Wireless Networking Strangeness with Linksys WRT54G

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Subject Author Date
Strangeness with Linksys WRT54G Bob Willard 03-04-08
Posted by Bob Willard on March 4, 2008, 9:16 am
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I had a weird problem for a few days on my home LAN, using a
Linksys WRT54G v2 router (v4.20.7 µCode), tied to WAN via
Moto SB 4200 to Comcast.

Symptom 1: Could not send or forward long (>1000 bytes) emails
from Moz v1.7 on wired XP PRO PC: after ~60 Secs, Moz reported
failure to connect to smtp server; but, short (<200 bytes) emails
sent OK. Same problem with Moz v1.7 on wireless XP MC PC, and same
problem with Netscape v7.1 on wired W98 PC. No problem with
WinMail on wireless Vista PC at any message size.

Symptom 2: Could not connect to some websites with either FF v2
or IE v7 from wired XP PRO PC: connections timed out. I think
the common factor was using https instead of http, but I'm not
really sure.

Aside: transfers of up to 1 MB uphill and up to 16MB downhill
via FTP work OK, and at full speed; no sign of errors.

Solution: power down the router for >3 minutes, then power back up.
Note that powering down for >20 seconds (tried twice) was *not*
long enough to clear the problem, but a surprisingly long power-off
period (while I temporarily bypassed the router) did the job.

Weird, huh? Maybe this 3-year old router has Alzheimer's?

--
Cheers, Bob

Posted by Bill Kearney on March 4, 2008, 12:21 pm
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> Solution: power down the router for >3 minutes, then power back up.
> Note that powering down for >20 seconds (tried twice) was *not*
> long enough to clear the problem, but a surprisingly long power-off
> period (while I temporarily bypassed the router) did the job.
>
> Weird, huh? Maybe this 3-year old router has Alzheimer's?

Long timeouts like that sound more like there's gear UPSTREAM at the ISP
that has to timeout, not this equipment. Try this, instead of powering it
off, physically DISCONNECT it from the cable modem. Wait that 3 minute
period, reconnect it and see if the "problem" went away. I'm guessing it
will.

That being the case there are other debug steps to consider.


Posted by Bob Willard on March 4, 2008, 1:56 pm
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Bill Kearney wrote:
>> Solution: power down the router for >3 minutes, then power back up.
>> Note that powering down for >20 seconds (tried twice) was *not*
>> long enough to clear the problem, but a surprisingly long power-off
>> period (while I temporarily bypassed the router) did the job.
>>
>> Weird, huh? Maybe this 3-year old router has Alzheimer's?
>
>
> Long timeouts like that sound more like there's gear UPSTREAM at the ISP
> that has to timeout, not this equipment. Try this, instead of powering
> it off, physically DISCONNECT it from the cable modem. Wait that 3
> minute period, reconnect it and see if the "problem" went away. I'm
> guessing it will.
>
> That being the case there are other debug steps to consider.

Interesting. I can't tell the diff, since the router was both powered
down and uncabled. And, the problem has gone away (for now).
--
Thanks & Cheers, Bob

Posted by Bill Kearney on March 4, 2008, 3:53 pm
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> Interesting. I can't tell the diff, since the router was both powered
> down and uncabled. And, the problem has gone away (for now).

Here's a thought, what other traffic was being routed through it? Is it an
open wifi network? Might've been something else hammering a ton of traffic
through the link and that tripped something on the ISP's side of things.



Posted by Bob Willard on March 4, 2008, 6:38 pm
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Bill Kearney wrote:

>> Interesting. I can't tell the diff, since the router was both powered
>> down and uncabled. And, the problem has gone away (for now).
>
>
> Here's a thought, what other traffic was being routed through it? Is it
> an open wifi network? Might've been something else hammering a ton of
> traffic through the link and that tripped something on the ISP's side of
> things.
>

The WiFi segment is secured with WPA, and usually pretty light anyway. The
bulk of my LAN traffic is on the wired side, including a gamer (sometimes 2).
But the traffic wasn't unusually heavy when the router went funny.

I'm holding my breath, to see if the router (or whatever) goes awry again.
This Linksys router is ~3 years old, and the previous router (Linksys) lasted
for ~5 years before the radio front-end died.
--
Cheers, Bob

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