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[ezenia]

I'm on Sky Superfast and I recently replaced my Sky SR203 hub with a TP-Link VR600 V2 router. Initially I thought everything was fine because the router connected to the Internet painlessly and seemed to work well. However, it wasn't until I started doing some checks I began to notice some problems.

The first issue I have noticed is there are errors (pkts) building up on the upstream connection. These keep increasing. In 4 hours 2 minutes, 79 errors have been recorded. Before rebooting the router, I had the router up for 3 days uninterrupted and the errors were around 1.7k. Is this an issue?

The second issue I am having is also relating to uploads. I've noticed that whenever I run an upload speed test, the ping skyrockets insanely high. This is seen in speedtest.net. The latency when uploading rapidly rises to around 600ms. If I ping 8.8.8.8 via CMD and run an upload test, the ping spikes massively and goes up to 3000ms+. Some packets will also get lost. This is with an Ethernet connection.

Download tests are working as expected. Ping will typically go from standard 5-6ms to around 40-50ms. This is when pinging 8.8.8.8 while a download test runs. There's no insanely large spikes on the download side.

Is there anything that can be done about the spikes when uploading, or do I have a modem fault?

I went back to the Sky SR203 hub to test if the issue was present there. It was not. My ping did not have anywhere near those spikes on an upload test. This points to an issue with the VR600 itself.

I've done ping tests to the router's IP (192.168.0.1) while running download/upload tests and don't get spikes. Response times from PC to router is very good.

Is it just the modem that's likely bad, or is something else going on (firmware issue or some setting that needs changing)? The VR600 V2 is on the latest firmware I could find on the site.

[burakkucat]

Welcome to the Kitz forum. 

You mention ". . . there are errors (pkts) building up on the upstream connection." Are you referring to CRCs? Would you please clarify.

It is not obvious as to what is causing your problems and as I do not have any experience of the TP-Link VR600, let's see if other members can make suggestions.

[tubaman]

I believe the VR600 uses a Broadcom modem chipset so should be quite decent in that respect.
For the errors it'd be useful if you could provide a screenshot of the stats that you are seeing.
The upload ping issue is rather odd and I'm wondering if it something to do with QoS settings if those are available to you?

[ezenia]

I've currently switched back to the SR203, so can't get a screenshot of the stats (don't want to keep disconnecting and reconnecting the line as I've read that DLM will read that as errors and may intervene if it sees too many line drops). The router does not specify what kind of errors it's referring to. It literally just says "errors (pkts)" and then gives a number. It's listed along with the usual stats such as current rate, max rate, SNR margin and Line Attenuation. Upstream errors (pkts) climbs slowly (increases by around 20-40 an hour I'd say) and downstream remains at 0.

I enabled QoS and that did seem to stop the massive upload spikes. However, it seemed to cap my download speed to 45Mbps (what I'd get via speedtest.net with an Ethernet connection). Not only did the speed seemingly drop, it began having ping spikes when I just pinged the router (was getting large spikes). The router spikes took some time to happen. It wasn't doing it when I first turned QoS on. Turned off QoS and the router ping spikes stopped.

It has to be faulty at this point. I get better results from the SR203 hub. The sync speed on the downstream is 2Mbps higher on the SR203 than the V600 V2. Not sure why that is either.

[tubaman]

It does sound like it's a QoS issue - are there any other setting you can try as opposed to just 'on' or 'off'?
With respect to the 2Mbps sync difference you are seeing, that is to be expected for different devices so doesn't in itself indicate a fault with the VR600.

[ezenia]

The QoS setting seems a little basic on the router. I recall there being an enable option, current sync speed was stated and then another two fields where you could specify maximum upload/download speeds (not really sure what this does, if anything). I played around with that setting (trying 80Mbps for download and 20 for upload as that's the max Superfast can achieve - also tried some lower speeds to see if it helped). It did not seem to influence anything.

After that, you could select percentages for different priority levels (High 60%, Medium 30% and Low 10%). After that, there was a table where you could add devices to different priority levels. I did not play too much around with adding devices to different priority levels.

I don't know if QoS is to blame. If it is, shouldn't download tests be causing insane spikes as well? The router behaves fine when download tests are run. QoS doesn't need to be turned on to make it behave. Having QoS turned on also caused another problem where the router suddenly struggled to keep up. It was very slow to respond to requests on the router page and pinging the router gave regularly high response times (lots of ping spikes). That's why I had to turn it back off. The router recovered after I disabled QoS.

Furthermore, the SR203, as far as I know, does not have any QoS and yet functions far better under the upload tests. My Internet literally slows to a crawl with the VR600 whenever I run an upload test. Pages stop loading and loading errors might appear. I don't think that's normal as that behaviour is not observed on the SR203. QoS is disabled by default, so I don't think that'd be essential to turn on just to stop the Internet crashing under high upload loads.

The router was bought from eBay. The seller did not mention any faults, but given its price, I'm starting to think it was sold because of the issues I am experiencing.

I was going to try to hook up a BT Openreach Modem I had laying around to see if the router's built-in modem was causing issues. Unfortunately, that's not an option as the router does not support Sky's MER/Option 60/61 authentication when set to "Wireless Router Mode", it's only supported in DSL Modem Router mode. That option is out of the window.

[ezenia]

So I decided to try and see if I could turn this router into an access point, at least it'd get some function. Unfortunately, even that is giving me difficulties. I previously used an old TalkTalk router as an AP (disabled things like DHCP) and it was working great in this setup. I know you're not meant to use ISP-supplied routers as APs, but it seemed to work OK with it. There wasn't any double NAT as far as I know (tracert only showed main router and no other private IPs). Since the TalkTalk router functioned as an AP, I knew the setup worked.

If it worked with ISP-supplied routers, it should work with the VR600, right?

With this router, it's refusing to work with some Wi-Fi devices. I initially couldn't get any Wi-Fi device to hold a connection. It would try to connect and disconnect immediately. After some fiddling about, some devices were connecting, staying connected and giving Internet. Connecting my laptop via Ethernet shows an Internet connection. The Ethernet side always worked OK. It's the Wi-Fi that isn't working as intended.

DHCP is off, I've tried keeping the router in DSL Modem Router and Wireless Router Modes, none help. What allows the struggling Wi-Fi devices to connect is if I unplug the Ethernet cable (that connects to main router) from the VR600 and plug it back in. After doing that, the struggling Wi-Fi device gets an Internet connection. If I disconnect the device from the router, it does not get Internet again and I have to remove the Ethernet cable again and reconnect it.

I've setup the VR600 the same way as the other routers that were acting as APs, but it's not playing nice. For testing purposes, I gave the VR600 different SSIDs as setting them to the same as the main router wasn't working. Setting the different SSID allows me to see if the Wi-Fi on the VR600 actually works.

This router has to be faulty at this point, right? It shouldn't be giving me this many problems.

I tried resetting the router to factory, I even re-flashed an older firmware. The problem still persists. Nothing I do helps. I've looked through settings and can't see anything that would interfere.

[burakkucat]

Most peculiar. It does seem as if the VR600 is acting very strange.

Perhaps that was why it was sold on eBay. 

[ezenia]

Certainly looks that way. I wanted to believe I could fix it, but whatever is wrong is clearly hardware-related. No amount of tweaking settings is going to magically make it work.  The more I mess with it, the more problems I seem to notice.

Looking on the TP-Link forums I can see others start having issues with some of the TP-Link VR routers. They just play up randomly for some reason.

I have contacted the seller. It says no returns accepted on it, but seems to be covered by eBay Money Back Guarantee. Maybe I can get something done through that if the seller doesn't help/answer.

[tubaman]

A quick Google of "VR600 AP mode" finds quite a few hits on TP-Link's community site for those having issues trying to get it to behave as an AP. Some have been referred to TP-Link's official, but generic, instructions on the matter (https://www.tp-link.com/uk/support/faq/2655/) and still say it doesn't work.
From this is suspect it just does not play nicely when used as an AP unfortunately.

[ezenia]

Well, damn. That is a shame.

It has some issues realising that the main router is connected. I can get Wi-Fi clients that have trouble connecting to connect by simply disconnecting the main router Ethernet cable and then re-connecting. Once I do that, it goes from "connected, no Internet" to "connected" with Internet. If I disconnect from the Wi-Fi and re-connect, it has trouble giving Internet again and needs the main router Ethernet cable to be disconnected and then reconnected.

It's most odd why this only happens with some Wi-Fi devices and not all. My smartphone and a Medion laptop gives Internet no matter how many times I disconnect/re-connect. An S6 Galaxy Edge Plus and a HP Pavillion laptop has troubles connecting. It's baffling.

[ezenia]

Someone on the TP-Link forums told me to enable "DHCP Relay". I enabled it, set the IP to match my main router and now Wi-Fi seems to be working on all devices on my network. Time will tell if it stays working. This router seems to have a mind of its own sometimes.

EDIT: spoke too soon.

It's now kicking my phone off the 2.4GHz band. I try to connect and it immediately disconnects me. It's still working if I connect to the 5GHz band.

[tubaman]

I thought that DHCP relay was for allowing one DHCP server to serve more than one LAN subnet so I'm not sure why that would need to be turned on.
Usually all you do to create an AP from a router is to disable the DHCP server and set the AP IP to a different address to the router's IP (but in the same subnet).

[ezenia]

That's what I thought. It's all I had to do with a TalkTalk hub. That thing served as an AP for several years. Not once did it have Wi-Fi problems.

I don't know if the VR600 has firmware issues or if it's just hardware. It's hard to say. It could be either.

I wanted to upgrade from the TalkTalk hub, but it's looking like I might just have to go back to that for now.

The VR600 has been useless tbh. It's not played nice as a main router or as an AP. Reading through the TP-Link forums shows this isn't just an odd case. It seems to be an issue with a lot of models.

I don't think I'll be investing in a TP-Link router again.

[Alex Atkin UK]

I don't think I'll be investing in a TP-Link router again.

They're good so long as you pick a model supporting OpenWRT.