Issues with Hub 5x in modem mode
Hi all, I've had a bit of a hell of a time and hoping I can get some feedback and ideas on what exactly is going on with my Virgin Media Broadband.
My Initial Problem:
I work from home, and as part of that work I need to access services hosted on private IP addresses. This does not seem to be possible with the Hub 5x. I've helped colleagues with similar issues in the past, and the fix has always been to update the DNS servers to be used to 8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4. This fix does not work on the Hub 5x for some reason.
I'm not sure why, but it seems like something in the router is blocking any responses that return private IP addresses. I have run some Wireshark capture, and that seems to be what is happening; I nslookup public IP @ 8.8.8.8 I get a response happily, I nslookup private IP @ 8.8.8.8 I get no response at all.
In the 5x settings page at 192.168.0.1, I also tried a ping (error starting ping) and a traceroute which returned the following:
Host Host address Error code Retry times (ms)
| perr-bng-1-sub.network.virginmedia.net | 86.2.32.1 | 0 | 8 | 7 | - |
My Fix:
After some searching I found that I may be able to set the DNS servers manually by using a separate router, so I got a TP Link Archer AX12 to test this. So I went through quite a bit of struggle to get the 5x into modem mode, I set the DNS servers on the TP Link to 8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4 and when I connected to the internet through the TP Link network I could access my private IPs!
More Pain:
That worked for about two weeks fine (just until the cooling off period ended, sods law). Then things started going wrong. It feels like there's been a dozen different things happening, but I'm not really up to scratch on the hardware layers of networking so I may not be very helpful.
- Internet randomly drops daily, sometimes the TP Link loses connection to the 5x. Sometimes the 5x just seems to fully lose connection. This happens 2-5 times a day at random times.
Usually this could be fixed by factory resetting the 5x and putting it back into modem mode. - Over the weekend I tried just using the 5x without TP Link connected, but it still had issues and at one point was down for 24 hours, before miraculously coming back up by fiddling with some wires.
- This morning the TP Link network was not sending out internet, and the 5x was not doing anything. It was in white, whereas normally it is green for modem mode. Factory reset did not work at all, even holding it down for 60 seconds. For some mad reason I turned the 5x upside down at THAT seemed to do it, and it is now sending out the internet across the TP Link network and the VM network.
I've not tried anything else this morning, like setting it to modem mode in fear of not being able to work further this morning.
Not sure if it matters, but both the hub and the TP Link are plugged into one outlet with an adapter, as the location of the Hub only has the one socket. Also it may have been random coincidence, but at least one of the times the internet dropped it was just after my partner returned and added another device to the network. We don't have a disgusting number of devices probably under a dozen, so I can't imagine this is the cause.
I'm happy to go and grab any logs that may be helpful if you can direct me to where I could find them.
In Summary
This has been long and rambling, but essentially what I want is a stable internet connection while being able to access my private IP addresses for work. Whether this is through the Hub 5x or the TP Link I am not fussy, I just want it to work.
Thanks in advance.
