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Accessing some websites cause router to reboot

camuc
Tuning in

I have a Hub 3. Among the many devices, I use a gaming laptop from Alienware equipped with a Killer E2400 wifi adapter. 

Like many people report, my router restarts several times per day, which is very annoying, and so far I thought it was random. Yesterday I tried to pay my DVLA road tax and every time I opened the payment page the connection dropped and the router restarted. 
The first time I thought it was a random occurrence.
The second time was just a few minutes after the router restarted, and I thought it just happened randomly as maybe there were still problems with it.
The third time was hours later after a computer restart and after I factory-reset the router (useless suggestion from Virgin Media customer service).

So, there are situations when some content exchanged over HTTPS can cause the router to crash and restart. The payment page is on the UK government website https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax so I really hope that there's nothing dodgy going on there. I wonder how many of the random restarts are caused by similar problems. 

In hindsight, I can remember a few times when trying to make a payment was followed by a router crash. It's easy to remember the panic of not knowing if I had been charged or not. and it happened from various devices, not yust my PC. (at least one iPhone and one iPad). 

I think that this is a bug somewhere in the router's core programs. It worries me a lot to think that the problem surfaces during payments, as it leads me to thinking that content filtering from VM goes far beyond what we know.

20 REPLIES 20

lotharmat
Community elder
Do the same drops happen if using ethernet?



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Hub 3 - Modem Mode - TP-Link Archer C7

I don't know if it happens when wired, and it's quite hard to tell since I have now paid my taxes using my phone (via 4G). I can't see the payment page until next year and I don't know what other service on gov.uk uses the same payment gateway / scripts. If it happens again in the future with any other website or service, I will wire in before retrying.

As I said, though, this is not the first time that the router crashes on a payment page. Last week it happened to my wife on the domino's website (https://www.dominos.co.uk/) while placing an order from her phone. It's easy to remember that. No pizza, and a 4 years old son going ballistic because the Chromecast stopped working. 

It would be pretty hard to wire up an iPhone to the router so, if it turns out that more people have problems with their routers crashing when they make a payment, maybe VM should take a look at that? We come across this sort of issues 3 or more times per week, and I don't believe we are the only ones.

 

I can confirm that the problem is present even when the computer is wired.

Yesterday I wired the same PC and after some navigation on websites with payment gateways the router disconnected.

Adduxi
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

Is this happening only on one PC?   Have you tried running the PC in safe mode with networking, cabled directly to the Hub, to see if it's software related to the PC?  

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This is one of those weird moments when I feel that I am talking to an automated system with a strong New Delhi accent.

As I wrote above, the problem happens even when my wife buys stuff from her phone. And yes, it happens even if the device navigating to those pages is wired (so it's not a Wifi problem).

I bet on the fact that the Hub is probably broken. But I don't understand why the hub restarts specifically when some payment gateways, or some SSL certificates, are used. What worries me is the level of filtering done by the hub because whatever is crashing it when using some web pages clearly shouldn't be there.

Adduxi
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

@camuc wrote:

This is one of those weird moments when I feel that I am talking to an automated system with a strong New Delhi accent.   <snip>


Nope, not me.....

However you said you did a reset.  Did you try the 60 second pin hole reset and do NOT reboot the Hub afterwards.  Just let it do it's thing until it's stable.

Apart from this I'm out of ideas?  I've been a long time customer and also use the Gov website for vehicle tax and other HTTPS sites without issue.  It's very strange.

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Yes, factory reset done. And I didn't touch the router for a while afterwards, so if it had to update itself it would.

I tried all the standard stuff religiously. This is not something that a restart will fix. But, again, I can understand that the router could be broken. No big deal. My problem is that navigating to some URL has some effect (in this case negative) to the router itself. The router shouldn't be looking at what goes through it, but this is clearly a case in which the content is somehow being picked up by the hub.

I am mostly worried for my privacy.

Tom_F
Forum Team (Retired)
Forum Team (Retired)

Hi camuc, thanks for your post - sorry for the delayed response.

 

I'm also sorry to hear you've had some connection issues when accessing websites. Using your forum details I've been able to take a look into this and can see that some action has recently been taken - please keep us posted with the outcome of that, hopefully things have been sorted for you? 

 

Tom

Hi Tom

Yes, an engineer visited today, tested the line and decided that the Hub3 was indeed the problem. He exchanged it for a brand new Hub4 (that VM's customer service told me on the phone I couldn't be given because I am not a Gigabit customer), and my Internet connection has now been good for the past 4 hours (this month's record).

Still, I have something buzzing at the back ot my head. I have a bit of a background (work) playing with routers and modems, and I know that a router shouldn't really unpack the data it receives, but just pass it on. The fact that my old VM router would crash when visiting some URLs using some protocols, makes me think that there was something fishy going on. Maybe it was a bug that uncovered it, but to have a bug you must have a program with a purpose.