Netgear R6220 and microcell

My initial thought is that it's not the MicroCell per se. The Netgear R6220 is a "Smart WiFi router". I'm not sure what that means exactly (I haven't dove into the specs) but my guess is that some sort of load balancing is going on for wireless connections. And being as the MicroCell needs to maintain a 24x7 VPN connection to the AT&T Mobilty Servers, that could be the issue. The MicroCell has nothing to do with WiFi (3G is a totally different set of protocols) as far as interfernce goes so it may be how the router is handling or prioritizing those types of connections.

I would try to shut everything down and the power up again and see what happens. If not, you'll have to dive into how the R6220 is setup and what it is doing because there isn't anything on the MicroCell side that can be done. The MicroCell is a closed system so there are no configuration settings to modify. As long as the basic router requirements are being met, the MicroCell will work.

The same MicroCell and setup has worked with two other routers (according to your post) so it stands to reason that if  you are having issues now with the R6220 it has something to do with how it is setup or how it operates. Not all routers will play nice with the MicroCell and this may be one of them. If you still have one of the older routers, set it up and see if all is well as a test. If  you don't have any issues, then it's the new router. If you do have issues with one of the older routers that the MicroCell worked well with before, come back and we'll look into it.

I'm assuming there hasn't been any ISP changes or updates between the new and old routers.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm pretty sure the new router is the culprit, and that there is some aspect of its configuration at play.

Netgear, to their credit, jumped in and suggested lowing the MTU and disabling 20/40 MHz coexistence. Doing a 24 hour test.

I suspect the repeated connection attempts (every couple of secconds if I am second guessing the fashing LAN light on the microcell) eventually screws-up a table within the router, and then it decides not to allow more connections. So the whole problem appears to center around a basic failure to negotiate the LAN connection.

If Netgear's advice does not work, I'll likely try to nail the microcell's MAC address to an specific IP and see if that short circuts the problem.

@guyshomenet - I think you're posting to two threads because I just mentioned that in the other thread - assigning a static ip address to the MicroCell based on its MAC address and the nport forwarding the four required ports to that address.

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@OttoPylot wrote:

My initial thought is that it's not the MicroCell per se. The MicroCell has nothing to do with WiFi (3G is a totally different set of protocols) as far as interfernce goes so it may be how the router is handling or prioritizing those types of connections.

 

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I chopped out a part, to discuss/clarify.

Even though the Microcell doesn't use the same protocols, you can still have "interference".

For example, an old-style (we still use thes) wireless phone operates on 2.4G (or some on 5.8), the same as WiFi in the US, and most places.

Despite not having packat data and protocols that overlap, a wireless phone system can really hose your WiFi router performance; trust me, I've ran site-survey data to prove this out, with WiFi testing tools.  I've seen as much as a 75% packet loss, due to wireless phone interference, despite having zero protocol overlap.

To that end, even though 3G may not be using the same protocols, if it's got an overlapping frequency, you may still see performance degradation here.

@pgrey - that is true to a certain extent. We have a landline as well and our house phones are wireless in that they use the 2.4GHz spectrum. However, we've never seen a degradation in WiFi service even if we are talking on the house phone and using the laptop wirelessly (even at the desk where the router is about 8' away). The same for our MicroCell. We can be on the house phone and the MicroCell at the same time and there is no effect on the MicoCell convesation at all.  Carefully and wisely choosing your WiFi bands can also help so there are a lot of cavets to that.

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@OttoPylot wrote:

@pgrey - that is true to a certain extent. We have a landline as well and our house phones are wireless in that they use the 2.4GHz spectrum. However, we've never seen a degradation in WiFi service even if we are talking on the house phone and using the laptop wirelessly (even at the desk where the router is about 8' away). The same for our MicroCell. We can be on the house phone and the MicroCell at the same time and there is no effect on the MicoCell convesation at all.  Carefully and wisely choosing your WiFi bands can also help so there are a lot of cavets to that.

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I was seeing the HUGE degradation (the ~75% hit) when I had my landline "wireless base station" on the same desk as the router (and the Ooma with a Linx, another 2.4 device).

I've since moved to two different APs, semi-commercial, mounted way up on the wall (one on each floor and opposite sides of the house) and pretty much eliminated that issue.

While I totally agree that choosing low-use channels is VERY important to your WiFi performance (everyone should do a WiFi survey, at least every few months, it's VERY telling), it's not really a factor when it comes to the overlap devices, such as the landline wireless phone, and possibly the Microcell.  

Let's say your Microcell using 2350, on one band, well there's a pretty good chance you'll overlap with your 2.4Ghz landline phone (and my Ooma device, and ...).

Maybe the volume of data (probably pretty low for voice/text anyway) isn't enough to be a factor, that part I don't know, I don't have a Microcell, so I can't add it to my survey data.

All I'm saying, is there's really a pretty narrow number of frequencies here, that everyone is playing on, and protocols/channels/packets aside, interference happens, as my survey proved-out.

It would be interesting, have you ever done a survey, both with and without your Microcell connected?

Everything you're saying is true. No argument there, but it may not be applicable to every situation. When we were remodeling a couple of years back, I had to disconnect my MicroCell for about a week and we saw no degradation in performance with or without it online. One of my kids was home at the time and if anyone will scream about a performane issue, it would have been one of them and I never heard a peep. AT&T does mention in the setup instructions that the MicroCell should be at least 2' away from any WiFi source in case of potential interference so it is a known issue for some. My router is 7' away and 2' above the MicroCell, but at one time it was on the same desk, same level, and about 3' away (an old Linksys WRT54G router). Routers are more powerful today than they used to be so heeding that setup instruction may be more important now than then. Certainly following the instructions to the letter is an important aspect.

Certainly if one is having an issue with the MicroCell, and none of the help that we provide here appears to work, then looking deep into your home LAN for any interference would be something to do. But determing home LAN issues, and helping with that is beyond the scope here and is something that we, and AT&T, are not willing to do. The last thing we want to do is mess with someone's LAN. We can suggest it but we can't tell them how to do that. It is impossible for us to keep up with the many different modems, routers, and gateways available today, not to mention the firmware versions and equipment configured specifically for an ISP.

In the OP's case, being as his MicroCell worked with two previous routers with no issues, and is now failing with the newest third router, that points to the router and how it is handling traffic, not necessarily radio interference. Can't rule that out entirely but it is far from clear. What ever the reason, there is nothing that can be done on the AT&T side other than trying a different router that has different performance characteristics. I would move the router or MicroCell up and away as far as is reasonable and see if there is any difference. It could also be that the MicroCell and AT&T's VoIP service is just not compatible with that particular model of Netgear. If that doesn't work, then it's just the way that the Netgear is handling and/or balancing traffic and the 24x7 continuous connection between the MicroCell and the AT&T Mobility Servers is messing with the router and data flow on the WiFi channels.

Might not be a bad idea as well just to perform a VoIP test (voiptest.8x8.com) a couple of times during the day to see if something hasn't changed on his line. Probably not. But if it has, and is forcing the MicroCell to continuously re-negotiate, that could be a cause as well. Can't hurt and that would at least rule line quality out.

Yeah, good point, on the network thing.  I did IT for 1.5 years as a one-off gig (mostly software/hardware engineering otherwise), so I tend to take IT diagnosis as a given.

I struggle with helping people with generalities and their network layouts, like the S7 snapchat thing, where it's almost certainly a router/packet deal, and probably easily debugable/fixable, for the interim, if people could read/interpret their routing logs.

I had that bad problem with interference, so I keep that in the back of my mind, and have gone to an every 6 months WiFi re-survey deal, which helps me adjust accordingly (my network is a 3 tier deal, it's a bit more "interesting" than your average setup), particularly like you mention, the band-steering and similar.  One of these days, automated WiFi settings will actually work, maybe, to decent performance, but in the meantime...

I agree, the original users' problem is most likely due to their router interrupting the Microcell.

It's too bad the Microcell doesn't log more data, or AT&T keep it around on their interface, if it does, seems like that would be handy, and easy to build a filter to diagnose stuff.

In the meantime, maybe the OP can look at their router logs, but again, like you say, this is beyond the scope of the forum...

There is a way to see what the MicroCell is doing but that is getting into a gray area and is definitely much more complicated than probably 95% of the users and AT&T Support can understand. Even then, there's nothing that can be done. I too wish there was even a rudimentary diagnostics but again, it would be way beyond what Support could handle and would invaribly involve the users LAN which, as I mentioned, is something that nobody want to do.

True, but if the logging were re-directed, say to the Microcell login-interface on ATT.com, they could set up a XML filter, and show users big "chunks" of recurring issues.  You could see a bunch of GPS sync, or DHCP failures, for example, which I think  would help. 

At the very least, when I got a call/email from that relative/friend, I could look at their logs first, and possibly tell them what's up ;-]

I have long wished (I did a LOT of work on standardizing hardware and driver interfaces, as my work on Windows for a lot of years), that there were more standardization in this area, where a DHCP error (and sequencing) was the same, regardless of the device, for example.  The industry seems to want to fight this, always thinking that "their interface" is the best, adds value and such, but then they balk at having to support 47 different interfaces and all the randomness.  Go figure, touch a hot stove, it hurts, again and again...

If something like this were implemented (I really, really like consortiums, been part of numerous ones), then we could help people with this up here, with some degree of confidence/competence.