[SCLead]

I'm a few baby steps above 'complete idiot' with networking stuff, so please don't be afraid of spoon feeding me.

Bought a used RT-AC5300 that had DD-WRT installed, 2021 era version. Factory reset right away. Had some fits getting internet at all, but got it figured out with some help from the ISP (Spectrum cable, for what it's worth). They asked me to reset the modem and confirm the router MAC, and things started working. Not sure what, if anything, was done on their end here. I'd already restarted the modem and router numerous times, but she claimed that's all that was needed. I suspect they register the MAC addresses? I for sure had to have them update my modem MAC when I found my old modem in a box and switched from their supplied modem.

Connecting through a Netgear CM1000 modem, though that shouldn't matter I suspect.

So, old DD-WRT version, once it was dancing with the ISP - seemingly no issues. Wifi worked fine...for a few hours. Then all my devices started dropping connection every 30-45 seconds, I'd have to open my wifi settings on the device, find the network, click connect. It would work for a while, then drop again. This was last night.

This morning, no internet on wifi at all, despite strong connections (600sqft two story apartment - not much room to get away from the router).

Updated the DD-WRT version tonight:
Firmware: DD-WRT v3.0-r58283 std (09/02/24)

Same issue, no internet on wifi. Ethernet through the router has no problem connecting. I've been hunting for hours, tried many solutions to no avail.

- Local IP is set to 192.168.17.1/24 - not sure if I should change the /24 to something less common, or is the IP enough to deconflict? Seems problems here would disrupt ALL internet, not just wifi?

- I have a WAN IP, obviously - given functional ethernet.

- Put in an NTP Client Server 129.6.15.30 (NIST) thinking maybe time sync between devices and router may mess with things? Leaning on radio cryptography thoughts here, no clue if it applies to this.

- Reduced DHCP start address from .100 to .20, and max users down to 20 - I live alone, don't have many devices. Don't care or know anything about this, just a "solution" I found online, didn't do anything for me.

- Disabled 2.4GHz; don't expect to use it.

- Had issues resolving ANY internet today. Enabled MAC cloning to match the printed MAC on the router, as this had incremented up. Suspect Spectrum registers MACs. This got me online with wired connection, but no dice for wifi.

I've cycled through a bunch of other 'fixes' from the internet, but nothing seems to change the wifi issues. Not sure where to go from here. Apologies if I missed a document somehwere, most stuff I found here was either outdated, or in line with my settings.

[kernel-panic69]

How exactly did you reset the device? Seems there's this mystery issue with this device....

WAN DHCP and MAC address Issue - can't get address!

... and I can't see your webUI pages to tell if the MAC addresses are all hosed up or what, but they should be read on boot unless there is a reset method that is b0rking the sh*t out of the information.

[SCLead]

The 'reset' was just power off, hold the WPS button while powering on. Wait for the power light to blink, then power cycle. Prior to that, I wasn't able to access the router GUI at all. Presumably an altered local IP by the last owner. The reset placed the GUI at 192.168.1.1, asked for new login/password, etc. so I assumed this was a full reset. If there are more thorough options, I'm happy to give them a shot.

Installing the new version of DD-WRT was done through the ASUS recovery tool, so I figure that should(?) be a full reset as well?

At some point I did fiddle with every MAC I could find, attempting to get the WAN mac back to what my ISP expects. I *think* I've done the 'WPS buttton reset' since then to flush any incorrect changes I made. Also happy to get screenshots of any pages that might help diagnose, just let me know what feels pertinent!

[SCLead]

Reading through the thread you shared last night; mostly over my head

I honestly don't understand enough to say I do or don't have the same issue; my MAC addresses seem stable, but I also have no idea which MAC address on which configuration pages correlate to what physical device. I fiddled with probably every one of them until I figured out which one I had to change to get the WAN MAC to show 'correctly.' My WAN MAC had gone up by one digit: XX:XX:XX:XX:D2:E1 instead of :E0 the ISP expected to see, so it hadn't zeroed out as in the other thread.

I'm going to do a factory reset according to these directions from Asus, power it off and go about my day. Tonight I'll start by setting up MAC cloning to keep my ISP happy, updating my local IP, then take baby steps from there in terms of what settings get touched, since right now I'm honestly not sure what may have been changed and not restored to where it should have been.

[SCLead]

Fresh settings all around:

- MAC cloning enabled
- Change local IP
- Set correct time zone
- Wireless security set up

This combination got internet working all around...For a while. Then back to dropping connections on wifi, but no issues on ethernet.

Much head scratching, reading, and digging later: NordVPN is my problem. It appears NordVPN has just totally died on me in the last couple of weeks, and I failed to notice.

I recently moved, using a managed "secure" wireless network daily, immediately found I had no internet while my VPN was enabled, on any of my devices. Figured that's just the way the network admin rolls, so I 'trusted' their network with NordVPN and left it at that. Haven't had internet in my apartment until this router, so the obvious issue would be the router, since I don't have issues anywhere else.

If I disable my NordVPN connection, I get internet immediately, on all my devices, wired or not. Autoconnect running VPN in the background on everything kept it completely out of my mind.

Reinsalled the Nord app - same issues. Tried setting up NordVPN within DD-WRT, it kills everything. Think I might be calling NordVPN support here soon. Never even thought to look at that, as it's run flawlessly in the background for me for many years.

[bushant]

Sounds like kill switch enabled and using PBR .

OpenVPN client setup guide is sticky in Advanced networking forum
which has a short section dealing with Nord.

[SCLead]

Thing is, my connection is killed even without touching the DD-WRT installation. Even if I'm using the NordVPN app on Windows or iOS, as soon as VPN is connected, my internet dies. So the problem seems beyond a DD-WRT configuration issue, but I will definitely play with that. THank you!

[SCLead]

So killswitch didn’t appear to be an issue. There was one setting off in the VPN client setup, plus a time sync issue. Fixed the missed setting (I’d set Compression to ‘disabled,’ instead of ‘no.’ Semantics matter.) and put in a time server, which I hadn’t done on this reset. That all got NordVPN working on the router, and no longer blocking access from devices running the local client. It also throttles my “600Mbps” connection to about 40Mbps if I’m running it on the router, so that was all for naught.

But now I’m back where I started. Wired connection works flawlessly. Wifi works on half of my devices, and not the other half…which is 50% better than I was before.

What the heck am I missing here? My ipad connects fine (using it now, somewhat ironically with VPN running fine), my laptop connects fine. My iphone will just pinwheel next to the network name forever, never resolving an IP. My PC shows “connected, no internet.” At this point, I’ve uninstalled NordVPN until I iron out quirks with the foundational network, so that factor is removed from everything but the ipad.

Wireless settings are more or less defaults. Should I force a channel selection? Scanning shows channel 44 (8 networks) and 157 (9) are in use by the overhwelming majority of networks around me, followed by 36 (2), and only one running 40. Lots of folks eating up 2.4, which I’ve just been avoiding and have disabled.

[SCLead]

In case anyone is remotely as uneducated as I am, and finds this looking for their own solutions:

I set up DHCP Server settings in the basic setup tab to get VPN running on the router. Instead of zeroing these attributes out when I decided to shut off the router VPN, I just disabled the DHCP Server option. This kept my already connected devices running fine, but wouldn't accept new connections, so my other devices were locked out.

I *seem* to be functioning now. Thanks for everyone's input and things to look in to. We'll see if new problems blossom over the next few hours, as they've been tending to.