Anyone else having problems with their Ubiquiti Dream Router recently?

[Adsibob]

I have a Ubiquiti Dream Router (not a Dream Machine). This is connected to a Virgin Media router that is running in modem only mode. I then have 2 Poe access points connected via Ethernet to the router. The set up has been the same since we installed it about 20 months ago. It has generally worked flawlessly and I’m not exaggerating when I say that in the first 19.5 months, in total, I think I only had to reboot the VM “modem” and UDR 3 or 4 times. This was, I assumed, a problem with the unreliability of Virgin Media, in that although they have market leading speeds, their reliability isn’t great.

 

In the last 4 or so days, I’ve come home almost every night to a house with no internet. Restarting both the VM “modem” and the UDR fixes the problem… until it breaks the following day.

 

Today, as an experiment, I just restarted the VM “modem”, but this didn’t fix the issue. Then I restarted the UDR and that did fix the issue.

 

I notice from my UDR’s system logs that it auto upgraded to 3.2.9 at 3am on the 17th Jan. I think the problems started around the 18th Jan late afternoon, but I can’t be sure. 

 

Hope would you go about testing things to get to the bottom of whether it is a Virgin issue or a UDR issue? When I run VM’s online tests on my VM hub, it tells me it’s all fine, but sometimes it cuts out and says sobering like“unable to run this test right now” so who knows.

 

The UDR regularly reports issues with the ISP, usually high latency or packet loss. This happens once or twice a week, but has never seemed to impact real world performance so I never investigated it. I mention it but it may be a red herring.

[Thorfun]

I turned off auto updates on my Ubiquiti kit early on after issues with an automatic update. Now I update manually after ensuring no major issues are found. Sounds like you’ve just exp the same. 
 

can you rollback the update?

[Adsibob]

1 hour ago, Thorfun said:

can you rollback the update?

Probably. Presumably this is something I can do from the unifi app?

[Adsibob]

I’ve been tinkering in the app, and I thought I’d done it, but no. Still showing new update as the current OS version.

[Thorfun]

I don’t really use the app much. Much more functionality connecting with a web browser 

[Alan Ambrose]

This web-connected auto-update thing is super-annoying. My CAD set-up exploded on Monday and it's not obvious how I get it back - the error messages are, of course, complete nonsense. Meanwhile our Sony TV is taking longer and longer to start as they add more cruft to it.

 

Roll me back to the nineties when you bought a bit of software and it stayed the same unless you decided to update it.

[Adsibob]

6 hours ago, Thorfun said:

I don’t really use the app much. Much more functionality connecting with a web browser 

Okay, I will try and connect from a web browser, because doing it through the app late last night was a somewhat confusing experience. I got this, which I thought was positive:

 

 

I thought this was saying that it was loading the backup from 8 Jan, in that I don’t see logically how I can create a backup with that date two weeks later. But after it finished doing this, the version was still showing 3.2.9.

[Adsibob]

@Thorfun when you say connect with a web browser, do you mean by plugging a laptop directly into the UDR and then going to the UdR IP address, or do you mean logging in to my Ubiquiti account from a web browser without a a physical Ethernet connection?

[Thorfun]

2 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

@Thorfun when you say connect with a web browser, do you mean by plugging a laptop directly into the UDR and then going to the UdR IP address, or do you mean logging in to my Ubiquiti account from a web browser without a a physical Ethernet connection?

log in to your Ubiquiti account. i navigate to 192.168.1.1 (the IP of my DMPro) from my internal network (whether wifi or cable shouldn't make a difference as you're on your internal LAN) and log in to the web page that shows.

[Adsibob]

4 hours ago, Thorfun said:

log in to your Ubiquiti account. i navigate to 192.168.1.1 (the IP of my DMPro) from my internal network (whether wifi or cable shouldn't make a difference as you're on your internal LAN) and log in to the web page that shows.

Ok, I’ve done that and it appears to be doing something good:

 

I will report back once I know if it’s worked. Thank you @Thorfun

 

Edited January 24 by Adsibob

[Thorfun]

1 hour ago, Adsibob said:

Ok, I’ve done that and it appears to be doing something good:

 

I will report back once I know if it’s worked. Thank you @Thorfun

 

although that says system data and configurations, not firmware. so I'm not sure that the restore from backup will revert the firmware update.

 

seems to be lots of posts on UDMPro rollbacks but not UDR. https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=ubiquiti+dream+router+firmware+rollback&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#ip=1

Edited January 24 by Thorfun
typo

[Adsibob]

1 hour ago, Thorfun said:

although that says system data and configurations, not firmware. so I'm not sure that the restore from backup will revert the firmware update.

Hmmm, I fear you might be right. This is what the UDR screen was displaying after I restored the system data and configurations:

 

but logging in now, it is still showing 3.2.9. Very annoying.

[Thorfun]

Check on the Ubiquiti forums or log a ticket with their support. Maybe someone else has seen the issue or maybe it’s a bug they’re unaware of. 

[Adsibob]

2 hours ago, Thorfun said:

Check on the Ubiquiti forums or log a ticket with their support. Maybe someone else has seen the issue or maybe it’s a bug they’re unaware of. 

Thanks. That’s a good suggestion.

[Adsibob]

So following @Thorfun's suggestion, i logged a ticket with ubiquiti, which included uploading a very large system log file which I had to download from my UDR or ubiquiti account. About 5 days later, I get this response:

 

Quote

 

Apologies for the inconvenience this may have caused, I got this checked, and it seems that the UniFi Dream Router has potentially gone bad, you can file an RMA for the device, to request a replacement, fill out the form located at rma.ui.com

 

 

The ubiquiti hasn't suffered any knocks or damage, so i cannot for the life of me think what has happened. Normally hardware like this should last years. The only abuse I can think of is that when I've had to reset it, which is pretty much never until this problem started a couple of weeks ago, I would pull the power cord out the back of it, rather than switch it off by flicking a switch.

 

This is quite annoying. Apart from the hassle of processing the return and being without internet in the meantime, I query whether upon installing the new one I will have to go through the whole set up again - I had this more or less professionally done, for free, by a mate of mine who is super geeky with this sort of thing. But he now lives in California!

[Thorfun]

48 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

So following @Thorfun's suggestion, i logged a ticket with ubiquiti, which included uploading a very large system log file which I had to download from my UDR or ubiquiti account. About 5 days later, I get this response:

 

 

The ubiquiti hasn't suffered any knocks or damage, so i cannot for the life of me think what has happened. Normally hardware like this should last years. The only abuse I can think of is that when I've had to reset it, which is pretty much never until this problem started a couple of weeks ago, I would pull the power cord out the back of it, rather than switch it off by flicking a switch.

 

This is quite annoying. Apart from the hassle of processing the return and being without internet in the meantime, I query whether upon installing the new one I will have to go through the whole set up again - I had this more or less professionally done, for free, by a mate of mine who is super geeky with this sort of thing. But he now lives in California!

i understand the frustration but if their technical support is saying it needs replacing then i would suggest replacing it now while it's still in warranty rather than having more issues further down the line!

 

you should be able to backup your config and save it somewhere and then restore the new one from that backup to get your changes in place.

 

i would also be asking them to send the new one first to get it installed and then send the old one back so you're not without internet access for too long.

[Adsibob]

33 minutes ago, Thorfun said:

i would also be asking them to send the new one first to get it installed and then send the old one back so you're not without internet access for too long.

I've heard back now from Ubiquiti, and yes that is what they are going to do. Subject to availability. The UK Store is showing it as out of stock at the moment. If they don't have it, query whether I can demand an upgrade?

 

35 minutes ago, Thorfun said:

you should be able to backup your config and save it somewhere and then restore the new one from that backup to get your changes in place.

fingers crossed even a luddite like me can do this.

[Thorfun]

10 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

query whether I can demand an upgrade?

if you don't ask you don't get! but they'll probably say no. they can always get one shipped from Europe i guess.

 

11 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

fingers crossed even a luddite like me can do this.

use the Ubiquiti forums, Google and/or YouTube and there'll be a solution out there for you.

[Wil]

How strange. I dread the day my dream machine packs up- we rely on it for so much of our lives.

 

Regular backups are vital as even minor config changes can be a total PITA to undo if it all goes to hell.

 

Don’t know if you could insist on an upgrade, but definitely on having a new one from European stock ahead of RMAing your existing.

[Adsibob]

3 hours ago, Wil said:

How strange. I dread the day my dream machine packs up- we rely on it for so much of our lives.

 

Regular backups are vital as even minor config changes can be a total PITA to undo if it all goes to hell.

 

Don’t know if you could insist on an upgrade, but definitely on having a new one from European stock ahead of RMAing your existing.

Indeed. What is particularly odd is that the warranty claim has now been approved (we are still arguing about the timing and delivery costs, given they are expecting me to post the package to Netherlands) and in the paperwork produced by their RMA department the failure is described as a “software failure”. If that’s the case, why can’t they reinstall the software remotely and fix it that way? Or failing that, get me to reinstall it.