Power-Cycle Your Cradlepoint Router

Maureen

For users who find themselves having to manually re-set their router on a regular basis, our suggestion is that they put their Cradlepoint 3G/4G router on a digital timer that is set to cycle power on a pre-defined schedule, completely rebooting the router without the need for human intervention. If you're experiencing:

1. Computers dropping off of the router's WiFi network
2. Router's WiFi SSID disappearing/vanishing
3. Log files filling up, resulting in slower performance on the network
4. Slow-loading web pages even when attempting to load the Router Admin pages
5. Router appears to be frozen or LED's not behaving normally

You may want to consider putting your router on a timer to force it to reboot on a regular basis.

Read Tip #35: Power Cycle your Cradlepoint Router

beyondo · EVDO Newbie Joined: 13 Dec 2009 Posts: 9

That's a sad testament to the reliability of those routers if that's required.

wvbills · Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 7:36 am Post subject:

Maureen,

What is the root cause of these symptoms?

Periodic power cycling something to clear a fault is just a band aid to a latent defect.

Why is 3G Store selling products with a known defect that results in you feeling it necessary to publish such a band aid?
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WVBill

Victor · Site Admin Joined: 14 Jul 2006 Posts: 138

The purpose of preparing a tip of the week like this is to allow for the user of any type of router to regain control of their mobile network.

This is not a statement being made that CradlePoint router's in general have all kinds of issues that one needs to resort to this to resolve them.

What this tip was created for was to share with users that a mobile connection has so many variables that when out of reach and out of touch, a user can regain some of that control by using a simple device that can cycle power at periodic programmed times.

Imagine this...

Your company has multiple data card's/router's. In the field connected to key devices that collect data and communicate it back to a central office connected to a commercial internet service. As an IT manager you know that you are dealing with many variables that keep these devices operating with minimum issues.

You may be dealing with;

-Weak signal areas where the modem loses it's connectivity to the cellular network.

-The module or computer may freeze or lock your technicians out and making it difficult to continue their operations when these are in other counties several hours away or even several states hundreds of thousands of miles away.

-The router is the "heart beat" of your network and for some odd reason unknown to you at this time you are no longer able to reach this remote setup. over the internet.

All of the above equals lost time, money or both. In order to resolve these issues, a manger would have to have trucks roll, or even have to put a tech on a plane to get "boots on the ground" in the location of the equipment. All of this can cause a lot of grief as you can see.

It is the main reason why companies install rather expensive power strips controlled by IP. They know that if they can quickly cycle power on a router, computer, networking equipment and the like, they can once again re-gain control of their scenario.

The low cost easy to use, easy to install and configure 7-day programmable timer is simply an entry level way to accomplish the same results that fortune 500 companies receive especially in these lean times where technology spending is at an all time low. Everyone is looking to get the job done in the least amount of time, and spending the least amount of money. This is yet another way of accomplishing that goal.
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- Victor

danpoleary

Since these problems are VERY frequent, such as the CTR350 and the MF636, then you know that it loses the connection as frequent as every ten minutes.... This need to be resolved, or please point me to a time that will power off and on the modem every 10 minutes.

Victor · Site Admin Joined: 14 Jul 2006 Posts: 138

Dan,

I have not personally used the model of modem you mention here in your post. Explain what your seeing in more detail and give me a better understanding as to where you are using your router and mobile broadband service at.

Which service provider are you on and what type of signal can you expect from the service in the location you are using it in?

The more information you provide with regards to your combination, the more chances you will have in getting your specific issues resolved.

CradlePoint follows rather closely the forums here for they have a reputation for listening to their customers and putting out sound products.
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- Victor

Llama · Posted: Sat Jan 02, 2010 4:16 pm Post subject:

Maybe Cradlepoint could add the ability to schedule reboots to the firmware. I used to do this on my older Linksys (non EVDO) router that I had installed DD WRT onto.
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--Larry

Dwayne · Posted: Sat Jan 02, 2010 4:54 pm Post subject:

I would second the request to add a timed reboot feature to Cradlepoint unit, as well as the ability to provide the unit a specified remote host to contact and reboot in the event that it is unable to contact it. The first feature would address some issues, but the second would allow it to sort-of self-monitor to see if it is at least talking on the Internet and reboot if not.

The digital timer idea is a good one . . . unless your router has a battery backup. Then your problem still exists.

danpoleary · Posted: Sat Jan 02, 2010 5:56 pm Post subject: Re: In Response...

The ZTE mf636 which Cradlepoint says is rogers supported, does not maintain connection. No rogers modems maintain the connection no matter what the model. Sometimes it keeps the connection up for an hour or more, but more often then not, the modem stops responding every 10 to 20 minutes. Only unplugging and re-plugging the modem gets the connection back. also, powering off the ctr350 also gets it back.

I have a ticket open with both Cradlepoint and with 3GStore, and neither has been acted on, no updates or activity of any kind.

I have tried every available firmware, two ctr350s, and various settings. Them ZTE MF636 works fine in Linux, and all supported flavours of Windows.

The idea of having a timer power off and on would be a good idea if I could find one that can do it every ten minutes... I would prefer a real fix though... Is there anyway of logging all the traffic that the modem receives so that I can see if Rogers is sending some request that Cradlepoint does not respond to?

Dan

Dwayne · Posted: Sat Jan 02, 2010 8:01 pm Post subject:

I don't have a lot of disconnect issues with modern firmware on Sprint or
Verizon. I wonder if this is a carrier issue. If you have an older firmware, try upgrading to see if it resolves the issues. I see posts relating to this issue from time to time, but I don't think its the norm.

wvbills · Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 10:42 am Post subject:

I have a CTR350, and a USB727 on Verizon.

It is on and stays connected 24 x 7 except for about every 10 days to 2 weeks I lose connectivity to Verizon.

On these occasions, it is NOT the CTR350 locking up - it is the USB727. The light on the USB727 is out.

To get back on line, I need to power cycle the 727 by unplugging it from the CTR350 and plugging it back in.

This is for home use so I'm not worried about it. If it were for a business-critical application I might - - but then I do not think that Verizon (or any other cell carrier for that matter) advertises it's 3G service as an always-on, business class service.

Which sort of goes to the point of my post earlier in this thread.
As an IT manager, if I needed always-on, business class service, I would not be depending on Cradlepoint routers and 3G service.
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WVBill

ldmitchel80 · EVDO Newbie Joined: 01 Jan 2010 Posts: 6

FYI - I received a mbr1000 router with the 1.5.2 software installed. I promptly upgraded to the latest firmware, which was 1.6.2 at the time. I noticed that I would get the "no WAN device connected" error about every other day. My wireless signal would also stop broadcasting about every other day. I decided to downgrade to 1.5.2 and I have been running for well over a month with no problems. My router has only been rebooted one time because of a power outage but other than that the router (mbr1000) has been running flawlessly with my v740 connected. The 1.5.2 firmware seems to be more stable than the 1.6.2.

danpoleary

Yes, I tried all firmware versions. This seems to be on Rogers only. The problem only occurs when I connect it to the CradlePoint. I have called others, and tried my CTR350 with their modems, and same issue... No ZTE MF636 works with Rogers and the Cradlepoint. They should remove it from their supported list until resolved.

danpoleary

When it is every 10 to 20 minutes, I do worry about it. I paid good money for the CTR350, choosing it because they said it supported the MF636 on Rogers, when in fact they do not.

Dwayne · Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 7:30 pm Post subject:

Why not return it?