RV082 RV042 RV042G v4 firmware bug?

[dondersconsulting]

Models affected:  RV082 v3 (primarily)  -  also RV042 v3 and RV042G

Symptoms:

1) web admin GUI stops responding

2) internet speed slows or stops completely

Temporary Fix:

1) power-cycle the router, everything works fine for a random period of time

Notes:

1) happens after a month or so for RV082 that is giving me trouble.

2) seems to affect a large number of units but not all units

3) this has been going on for a YEAR OR MORE without resolution

4) also, I can only program this router with IE - for firefox, I can't get past the certificate warning and to the login prompt.

5) could this be related to https login and broken code regarding SSL certificate or its integration into the web GUI?

6)  yes, I have reset the unit to factory defaults and reprogrammed

     yes, I have tried different firmware revisions

     yes, I am on the current firmware

     yes, I have re-issued the SSL certificate

Maybe the team writing the firmware could get their hands on some of the reported units with these issues and see how they behave, figure out what the real problem is so we can stop beating our heads against the wall?

[Tom Watts]

Hi Phil, this case was closed 70 days ago because the RV042G model didn't perform to the spec speed.

I actually escalated this case for you

-Tom
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[dondersconsulting]

To add to the "discussion" side of this post....

I have an RV082 v3 running firmware v4.1.1.01-sp - it is used heavily by around 20 users and current uptime is 252 days, no issues whatsoever.

The RV082 v3 that I am having trouble with (locks up once a month) is firmware v4.2.1.02.   I also had trouble with it on an earlier firmware v4.0.4.02.   I am about to replace it with my service unit, which I took the time to reprogram from scratch on the v4.1.1.01 code.

For those of you who can afford to test, have you tried downgrading to v4.1.1.01, resetting to defaults, and then reprogramming?   Just backup your v4.2.1.02 config first. 

Tom or Jason - do you know if the configs are cross-firmware compatible for the v3 hardware which is using xml format now?

[Tom Watts]

Yes, the configs should load coming from 4.2.1.02 to 4.1.1.01

-Tom
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[Computime SCC]

Hi I have similar issue with RV042 - firmware version 4.2.1.02 - Internet browsing stops randomly and users get the IIS7 page - I reboot the router and all comes back to normal for another random period even several hours ..

very strange issue indeed - as even during this time router GUI is still responsive - all tracertoutes to Internet works and ping to Internet addresses also work fine - eg. ping to google ip 8.8.8.8 still keeps going as normal - but users cannot browse - all DNS is fine.

[Tom Watts]

Hi Computime, if you're coming to an IIS7 redirect, that may be something to do with a conflicting configuration with the web server or the https. There isn't any reason the IIS7 redirect is coming up unless you have forwarding rule that may be getting in the way.

So I guess the real question may become, is there a conflicting gateway or something that is common to the router and the server?

-Tom
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[Computime SCC]

Hi Tom,

Many thanks for replying,

Before this happened setup was as follows:-

RV042 router on vlan 1 192.168.1.1 /24  (default)

mode as gateway with all LAN devices having it as their gateway for Internet

dual WAN links load balancinf - firewall enabled with LAN any any rule

Then more than 1 vlan was required on the LAN so I had a cisco L3 switch inside to handle all VLANs and routing

I changed vlan 1 routing from RV042 to Cisco switch keeping same IP so Cisco switch was now the gateway for all LAN devices. added any any rule on cisco switch to point to RV042 for all Internet facing traffic

Then on RV042 added respective multiple subnets and a static route to all 192.168.x.x /16 subnet to point to cisco switch and changed it's IP from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.252 on same vlan !

All routing was working fine and Internet working - then the following morning this browsing issue comes up with IIS7 page... the server IP which is DNS and DHCP never changed from 192.168.1.2...

Following this I decided to roll-back all changes and made RV042 back to excactly how it was and removed all routing from cisco switch.. However issue happened again and had to reboot router multiple times ..

When I reboot the router all comes back to normal..for another random time

Yesterday all day all worked fine with no issues, but I changed nothing now ..

So you mean that IIS7 page was being proxied by the DNS server ? that is what I thought too, but then I made my PC to use google dns directly and cleared local dns cache but same result happened so I concluded it was not the server but the router ...but router does not proxy the IIS7 page correct ?

[yermo2014]

I am experiencing what I believe to be a similar/related problem with the latest firmware

RV0XX-v4.2.2.08-20130426-code.bin

Everything works fine for a couple of hours and then all routing stops.

From the router I can ping the the outside world and I can ping hosts on my network, but the router refuses to forward packets.

[Bob Boklewski]

I think there is a bug still in the latest firmware 4.2.2.08.  We put out some IP phones and they have worked well for about a month, now my two users randomly lose calls where the cisco ip phone shows connected, but they lose all audio.  I can't downgrade firmware as there was a fix implemented in this latest firmware to fix an issue with having multiple phones running on it.

UPDATE: I am working with tac on the voip issue.  Not sure where I will get by I have sent over some syslog data from my phone when it has the issue.  I will post it here in hopes someone from Cisco can review it.

[larssimonsen]

I have a similar problem with the RV042G, firmware v4.2.2.08. It tends to conk out in the middle of the nighly backups, so when people arrive at work in the morning there's no working Internet connection.

A soft reboot of the router helps. I have a feeling it's the LAN port of the router that is acting up, because a hard reboot of the switch that is connected to the router also seems to help, but only some times.

Needless to say, the situation is not something we can live with for very long.

Update 2013-11-13: The problem got progressively worse, until we had to reboot the router several times each work day. Not a good situation, in fact totally unacceptable for a small software company like ours, who do most of our support by remote desktop software.

I ended up solving it by tossing the RV042G and installing a wireless router, an Asus RT-N66U, instead. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that even though this is a consumer router, it routes faster than the RV042G, and it has the option of load balancing/fallback on the WAN side. So now we have a much less expensive router, that does everything we need it to, seemingly better/faster than the old one. Our nightly backups seem to run as they should, and no more daytime downtime yet, at least not so far. (Knock on wood.) I can even set up a guest wireless network on it if I so choose. So thanks to Asus for solving this problem.

[marthinpa1980]

Hi Everyone;

Could you please to send me beta firmware for RV042G to achieve full speed (250) instead of 100mbit?

marthinpa@hotmail.com

Many thanks

[bgorigingroup]

This is still an issue with RV042G routers.  I can't believe that this has been going on for this long with no resolution.  What is Cisco going to do to fix this????

[SamirD]

I think the answer is the thread itself--there's no fix coming from Cisco.

It's times like this that it's important to evaluate other products in the same price range (which are many).  They're ALL going to have some sort of quirk like this unless you're going to spend $1000+ for enterprise gear or get an Edgerouter.  Just research the quirks on their support sites before you buy to make sure a dealbreaker quirk doesn't exist.

[zzDraggon]

This is mainly being posted for anyone that happens along this page as I did after updating my previously-wonderful RV042G's firmware to the latest 4.2.3.07 release due to being unable to log in to the router because of a bad certificate error.  After updating the firmware and (I thought) reverting everything back to my old settings, I was able to log in from any browser, but I immediately began experiencing the issues discussed in this thread.  Specifically very arbitrary drops of internet service and sluggish access and/or no access to to router login screen.  I was on the verge of ordering a new router after putting up with this frustration for over a week and finally coming to the conclusion that the firmware was indeed buggy and had broken my router.

I am by no means an expert, but I do believe I've finally figured out the issue in my case as I've been running stable and fast for the last week after noticing one setting that I had apparently overlooked.

In the DHCP tab, under DHCP setup, I have always used OpenDNS servers for DNS, and I had faithfully re-entered the server IP's after updating the firmware.  The setting I missed (that I changed a week ago) was in the drop-down box above the "Static DNS 1" and "...2" settings.  It had defaulted back to "Use DNS Proxy" and I hadn't noticed.  When I changed it back to "Use DNS as Below" with my OpenDNS IP's entered, it began working flawlessly again.

I don't know if this will help anyone else, but if I have to Google this again someday, I wanted this here to remind me...  :)

[dondersconsulting]

What Samir said...

FWIW - here's what I've settled on:

RV042 v1 with the last v1 firmware.  I have a couple clients with these.  I want them to die but they won't, so they are still running fine. Some develop that squealing sound in the power supply section.  Had one or two fail and upgraded to RV082

RV042 v3 (not sure which firmware)  I had one client with this, NEVER had an issue

RV042G - never tried one, and I don't plan on it  (maybe an RV320, although I prefer rackmountable units)

RV082 v1 with last v1 firmware (v2 firmware will break it) -  several of my clients have these, and I use one at home.  They just run and run and run, and occasionally one might need to have the CMOS battery replaced.  I just configured one of these with a Dual-WAN and it works great.  I prefer the v4 firmware UI that comes on the v3 units.

RV082 v2 = JUNK!!

RV082 v3 - firmware v4.1.1.01-sp is stable and has been running one of my clients for 2 years no issues.  firmware v4.2.3.03 came loaded on a new one that was purchased in 2014 and that has also been running fine.  The first gets heavy internet use with skype, audio streaming, websites.  The latter has 9 VoIP phones (phonebooth) behind it and using bandwidth priority rules to share a 800kb upstream. 

** v4 firmwares are unified across all v3 hardware (RV042, 82, 42G) - I only trust the two versions listed directly above.  If you change/update to one of these firmwares to resolve issues, reset the router to defaults, flash the firmware, maybe reset it to defaults again just to be sure, and then program it from scratch.  Save your config from the stable firmware and then you can use that to reload if you do more resetting later.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

**  I love that the RV082 is rackmountable, has an internal PSU, and has an 8-port switch.  It's only a few bucks more so just forget the RV042 and get the faster/better option.

** The RV325 is a compelling successor to the RV082.  (basically an RV082 with Gigabit ports).   It has better firewall throughput and processing, also has newer features for QoS and multiple DHCP on several vLANs.  I picked up one last year to replace an RV082 but I figured out a solution before swapping the routers.  I haven't been brave enough nor had enough time to give it a real test yet.  Hoping to do so soon.  It has external PSU which is not so great but I can deal with that - at least it's rackmountable.

(I have retracted my comment about the ISA series.  I configured one running on early firmware and was impressed, but evidently they had issues and Cisco stopped making them after a relatively short run, which is a bad sign).

[SamirD]

I have to say this is the more informative post I have ever read on the support forums.  Thank you so much for sharing so much valuable information!

Have you had any experience with the rv016?  I have a v1 and v2, both on 3.0.0.19-tm firmware.  Both are solid other than needing a reboot every 24hrs, which I am accomplishing via a script.  Do you think the last v1 firmware for the rv016 (like the rv082) will make their uptime solid?

Also, have you run into any problem with the units in multi-wan mode dropping their wans due to ISP side packets (suspect IPv6 100/sec ack/nak packets being the root cause)?  I ran into this with both my rv016s.  Turning off the firewall, etc did nothing to fix the issue.