Losing broadband connection at router regularly

[d bennett]

A few times a week i am losing both wired and wi-fi internet connection to internet.

The last time this happened i ran a diagnostic check which said the connection was fine (i assume this means exchange to my openreach box) but i had no wired or wi-fi internet connection.

The issue seems to be fixed if i re-start the router. But this is not sustainable approach.

I was upgraded to g-fast in Aug and these issues started soon afterwards. I am on a TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub version SG4K10002816t for 3 years.

How to resolve?

[Debbie-TalkTalk]

Hi d bennett

Sorry for the delay, you should now have a PM. If you click on your Community avatar and then click on the little envelope.

Thanks

Debbie

[d bennett]

Where will i find a private message?

[Debbie-TalkTalk]

Hi d bennett

Thanks for your reply.

I'm just sending you a Private Message.

Debbie

[d bennett]

G.fast 150

[Debbie-TalkTalk]

Hi d bennett

Sorry for the delay.

Can I just check, which package are you on?

[Gliwmaeden2]

@Chesterdog, staff will only reply to the original poster. 

You need to return to the message board and click on start a topic to open your own thread. 

Also: add your Talktalk landline number to your community forum profile details for TT staff to identify your account. 

Go via your avatar/name; settings; launch profile wizard. 

[Skynet_TX]

Ok, a replacement Huawei hub might be best then, but I'll paste the details below of the setting you could change on your current Sagemcom hub if you wanted to give it a try :

At present your router will be acting as the DNS server for all of your devices, so when the DNS stops working in your router all of your devices will lose internet access. However you could configure your router so that it just tells all of your devices to use the TalkTalk DNS servers directly, therefore your devices won't use the router as a DNS server, and so shouldn’t be affected if the routers DNS stops working.

If you wanted to try this you just need to follow the instructions for the 'Wi-Fi Hub' here (ensure you go to the screen described in this article, as there are two screens in the router where you can modify DNS settings, but you must change the settings on the specific screen described in this article for this potential fix to work).

If you have never changed these settings before you will probably find that the primary DNS server is set to 192.168.1.1 (i.e. the router itself). You could change the settings as follows (or use any other DNS service of your choice) :

Primary : 79.79.79.79
Secondary : 79.79.79.80

These are the current preferred TalkTalk DNS servers (they are mentioned at the bottom of that webpage so you know they really are genuine TalkTalk DNS servers).

IMPORTANT : Having changed the settings you would need to make your devices disconnect and reconnect to the router (you could just reboot the devices or the router). When your devices have reconnected they will be configured to use those two addresses above as their DNS servers. So from that point on the devices will use the TalkTalk DNS servers directly rather than going via the routers DNS service.

Making this change may well resolve the issues for you, but if you do ever want to 'undo' this change all you need to do is put the old values back into that screen, or you could just factory reset the router by holding in the pinhole reset switch on the back for over 10 seconds, as that will return all settings back to their initial defaults.

[d bennett]

Yes. LED white and power off/on resolves.

Huawei router possibly best solution. My home setup means i am streaming from media server to chromecast, so not simply devices accessing Internet. But let me know what the setting update is for current router and i can investigate. Thx.

[Chesterdog]

My WiFi has completely disappeared. Can't connect on my mobile nor the TV, twice this has happened after complaining and being sent new kit! Tried to log into the router on my mobile and getting nowhere. No 24 hour support want to rip it out and go elsewhere. Absolutely rubbish talktalk. So fed up, we need WiFi for more reasons than just browsing but work purposes, my daughter already lost a day pay because this happened. Fuming 

[Skynet_TX]

Hi @d bennett,

Does the LED remain solid white on the router, but your devices lose internet access, and if you restart the router everything works again for a while, but then it will happen again ?

If so, you may well be suffering from a known DNS resolution error that affects this version of firmware on this router. There is a new version of firmware that is being rolled out to fix this issue, however the rollout is currently paused whilst TalkTalk make a further small change to the firmware.

The staff here on the community may be able to send you a router of a different make (the Huawei hub), that is not affected by this issue and so should resolve the problem for you. They will hopefully be able to respond to this topic tomorrow to help further.

Alternatively, if you are comfortable with logging into the router and changing a setting then you may well be able to stop the issue from happening, but it is only a good idea to try this if you have a fairly simple home setup (i.e. just devices that need to access the internet), if you have devices that need to talk to each other and rely on your router to provide local DNS for the devices to find each other, then trying this workaround is probably not appropriate, as it may stop those devices from being able to see each other.

If you did want to try changing settings on your router then let me know and I'll post the details, you can easily undo the change if necessary.