My Net N900: WiFi goes down when specific device connects to network

WD Legacy Products My Net Networking Devices
1

I have been trying to trouble-shoot a specific issue on my own for the last couple of weeks. I have seemingly exhausted all options available to me.

I have a My Net N900 router with several devices attached, both wired and wireless (mostly wireless). I have a cable modem (Time Warner Cable - Ultimate: 50Mbps)

Everything on the network works great until I connect my work laptop to the network. Within minutes of connecting it, I lose wireless connectivity from all of my other devices, including the work laptop.

I am able to see my home network (and access the router admin) but I can’t access the internet.

  • I can access the internet from all devices through WiFi when the work laptop is not connected wireless to the network.
  • I can access the internet from my work laptop if I turn off WiFi and connect it via Ethernet cable.
  • I can access the internet from my work laptop on other WiFi networks.
  • I can access the internet from all devices through WiFi after I disconnect the work laptop (usually have to power reset the router to recover).

Trouble-shooting options I’ve tried…

  • Rebooting the cable modem
  • Rebooting the router
  • Updating the firmware (current version is 1.07.16)
  • Verifying signal is strong through the cable modem (Time Warner Cable)
  • Disabling WPS within the router admin (Advanced Settings > Wireless > Wi-Fi Protected Setup)
  • Disabling FasTrack Plus QoS within the router admin (Advanced Settings > Additional Features > FasTrack Plus QoS)
  • Disabling Enhanced WMM within router admin (Advanced Settings > Additional Features > Enhanced WMM)
  • Changing the ‘Channel’ for 2.4Ghz from Auto to Channel 1 within the router admin (Advanced Settings > Wireless > Wireless Setup)
  • Cloning the ‘MAC Address’ by clicking on the “Clone Your Computer’s MAC Address” button within the router admin (Advanced Settings > WAN > Internet Setup)

NOTE: I feel like this issue may have cropped up after I updated the firmware (as there was a point in time when I didn’t have this issue), but I can’t be sure.

Please help!

2

Aslot123,

Sounds like a strange problem that you’ve gone through everything on! 

I don’t know if you’ve done a complete “Restore to factory default” and didn’t list it explicitly but if you haven’t tried that yet I would give that a go. If you restore it to factory default I’d recommend trying to connect the work laptop without messing with too much at first. I’d recommend writing down your settings if you are happy with the way it works on all other computers just to be able to slowly change those settings back when you figure out the issue. 

It sounds like your work laptop only works on the 2.4Ghz band and I can tell you if I switched the 2.4Ghz band to “20/40Mhz (Auto)” under the channel width I’d run into some serious problems with network speed and connectivity. So I pretty much have to run in 20 Mhz on the channel width. This doesn’t effect my speed *that* much as I still get about 50 Mbps from a long ways away from the router. This is defaulted to 20 Mhz channel width so if you haven’t messed with it, it probably isn’t an issue. 

Also, another way to approach the issue is to look at the router logs to see any unusual behavior being logged. If you go under “Admin” there is a section called “Logs”. You could try to reproduce the issue and watch the log just to see what is going on. Maybe if you can see something here we can help narrow down for you. 

3

I figured out how to resolve the issue, finally.

  1. Go to Advanced Settings > LAN > Host and LAN Settings

  2. Change “Enable DNS Proxy” to Off

  3. Save

That’s it. So far, I have internet connection on all devices, including the work laptop that was causing issues.

Hope this helps others who might experience a similar issue.