N900 Central Router hangs after many packets in short time

Hello,
The WD My Net N900 Central Router hangs (turns off) after the computer sends many packets in a short period of time. It later comes back, but it takes half a minute or so, and the connection is lost (so I cannot use the internet properly). Has someone faced the same problem? Details:

  • Tried both with wireless and wired, same problem.
  • Tried with different OSes / computers, same problem.
  • Tried in different scenarios (Dropbox with many updates, sending large emails, etc). I know the issue is with packet flooding in the router because if I put a packet limit in Dropbox (via software), then it works. Without it, the router hangs. It does not happen at every connection, but when happens it is a moment of many packets being sent through it clearly. Surely happens with TCP packets, not sure if with UDP too.
  • I am using the latest firmware (or so I suppose: 1.07.16 of 12/Apr/2013), and a very basic configuration of the router (I have changed that in every possible way, but no fix to the problem).

Thanks in advance!

Reboot the router, and does situation improve?

Thanks for replying. If by reboot you mean just to turn off and on again (citing IT Crowd here :-)), I have tried that, and actually it does exactly that when it gets too many packets too fast. I have also tried to reset…

Yea remove all power – unplug it for a few minutes. Then do same for modem. Restart modem after a couple of minutes, then restart router.

Thank you for the effort, but this does not help me. As I mentioned, I had tried to reset the device before. I have tried now speedtest websites too, and the router hangs too on those. There is clearly a problem there, and I would like to know if this is an issue of my device or a known issue with this N900 central router. Is there anybody else with a similar problem?

Note that I have direct fiber connection through other main routers with a few hundred Mbps both directions (download and upload, no “modem” here). I believe N900 breaks down only when speed goes beyond many tens of Mbps (at least) and only for upload. I know it works if I restrict my connection to 10 Mbps, for instance, but that is not ideal at all.

I have no idea, so contact WD.

Thanks. It works fine if I limit upload bandwidth below 100 mbps, so for now I will simply do that…

Hello cassiopc,

Sounds like the dreaded overheating issues with these routers.

This might seem silly but it has worked for me, turn your router upside-down with it turned off for about 15 minutes or so & reboot it. That should allow it to cool off better by letting the heat dissipate though the grill on the bottom (which is now facing upward).

See, the router has a non-functioning cooling fan. From my research I have found that one of the last updates had some kind of flaw which doesn’t allow the fan to come on.

One other test you can try is to mount a small cooling fan outside of the grill to see if it will provide the needed cooling of the chips. If it works you can then modify the case for a more permanent solution.

The more stress your router is under causes extreme heat to build up in the router’s cpu, producing errors, connection loss, & possible chip failure.

Please let me know if this helped. It did for me. I’ve left my router running upside-down since 2014 without issue. PS: I also stuck little felt pads on the “top” of the router, using them as feet.

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Hello symphorian,

your solution looks really silly but it works great. The temperature dropped from 52° C to 45° C and all connection problems and random reboots are gone. Copying of 50GB file bleep good. Thanks.

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Heating was something I didn’t consider indeed… great tip.