M4 crashing intermittently

M4 crashing intermittently

M4 crashing intermittently
M4 crashing intermittently
Thursday
Model: Deco M4  
Hardware Version: V2
Firmware Version: 1.8.2

Over the last 6 months I've had 4-5 instances of the M4 router crashing.  It's hard to debug the precise situation, but effectively the Deco goes offline as far as WAN access is concerned, all local wired and wireless devices lose the ability to communicate with the internet and I'm pretty sure local connections between devices also fail.  The only thing I've not been able to definitevely test is whether wired devices are still able to communicate with 192.168.1.1, but my gut feeling is that they can't.

The frustration I have is that the router doesn't detect the crash it is experiencing and therefore doesn't reboot / restart automatically so if I am away from home it means my connected devices such as IP webcams etc fail.

The M4 and it's satellite devices are all on 1.8.2 firmware and the number of devices I've got on the network hasn't increased.

What could I trace through the logs that might help unpick this and / or is there anything I could do to force the router to perform a self-administered reboot?  I don't want to have a scheduled daily reboot of the deco as that pollutes the ISP's data in terms of line stability, and I'm pretty sure that the issue doesn't relate to the ISP as the impact on local communication between devices means its not just the ISP dropping the WAN for some reason.  (I've also experienced this issue across two different ISPs).

I usually have 30-35 devices connected max, mostly wireless, and have the main M4 in router mode with 3 satellite devices.

Any assistance on steps forward would help.  At some point I will of course upgrade to a new mesh setup, but that's hopefully 2 years away at the moment.  

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#1
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2 Reply
Re:M4 crashing intermittently
Yesterday

  @larkim 

Hi, 
Please provide more details regarding the reported phenomenon.


  1. When the Deco crashes, what's the LED status on the main Deco and the satellite Deco, such as solid red, flashing red, etc.?
  2. How do you restore the network connection after crashes, such as rebooting the Deco nodes?
  3. When the reported phenomenon occurs, is the satellite Deco disconnected from the main Deco? If so, how do you test that?
  4. If rebooting the Deco nodes will restore the network connection, but you do not want to schedule a daily reboot, you may go to the Deco app > More > System > Reboot Schedule to enable the weekly reboot schedule if you can see the option, and check if it helps.

 

Best Regards

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Re:M4 crashing intermittently
Yesterday

  @Solla-topee Hi, thanks for responding.  I can't be definitive about some of the answers here as unfortunately the last two times this has happened I've been away from home and another family member has reset the unit.

 

1. When the Deco crashes, what's the LED status on the main Deco and the satellite Deco, such as solid red, flashing red, etc.?

All units show solid red I think.  


  2. How do you restore the network connection after crashes, such as rebooting the Deco nodes?

Restarting the main unit only restores network connection for all other units - i.e. I don't need to restart the satellite nodes


  3. When the reported phenomenon occurs, is the satellite Deco disconnected from the main Deco? If so, how do you test that?

This is difficult to diagnose; mostly because once devices are unable to find the internet via WiFi they "pretend" that wifi is down and revert to things like 5g or simply show that they can't connect.  I *think* that if I was on a PC I would be able to ping / tracert to the satellite nodes via their IP addresses, but can't be sure.  But as posted above, physically restarting the main unit solves the issue.  


  4. If rebooting the Deco nodes will restore the network connection, but you do not want to schedule a daily reboot, you may go to the Deco app > More > System > Reboot Schedule to enable the weekly reboot schedule if you can see the option, and check if it helps.

Agree that this is feasible, however a weekly reboot is a clunky workaround to something else being an issue, and it doesn't resolve the fact that a crash may happen outside of that window.  Of course, it could be that 3-4 weeks of constant use builds up some sort of memory leak or similar, but I've not got any info to say that that is the issue or not.  And if that is the issue, I would like to be able to pinpoint it in any event so that a solution could be found.  

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