DHCP clients didnt't get any DHCP configuration. So even a reconnect was not possible. Even restarting the WDR-3600 router (and DHCP server) didn't help / didn't change the problem. The problem was in my local network. When I connected directly to the modem I could access the internet ... . The only circumvention to regain internet access was to shutdown the router + all WLAN APs then restart them. Then everything worked fine again. Some strange error but happening just every 4-6 weeks at this time.

Increase in occourence
Since 3 week I got the same error once per day. Really annoying. The only change I was aware of was that about at that time I added the first Windows 10 notebook to my WLAN (I had Linux, Win 7, Vista, Android, ioS devices before).

Some more serious debugging
I tried to force the error with the Win 10 notebook. I found a scenario where I can immediately force the error: I have to play an mpeg 4 file from the noteboook using the "video and TV" app from Microsoft remotely on the DVD player. This caused the problem not immediately but reliably wihtin 2-3 minutes wjile playing the video. I used this scenario to remove active devices from my network and to pinpoint the root cause. In the end I just had 3 devices attached to the network: The WIn 10 notebook connected via WLAN to the C5, the C5 as access point connected via an ethernet cable in his switch to the WDR3600 switch which is the router/DHCP server. In this scenario I could easily force the problem by playing the MGEP video. Then I replaced the C5 with a spare WDR-3600, keeping everything else the same and I could no longer create the problem. Actually since more than a week I have added all devices back but kept the C5 replaced by the spare WDR-3600 and the error did not occur again ... .

Any hints what can be done with the C5? Any special configuration aspects related to that video playing scenarios or Win 10? Any firmware update beyond 150428? Currently the C5 which I bought just 7 months ago is completely useless to me ... .
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