Unreliable Linksys router...
 

I have a WRT54G wireless router and the ethernet connection is unreliable. The wireless functionality is flawless but the ethernet connection will occasionally stop routing packets. You can still connect to the router and configure it, so the network is still working, but the router refuses to route packets to the internet. The only way to get it working again is to power cycle it or set a system preference which, presumably, resets it.

What is going on here? I really don't think routing is so complicated that it's hard to design one that works. Has anyone else had problems with their Linksys routers?
Thank you...

I've had trouble with Linksys everything... I have one of their routers, a cable modem, and a wireless network adapter... all of which are junk. As cheap as all these things are now, I'd recommend just replacing it with a different brand. I spent a week trying to get the wireless adapter to work with my computer but I'd have to reinstall the drivers EVERY time my computer restarted, so I went to Best Buy and bought a cheap Belkin adapter which was easy to install and works great. I won't ever buy a Linksys product again.

thats weird because mine has been doing the same thing for a while now. after a little bit, most websites start to slow down to nothing and i have to unplug and replug it for my internet to get back to normal. it sucks!

Have you looked into doing a firmware update?

I know I was looking on the linksys forums and some people have had problems with that very router, so I don't know if it is a firmware issue, an OS issue or what but judging by the number of posts about someone having problems with it I would say it is a pretty buggy piece of hardware.

http://forums.linksys.com/linksys/bo...reless_Routers

As far as linksys products go, I have only owned them, and recommend them to all my friends and family, I have one of the very first BEFSR41's old 1.x firmware running as well, and never had any problems with it, I don't know how the quality is since the takeover by Cisco a while back, but again I have never had any problems, and the ones I have had people buy have never shown any issues as well (I have gotten about half a dozen friends and family to buy the same router I have)

Well, if your router behaves similarly to mine then I wouldn't exactly call that a weird thing. After all, you'd expect these things to behave the same regardless of ownership, right?

I'm sorry, I probably should have specified that it was a WRT54G v6 router. It has the latest firmware so there'd be no point in flashing it...

...Although, now that you mention it, I went to the website to take a second look. I made the mistake of following the instructions on the website and looked up the current firmware for the product in my country. As it turns out, if you look at the American site, there is a more recent firmware version. So, do I use that or is my router somehow made specifically for my country?

Please look into a firmware update. My router is very reliable.

To be honest, I have no reason to believe that a firmware for a US product and a Canadian product would be any different, but I probably would not do it unless Linksys recommends it, you wouldn't wanna brick the router, but with the problems you are having it might be an easy way to get a new one :)

I haven't found a robust off-the-shelf consumer-grade router for quite a while. I mean they work for basic web & email traffic, but heavy use takes out most of them within a day. Even a little office with a few workers can take them out a couple times a week. The worst is when someone starts up a torrent machine that runs away with buffer space from all the half-open connections. The pre-VX Linksys models worked pretty well but since V4, with the RAM cut in half, there isn't much to play with.

You might want to try openwrt or one of the cousin projects. The code is available, has a far better feature-set, and bugs get fixed. I haven't used openwrt on anything newer than a V4 (or V5 GS) but they do suggest it works.

If nothing else, the hardware identification areas of these open projects will provide some clue as to whether your Canadian model is "different." The project members are widely dispersed so have exposure to lots of hardware. Check out the alternate list of compatible products.

the only trouble I've ever had with my old Linksys router was when i had to much bit torrent going at the same time, it would lock up every few days. I've since built my own router out of an old Pentium II. m0n0wall works great.

The problem with routers and bittorent is the number of connections max out on the router and you have to reset it. I know I have this problem, and every once in a while will have to reboot the router.

if you have a spare computer (PI or PII) with 2 NIC's you can build a monowall router

http://m0n0.ch/wall/

I actually went from having a "monowall" (I've never heard this term before) to this Linksys router. My PII 200MHz OpenBSD box was a fine router but I just got a laptop and wanted a wireless network to go with it. I could have just gotten a wireless adaptor for the PII but I was hoping to get something smaller, quieter, and more energy efficient since I don't use it for anything other than routing. As an added bonus, the Linksys supports UPnP, which is handy.

Well, I decided that the hardware was, in all likelyhood, no different between the two countries (they seldomly are) and updated the firmware. I even downloaded two torrent files to stress the network. So far so good. I'll wait a couple of weeks to see if there are any problems and, if there are not, switch from my phone company to Vonage. It's sort of my New Year's resolution...

The problem you're experiencing is almost certainly related to the router. It's not just Linksys, and it's not that the router's "broken" at all. It's being killed by connections. What's opening all the connections? Your bittorrent client.

Here's the deal:

"The default firmware for Linksys and most router track old connections for FIVE days then started to clear dead connection, which causes the router to hang when using P2P apps, or any software that generates a lot of connections which the router can't take. DHT only aggravates the situation because of the number of connections it generates."
"Linksys has yet to address this issue due to some reason, but there is a fix. If you use alternative WRT54G firmware, you can put in a start-up script to fix this problem."


The only fix you can really put in place is alternative firmware on the router. I wouldn't do that if you're a n00b.

My info comes from quite a while looking into this for my own, same, problem with my WRT54G.

Here's the link to where I finally nailed down the most info in one place:
http://forums.hardwarezone.com/showthread.php?t=998127

This is more info on alternative firmware:
http://lifehacker.com/software/route...ter-178132.php

This is in case you decide to try it:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php...ported_Devices

The guide covers many brands and models of router.

Best of luck!

More or less, I followed the directions here:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Installation

and was able to stabilize my connection. Although, fixing the router had an unexpected result in that I was able to find out the cable modem was also crapping out. I contacted road runner and got the current firmware pushed to the modem. All seems to be well for now.

Asta.

First, didn't the Linksys router do that only because that was the default setting for the Linux firewall? They've since switched from Linux to VxWorks so that's not necessarily true, anymore...

Secondly, this would happen regardless of whether I'd run BitTorrent or not.

Thirdly, there was a time when it had happened and I took the initiative of investigating the matter a little more thoroughly (although, still not thoroughly enough, in retrospect). It turns out that I still had an internet connection but that I had lost my DNS. I switched to a known static DNS and things were fine again. Because it only happened the one time, it's easily possible that this is simply a coincidental and unrelated problem...

Unfortunately (or, perhaps fortunately, depending on your point of view), I haven't gotten the opportunity to recreate any of these problems. I upgraded to the latest (American) firmware (under the assumption that the hardware is the same regardless of region) and I've yet to encounter any of these issues. I may have traded them for other issues but they're subtle enough to simply be my imagination...

i just updated my own router and i hope it fixes my problem too. (it was timing out all the pages i checked today. :S)

My Linksys BEFW11S4 has had some failures with DHCP as of late... been quite odd. Maybe it's time to get a WRT :)

Not sure if this helps much, but I do know that Linksys has had serious compatability issues with the Motorolla brand of cable modems.

I have for the last few years always advised people to stay away from Linksys routers. For stability in a small office I recommend Cisco Pix series router/firewall. For home use netgear has been more stable than belkin and linksys for me.
I personaly use an old microsoft wireless router. They may have had a short lived production life but the thing works great.

nope. The update to the firmware did not fix my problem. FUCK! it's retarded. when i want to use the internet, i pretty much have to go upstairs and unplug the router and plug it back... (my computer is downstairs where it's cold. :))

Well, my problem seems to be fixed. What's your problem, exactly?

"He called it a router." ;)

Nice, if the client is willing. I agree with you in concept, but I can only get people to spring for $500 components if they're serving commerce or other business-critical needs. Most are willing to power cycle junk once a week, and without some idiot firing up a torrent the consumer junk runs for awhile.

BTW, I've noticed a marked improvement in reliability of cheapo Linksys/Buffalo/etc. by switching to open or dd-wrt and a bit of buffer tweaking.

well i leave my computer on connected to my router all the time. (used for msn and downloading torrents.. ) after a few hrs or days, it seems like all the pages i check start to slow down when they load or i get a "TIMED OUT" message and have to refresh a few times before the page can load.

at 1st, i thought it was my torrents(Utorrent) slowing me down so i checked and sometimes, they're only taking 10k/s or less and my pages are still slow. Although msn keeps going.

i know my cable internet(unlimited) sometimes slows down at peektimes but never like this so i figured it might be my modem but it's not... i found the problem: when i start seeing slow pages, or time outs, i just unplug the router and plug it back. then it's like normal for a few days or so...

And i know it's my router because when i use the 192.168.1.1 page, i get a timeout too!

btw: i'm downstairs plugged in the router through an ethernet cable. and it's almost never used for the wireless.

after the update in firmware, i thought it fixed it but it happened again this week.

Loads of improvement in reliability. I recently came across a Linksys Wrt54g. Stock firmware; no dice. It didn't want to play with nice with my wireless devices, my dsl modem and the wired stuff worked, but not very well. I switched over to dd-wrt and it's a completely different beast now. My Wii/DS work with it, my dsl modem works well with it and I there haven't been any connectivity issues at all that I'm aware of...

I'm connected 24/7 as well. Just to be sure, what version of the firmware are you using? I'm using v1.01.1