BEFW11S4 Intermittant Failures

I have the version 4 model.

Duh. Are you running IPMasq (NAT) on the Linux firewall? Does your Linux box offer DHCP addresses to connected client computahs? If so, you don't need to have the BEFW11S4 run in router mode. Running double NAT is doable but a pain in the posterior with incoming traffic.

The default route between the wireless router and the wired router may have changed. Go into the configuration for the BEFW11S4 on the: Setup -> Advance Routing page, and set: Transmit RIP version: Disabled Receive RIP version: Disabled My guess(tm) is that you also have RIP enabled on your Linux router or some server and it's sending bogus route advertisements to the BEFW11S4. When that happens, it's usually the default route that gets mashed in the router, causing it to lose internet connectivity, but nothing else.

Since it's behind the Linux firewall, I'll assume it's protected from attack from the internet. There are some known router exploits that will hang a cheapo router. Well, they hang mine, so I guess it might also be a problem on yours if it were exposed directly to the internet. However, it's not.

The next time it goes insane, dive into the internal web server and see if the status page looks normal, or if some of the IP's (especially the gateway) are weird looking.

Bob Simon wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

If the unit was working before and you had no problems on an older firmware version, then why did you update the firmware? One only updates the firmware for security issues, new enhancement you must have, or something was fixed that you needed. I ran my 11s4 V1 with a firmware that was last issued in Dec 2002. The router finally died here recently but it was just acting as a wire/wireless AP switch when it went. If it's not broke, then don't fix it with an firmware upgrade. You may want to try flashing back to a firmware version that didn't give you any problems and see what happens.

Duane :)

Yes. On my BEFW11S4v4, it's on the: Administration -> Factory Defaults page. You should always do a restore to factory defaults after a firmware upgrade. Most upgrades do this automatically, but a few will save garbage in the registers, much of which cannot be seen in the web configuration pages. Best to reset and be sure. Good luck.

I've been living with this intermittant problem for several months and updated the firmware in an earlier attempt to fix it. Since this is a somewhat complex network setup, and since the problem is infrequent, I was not sure that the problem was in the AP until the test I did yesterday, To tell the truth, I really feel like I need to repeat the reset test before I'm completely convinced that THIS is the problem.

Is there's any way to do a reset from the web-based management interface rather than by removing power or pressing the button?

-- Bob Simon remove both "x"s from domain for private replies

Yes. Everything in my network has a private address except for the outside interface of the linux firewall and I'm masquerading outgoing host source addresess to it.

No and DHCP is disabled on the AP too. Every host in my wired (192.168.0.0) and wireless (192.168.1.0) networks is statically addressed. I use these static addresses in iptables filtering rules.

However, the outside interface of my linux firewall uses DHCP to get it's address from the cable modem. But even this address has been static for at least a year.

There's no reason for me to do NAT on the AP. I presume that turning off gateway mode disables NAT. Is this not correct?

Dynamic routing is already disabled on my AP.

No, I have no reason to run RIP because my static routing requirements are so simple.

I have not been able to determine exactly what gets broken in the AP when I lose Internet connectivity. It's certainly possible that the default route could have been lost. Next time the problem recurs, I'll verify the default and other two static routes in the routing table.

Thanks.

-- Bob Simon remove both "x"s from domain for private replies

I couldn't find a reboot in the web configuration. However, all you have to do is change some trivial setting, and the router appears to reboot. I suspect this is sufficient.

So much for that theory. One experiment you might wanna try is to wait until it hangs again, and then just connect a CAT5 cable between the laptop and the LAN switch on the back of the router. That takes the wireless out of the picture. It won't prove much, but it would be interesting to know if it really is the wireless part of the puzzle that's hanging.

Your version 1.45.10 firmware for your BEFW11S4v3 router is a bit different than my BEFW11S4v4 router with 1.50.14. I have an "NAT on/off" selection, but no "gateway mode on/off" selection. My guess(tm) is that you're correct, and that these both are the same function. Turning off the gateway mode probably (not 100% sure) turns off NAT.

From the online docs: "Gateway Mode should be used if your Linksys router is hosting your network's connection to the Internet. Router Mode should be selected if the router exists on a network with other routers."

Yep. Gateway off is same as NAT off.

Thanks but I meant a simple reset. Based on my experiment yesterday, there was no need to reconfig anything to get the AP forwarding again. I don't suppose this is supported in the GUI, but I thought I'd check anyway.

BTW, I did do a reset to factory defaults right after I upgraded the firmware. I didn't mention it earlier, but I did this upgrade several months ago when I first encountered the intermittant problem.

-- Bob Simon remove both "x"s from domain for private replies

That's interesting. I did not know that.

Thanks! You're right, that would be an interesting experiment.

-- Bob Simon remove both "x"s from domain for private replies