Question help troubleshoot internet disconnect at 11:26am

JimKiler

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 2002
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205
106
I have a weird issue that i cannot fix and am looking for help. I VPN into work and so does my wife. We both use work laptops connected to my Asus RT-AC86 router and every weekday at 11:26am we get disconnected from Cisco anyconnect VPN. I tried trouble shooting with my work and they cannot figure it out and offered another VPN solution which i declined. For reference it used to be up to 4 times a day, (9:26am, 11:26am, 1:26pm, and 3:26pm) but it is down to one. I think 5:26pm also occurs but i am done working by 4pm.

I thought it was the VPN but now my daughter is doing distance learning and twice now she has lost connectivity on her chromebook at 11:26. It happens when she is on a google meets video call. The Chromebook does not reconnect and just spins until I have her log out and back into it. I am not too familiar with chromebooks but next time i will have her turn off and on the wifi.

I thought i had a VPN issue but now I am not sure. I played with settings in my router, like the firewall/protection settings but i do not see a difference. Could it be my router or is it my ISP, Nuvera?

I should test this issue on my home desktop but normal TCP/IP protocol should be able to handle dropped packets, is my daughter's school somehow on a VPN?
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,548
10,171
126
Well, hmm. It could be DHCP renew problems between your router and your ISP's WAN router. Normally, a LAN router tries to renew your IP address halfway at the expiration time of your DHCP lease, with the ISP's WAN router. If it cannot, then it tries again, successively, every so often. If it fails to renew, then you will lose your IPv4 address, and thus internet connectivity. IPv4 addresses are in short supply these days, so if your ISP has had more customers sign up in your area, you may be out of addresses in the pool, and some customers will be in an IPv4 address "rolling brownout" situation.

The other issue, might be a "parental controls" / "internet time-out setting" issue with your router's firmware. Did you do a firmware update recently? (It might auto-update, depending on brand.) Also, there can be firmware issues with interacting with DHCP WAN servers too, some routers have more issues than others, due to variants in the protocol.

IPv6 would fix this issue, of course, but many ISPs (like mine as well, Verizon FIOS), haven't implemented IPv6 and rolled it out to their customers. (Comcast HAS, to their credit. They offer their residential customers a dual-stack IPv4 / IPv6 implementation. Usually all that's required is to enable IPv6 in the customer's router settings.)
 

JimKiler

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 2002
3,559
205
106
Well, hmm. It could be DHCP renew problems between your router and your ISP's WAN router. Normally, a LAN router tries to renew your IP address halfway at the expiration time of your DHCP lease, with the ISP's WAN router. If it cannot, then it tries again, successively, every so often. If it fails to renew, then you will lose your IPv4 address, and thus internet connectivity. IPv4 addresses are in short supply these days, so if your ISP has had more customers sign up in your area, you may be out of addresses in the pool, and some customers will be in an IPv4 address "rolling brownout" situation.

The other issue, might be a "parental controls" / "internet time-out setting" issue with your router's firmware. Did you do a firmware update recently? (It might auto-update, depending on brand.) Also, there can be firmware issues with interacting with DHCP WAN servers too, some routers have more issues than others, due to variants in the protocol.

IPv6 would fix this issue, of course, but many ISPs (like mine as well, Verizon FIOS), haven't implemented IPv6 and rolled it out to their customers. (Comcast HAS, to their credit. They offer their residential customers a dual-stack IPv4 / IPv6 implementation. Usually all that's required is to enable IPv6 in the customer's router settings.)

I forgot to mention i reboot my router and the time of day i do that makes no impact. If it was an IPv4 address shortage, would i always be able to reconnect right away? there is not an issue reconnecting to my work VPN.

My Asus router firmware is up to date. Nuvera does not offer IPv6 that i am aware of. I may need to escalate this with them but i am not sure how helpful that will be.

On a side note does Nuvera sound more like a phone company or a birth control pill?
 
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Steltek

Diamond Member
Mar 29, 2001
3,207
982
136
I'd try connecting a machine directly to the modem, bypassing the router. If the Internet connection on it resets, you'll know it is an ISP issue.

If Internet doesn't reset, that will at least tell you the problem is with your router. In that instance, if you haven't done it yet, you might manually record your router settings, do a factory reset to defaults, and then reload your settings to see if it makes a difference.

Also, are you running the stock ASUS firmware? If so, the most recent version description mentions some fixes for "WAN IP connection issues" that might be having adverse issues for you. In that instance, you might try to roll back the router to the next to last firmware to see if it makes a difference.

It also might be worth dropping an email to ASUS support as well to find out if the mentioned "WAN IP connection issues" involved loss of connection at a specific time each day.
 
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JimKiler

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 2002
3,559
205
106
I'd try connecting a machine directly to the modem, bypassing the router. If the Internet connection on it resets, you'll know it is an ISP issue.

If Internet doesn't reset, that will at least tell you the problem is with your router. In that instance, if you haven't done it yet, you might manually record your router settings, do a factory reset to defaults, and then reload your settings to see if it makes a difference.

Also, are you running the stock ASUS firmware? If so, the most recent version description mentions some fixes for "WAN IP connection issues" that might be having adverse issues for you. In that instance, you might try to roll back the router to the next to last firmware to see if it makes a difference.

It also might be worth dropping an email to ASUS support as well to find out if the mentioned "WAN IP connection issues" involved loss of connection at a specific time each day.

I should have thought of that, bypassing the router! i will probably have to wait till Sat or Sun to do it but I will test that.

I have had this issue since March 13th the last day i worked in the office so unfortunately i have upgraded to six different firmwares and it still occurs under each.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,548
10,171
126
I have had this issue since March 13th the last day i worked in the office so unfortunately i have upgraded to six different firmwares and it still occurs under each.
So it started, the day that you started WFH on a VPN? Would that be a correct statement? That seems to indicate either something to do with the VPN, or something to do with your router or ISP with regards to the VPN.
 

JimKiler

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 2002
3,559
205
106
So it started, the day that you started WFH on a VPN? Would that be a correct statement? That seems to indicate either something to do with the VPN, or something to do with your router or ISP with regards to the VPN.

It is hard to say, when i would occasionally work from home i would get disconnected several times, then early in the pandemic they fixed it so it was not nearly as bad. It is after that fix that I started to notice the pattern be 26 minutes after certain hours.

I have my router log file and i see the following

Sep 30 11:25:40 kernel: DROP IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=

Sounds like this could be my firewall, maybe i never turned that off. I will try that first although i really do not like that idea.
 

JimKiler

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 2002
3,559
205
106
It is hard to say, when i would occasionally work from home i would get disconnected several times, then early in the pandemic they fixed it so it was not nearly as bad. It is after that fix that I started to notice the pattern be 26 minutes after certain hours.

I have my router log file and i see the following

Sep 30 11:25:40 kernel: DROP IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=

Sounds like this could be my firewall, maybe i never turned that off. I will try that first although i really do not like that idea.

per my log file the eth0 OUT=MAC is the MAC address of the router LAN MAC address and the destination is my WAN IP.
 

JimKiler

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 2002
3,559
205
106
First despite playing with all my router settings it turns out i never turned the firewall off completely. I did and both yesterday and today i did not get disconnected. Now i would prefer to turn it back on but the firewall rules for Asus require a source and destination IP. I am sure my company has several IP addresses and i would have to set each one up at least 3 times to prevent hiccups. Now Asus has Trend security features and a scan does not even show the firewall status. I have a bunch of other options all enabled so how bad would leaving my firewall off be? I have 6 laptops/desktops, 4+ tablets/phones, 2 andriod TV's and one NAS. I can enable windows firewalls but i have never had a firewall on andriod tablets. What do you guys recommend?