Failed with two Nighthawk Routers, is there a third party router that works with FIOS?

I tried with two Nighthawk Routers R6700v3s that I got from the Amazon Store by the Empire State Building

Both would work for 2-6 hours at a stretch and then lock up. Verizon of course was no help, the Netgear people after having me do firmware upgrades and MAC cloning concluded by saying that their router was not compatible with the ARRUS ONT that Verizon had me hooked up to and offered to sell me an ancient model instead.

Does anyone have an option that works? (I already have a MOCA adaptor which worked fine with the Nighthawks when they weren't locking up.)

Accepted answers

lasagna

This almost sounds like there is more than one device attached to the ONT side of the network (i.e. two routers with WAN interfaces). The 4-6 hours is suspicious because that would. be the typical DHCP renewal window for the WAN side of the connection. So ... the router DHCP's an address, gets bound via MAC to theONT as the authorized device, but when the lease renews or expires, something else steps in and snags the address/mac assignment.

When this lockup occurs -- right after it occurs -- if you power off the Netgear and start up again (just the Netgear, nothing else), dods service come back or is it locked out for say another 4-6 hours or until you power cycle the ONT or something else?

With that said ... I kept having problems with my Nighthawk router where the WiFi would go offline until I power cycled (or certain devices refused to "see" it). There seemed to be some kind of firmware bug -- the router itself still worked -- direct connections and the 5ghz band were fine -- just the 2.4ghz band went out to lunch. Think it may have hand something to do with the bandwidth steering it was doing trying to choose between 5ghz and 2.4ghz and incorrectly trying to force 2.4ghz only devices over to 5ghz and blocking them from rejoining the 2.4ghz network -- I eventually replaced it with a TP-Link C5 Archer and have at times also used an ASUS (don't remember the model), and both worked flawlessly -- neither of which coincidently have bandwidth steering or "SON" as Verizon routers call it capability.

All comments

appDev

Need some more info - do you have gigabit? only internet or TV too? What VZ router?

I've used Netgear nighthawk, TP-link deco X60, netgear Orbi (AX4xxx) all without major issues (returned the first two for various other reasons). For most situations, ANY router should work

The only thing is the DHCP release interval (about 2 hours, IIRC) but once your mac is recognized on VZ's system, that shouldn't be an issue either - just a first call, t most.

smith6612

Router locking up sounds like something on your network may be causing issues. Theoretically, FiOS should work with any router that can connect to the ONT via Ethernet and do DHCP to the FiOS network. The challenge is, of course, some routers don't always handle the speeds FiOS provides. This is mostly an issue with the <$60 routers lacking Gigabit Ethernet and the processor power needed to route at higher speeds.

Things I normally target are UPnP - a setting in the router which is commonly used to automatically open up ports for game consoles and other apps. UPnP can easily de-stabilize a router (and also introduces security risks) if a device is spamming the router with commands or has sent the command to turn off/on the Internet connection. Other things I check for are network loops. If you have a switch or a device plugged into the router twice, this can cause problems. Also, router firmware can be an issue. If you installed the latest, try downgrading one or two versions - there may be a bug you're seeing. Or if you're on an old version, upgrade it. Also, P2P / Torrent software can be notorious for causing crashes if you're using too many connections, should you be running one of these programs.

But just to clarify - by Crash, are you unable to access the Netgear's Web UI or connect to it by Wi-Fi? Both?

lasagna