Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 3:12 Post subject: R9000: ISP throtting internet after upgrade (MAC unchanged)
I have a Netgear R9000 Nighthawk X10.
Until today, I've been using the same firmware on my R9000 for over 3 years. It was fine for most of that time, until recently I started having strange outages and even an incident where the Wi-Fi firmware crashed. So, with my firmware being so old, I figured it was time to upgrade:
Code:
r36330 (07/16/18) -> r47377 (09/07/21)
Since this was such a huge version jump, I decided it was best to make an nvram backup, take screenshots of all my settings, and do a factory reset after upgrading. So I did just that.
Long story short, the upgrade went fine, I've manually configured everything again, and the firmware is working well.
However, after upgrading, I'm noticing that my ISP seems to be serving me their "throttled" speed; I have gigabit download here, but from experience, they seem to serve ~130Mbps whenever there is some kind of misconfiguration, or an unknown MAC is connecting. That is exactly the speed I'm seeing now, and that speed alone is a "red flag" to me that there's a problem.
Additionally, I see two strange things about my connection that were not present before the firmware upgrade.
First, on the status page, my WAN IPv4 is showing as a range of IPs, rather than just a single IP or an IP with /32:
Code:
WAN IPv4 ***.***.***.***/22
Second, under Status > LAN, I see the following record:
Code:
Hostname IP Address If
* ***.***.***.1 vlan2
Unlike the other devices on my LAN, it is showing an interface of "vlan2" rather than "br0." Additionally, it seems to be a gateway IP - it is the same as the WAN IPv4 above, with a 1 at the end instead.
And to top that off, while services like ipinfo.io are showing me as having a different IP than I had before this firmware update, my router is still receiving connections destined to my old IP. I can contact my old IP, and while it is different from my current external IP, I will still receive that connection. I will receive connections from my current IP as well. It's like I have two IP addresses.
Were it not for these oddities, I probably would have called my ISP by now (SuddenLink). But this is not something I saw on my previous firmware, and absolutely nothing else has changed - not even the WAN MAC address. So I'm at a loss at what to do.
I figured I'd make this forum post, because SuddenLink's support is incredibly rude, clueless, and you have to pull teeth to talk to anyone with any kind of technical knowledge. Plus, I'm bound to get some friction if I have to explain to any of them what the heck DD-WRT is or why I'm using it...
Has anyone seen this before? Was there some kind of change in default behavior in how vlan's are handled between the major versions I jumped from?
Quick summary + notes:
- Router is Netgear R9000
- ISP is SuddenLink (connected via DOCSIS with an Arris modem)
- Did factory reset on R9000
- Upgraded r36330 -> r47377
- Configured everything like I had it before
- Noticed the throttling issue as described above, with strange vlan2 device on LAN that was not present before update
- WAN MAC address is identical to what it was in my screenshots before upgrade
- Modem is completely unchanged
- I have rebooted the router and the modem several times in varying orders - no change
Thanks!
Last edited by LinuxEnthusiast on Fri Sep 10, 2021 3:59; edited 4 times in total
Several hours later, it seems the issue is no longer present. My speeds are back to normal and the firmware is fine. I have no clue what happened, and it's still odd for my IP to have changed, but I guess it goes to show the answer to suspected ISP problems is "just wait."
My WAN IP is still showing as ***.***.***.***/22 (yes, /22, not /32), which is pretty weird to me. But, @Per Yngve Berg pointed out that vlan's are now shown in the list of LAN devices, so maybe another change happened to the WAN IP display; before I updated, there wasn't a subnet notation at the end at all, just a plain IP. Maybe it was always supposed to say '/22' and I just never realized (or, perhaps it could be a bug in the current firmware, maybe a code typo 32 -> 22, who knows).
Anyway, thank you @Per Yngve Berg for the response.
My problem is resolved, but if anyone can explain this weird /22 IP being displayed, I'm all ears.
