Can't connect to WAN

General
1

I lost WAN connectivity abruptly a day ago on my Balance 20X using firmware 8.3.0 though I had good WiFi indications.

  1. The ISP said my modem was good. I could connect to WAN successfully using a direct RG45 to the modem but not through the router.
  2. I can connect to the Balance 20X and open the admin pages using RG45.
  3. I put a recent Surf SOHO router in the Balance’s place and the Surf is now working.
  4. I rebooted the Balance 20X and reverted to my last known good firmware, 8.4.1. No change.
  5. Some recent notices in the forum led me to check that DNS over HTTPS was disabled, and it was.
  6. Other notices mentioned that there could be a Quad9 issue, and it was enabled, so I removed them in favor of Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1. I removed Quad9 from the Dashboard from the LAN and each VLAN.
  7. From Firefox I disabled DNS over HTTPS, and from my Mac’s Network settings I removed Quad9.

Have I overlooked something glaring?

2

For 1. Is the modem locked to the MAC address of the host? That’s the usual issue if you can connect one host, but not another. You can clone the MAC address to the B20X.

For 6. If you think DNS might be an issue, can you ping a raw IP address, like 8.8.8.8. If you can, maybe a DNS problem, if you can’t probably a transit (not a DNS) problem.

3

This Balance 20X has been running for four years - this “no WAN” issue rose just yesterday. I was not on the Admin pages when it happened, so I doubt I changed anything.

I don’t know if the modem is locked to the MAC address of the host. There is no router reference on the modem itself that I can see. It did reference its own MAC and its own serial number. So far I haven’t located a modem reference or Mac on either the Surf or the Balance routers.

There’s no specific reason to suspect a DNS issue, except the hints on other problems I found here in the PepLink forum, i.e., DNS over HTTPS and Quad9 mentions I’ve seen recently.

I’d like to avoid filing a ticket, if I can.

4

That was it, thanks. I cloned the Surf SOHO WAN MAC into the Balance 20X and it worked. Thanks again.

(Note: For posterity, the Surf SOHO WAN MAC can be found in Admin pages Status/Device. Balance 20X cloning is in Network/WAN/Details and choose Custom.)

1 Like
5

Again, for posterity, I’ll note that a router reboot wiped my cloned MAC and I had to re-enter it. I would imagine restoring a config saved after cloning would allow you to avoid having to do a second cloning. I would also imagine that firmware update would not affect the cloned MAC.