Intermittent internet connection problems

[wireless]

After every few days, when a device which was previously connected to my wifi network attempts to connect it connects, however it has no internet access. Other devices that are actively connected continue to work. The workaround is to reboot the router. This allows all devices to work again -- until the next time the problem occurs.

I did some troubleshooting of my own, and had these observations. First, when the router is in this weird state, I am unable to access the router configuration page via a web page. Normally I can browse to 192.168.1.254. However, when the router is misbehaving, this never works (even from a wired connection). Second, when a client attempts to connect to the router's wifi in this state, it generally does not work although it says it has a network connection. Inexplicably, on these partially connected devices I am able to use a web browser and do Google searches. But none of the search results work (i.e. I cannot follow a search result link) nor can I directly browse to any non-Google search page (at least that I have discovered).

I also observed that when the router is in this weird state, then a device which is partially connected does not have the normal connection information. When I check the device's ip configuration, instead of having a 192. IP address, it instead has a 169. address. This is not my router's IP address (when functioning normally), as reported by https://www.whatismyip.com. Also, the device which is partially connected has a DNS set to 0.0.0.0. And the devices default gateway was not the router (192.168.1.254); I can't remember what it was. As an experiment, when the router was in this bad state, I changed a partially connected device's settings to use a static ip, explicitly setting a 192. IP address, setting the DNS to 8.8.8.8 and setting the default gateway to 192.168.1.254. After making these changes, the device was able to successfully connect with the internet.
I have a Telus T3200M modem/router combination. I'm not using an other routing devices (extenders, mesh, etc). Is there a firmware update I can try for this that may resolve this flaky behaviour?


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