Frequent connectivity droppages - rebinding IP?

[Romedial]

Hoping someone can assist - I'm no IT pro, and I can't get through to anyone on the NOW side via phone.

For quite a while now, I've been suffering regular, brief connectivity drops. I've troubleshot this as far as I can. It's not my computer or devices or the line itself, or my WiFi connectivity. No lights go out or flash etc on the router.

The only thing I've been able to nail down is a correlation between these outages and events reported in the router's activity log. The outages correspond with this sort of line in the log, and occur roughly every 30-40 minutes:

[DATE] [TIME] syslog: Lease renewed 3600 rebind time:3060 ip [IP ADDRESS]

So these outages last 3.6 seconds, happen a lot, and seem to be something to do with constantly renewing my IPv4 address? Or something? My knowledge has stretched as far as it goes at this point.

Slightly nervous that this sort of activity might even be suspect. But even if not, is it normal, and how do I get it to stop? 

[gavs82008]

@Romedial 

Below are some standard things you can and probably have done before calling the team.

Have you done a factory reset to the router indicated in the link below?https://help.nowtv.com/article/improve-broadband-speed

This link also shows any planned outages as well wide spread faults.
https://help.nowtv.com/service-status

You need to call the broadband team. See link for number.
https://help.nowtv.com/article/how-to-submit-a-broadband-complaint1

[Romedial]

Thank you @gavs82008 

Yes, already tried all those things. After 1 hour and 9 minutes of waiting, eventually got through to a customer service rep. They tested the line etc, as usual for the triage even though I knew that was all fine. Then they went down the splitting the frequencies stuff, which I'd already done. Eventually disappeared for a few minutes and then just came back and said they're sending me a new router.

So still somewhat in the dark about what this issue actually is. I suspect that course of action was more down to the fact my router was still within its warranty rather than them actually knowing what the issue is.

[gavs82008]

@Romedial 

The thing is FTTC connections are more likely to have faults on it thanks to the copper side. Is FTTP in your area? Although sadly NOW doesn’t offer this.

Edit: if I were you push for a full line investigation and get an OpenReach engineer to check it as far back as the cabinet. 

[Romedial]

Thanks. I think I'll see if the problem persists with a new router, and if not I'll do exactly as you suggest.

[Jayach]

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@Romedial wrote:

Eventually disappeared for a few minutes and then just came back and said they're sending me a new router.

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Do let us know if the new router cures the problem, personally I'm doubtful it will, but I'll keep my fingers crossed. 🤞

[Romedial]

Thanks! I'll come back and update!

[schnapps]

Hi @Romedial 

Whilst waiting for your replacement NOW Router, I would be tempted has a test to go into the NOW Router webpage Settings and disable IPV6.

I used to get various wifi dropouts and loss of connection on my devices, where the NOW Router three green lights would remain on.

Once I disabled IPV6 I haven't encountered problems with loss of connections on any of my devices ever since (3 years plus and counting).

No harm in trying.

[Romedial]

Hi @schnapps - happy to try that. I see two things related to IPV6. One is to disable IPV6 Firewall under Firewall Rules. The other is to disable "Respond to Ping on Internet WAN Port(IPV6)" under the Advanced setttings. Which one would this apply to you think?

[schnapps]

Hi @Romedial 

On the NOW Router webpage Settings click on the Advanced tab, then click on the Lan IP setup tab, then untick the box where it says Enable IPV6 on Lan side, then click on the green Apply button.

From memory the NOW Router will then do a reboot with the new saved settings.

The suggestion above might not resolve the issues in your particular case, but worth a try anyway.