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Serious problems with all 7 Vigor 2830n units

  • vmgscot
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26 Sep 2012 11:14 #73633 by vmgscot
Hi
We have 7 x 2830n units installed around the country almost exactly a year ago. They were installed running firmware 3.3.6.1. They have all been runing reliably for the past year and have not had any config changes since install.
But in the last 3 weeks they have all developed faults one by one. The fault is the same on every unit... they all restart several times a day and every few days completely lockup (all lights on solid except DSL). When first unit failed, I thought it might be hardware so replaced with brand new 2830n and firmware 3.3.7.1 and reloaded config manually (to avoid config data corruption). Within a few hours this router started same failure.

Any help or experience like this?

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26 Sep 2012 17:26 #73640 by adminx
I have two 2830n routers that do the same on both 3.3.6.1 and the latest firmware version.

The first unit went back to Draytek and came back 'sorted' with the firmware flashed.

It works OK for random periods and then intermittently allows traffic in and out in fits and starts before locking everything up.

I've tried downgrading the firmware and setting up from scratch in case the settings config file had some bearing on the issue but I get the same results.

The irony is that I bought the second unit to replace the first when it went back to Draytek to tide us over, mainly because we serve a lot of VPN tunnels to remote workers and, to my chagrin, it does exactly the same as the first unit...

The only way to get things moving again is to manually power cycle the unit.

I've taken the Draytek out and dropped an Untangle and pfsense box in on separate occasions and everything flows beautifully, so the issue is definitely with the units/firmware and not with anything else we have in our infrastructure.

For the first time in over a decade I have stopped recommending Draytek routers to clients, which is a sad state of affairs given how many I have put in the field over the years.

I can't shine any light on this for you but I have read a lot of internet forum posts from other users experiencing similar issues so it is clearly not isolated and needs addressing urgently.

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27 Sep 2012 10:20 #73646 by admin
It's weird that they'd all suddenly start doing it if they were all fine before; there must be SOME common factor but
I'd urge you to work closely and persevere with support to try and isolate the cause/catalyst.



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28 Sep 2012 21:24 #73670 by vmgscot
It is very weird..... and frustrating for our 200 users spread around the country.

So far I have....

Replaced hardware.
Updated firmware to latest.
RST and then reloaded config manually.
and now I have just reloaded the bootloader on request from UK support - still failing.

We use a fair amount of the facilities in the units - firewall, csm (commtouch), vpn, wifi, etc but NONE of this changed before/after the units started failing.

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29 Sep 2012 09:34 #73672 by admin
Are they actually rebooting? If so, the 'sys ver dbg' telnet comment may give clues.



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01 Oct 2012 15:39 #73694 by vmgscot
I assumed they were rebooting... I am just checking the system uptime in the status screen and it matches when the users at a particular site see their internet and VPN connection go down/timeout. Then a few minutes later it's back up. But every few days the routers actually freeze.... all the LEDs on the 9 LED matrix stay on (except DSL) - even the ACT 'heartbeat' LED.

I will try that command... what does it do (he asks as he searches for the telnet command manual)?

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