Linksys befws11s4 v2 locks up

I have a wild guess(tm). You have a board with a few of the infamous leaky capacitors that appeared in devices made between about 1999 and

2001. Remove the rubber feet, remove the screws, and the box should come apart. Look for brown ooooooze coming from the bottom of electrolytic capacitors, or bulges in the top of the can on these capacitors. that it's not just motherboards that have problems with the defective low-esr capacitors. I've seen it in power supplies, VCR's, hubs, and wall warts.

This is only a guess(tm).

It's on its way out/failure.

Duane :)

"Mas G" wrote in news:kjCtd.81079$ snipped-for-privacy@fe45.usenetserver.com:

I have had my 11S4 v1 since 2001. I turned into a wire/wireless switch and plugged it into the Watchguard. It's just started recently having major issues, like I cannot get to the Admin screens anymore after doing repeated resets and power downs, but it could still send and receive traffic. Now, it won't even to that wired or wireless. ;-) I may or may not get another Linksys as I am in the market looking for something, maybe just an AP this time that can do B and G.

Duane :)

I think this speculation about 'leaky capacitors' causing the connections problems is bogus.

I say that because I owned 3 separate NEW units for about one week each, and all 3 locked up. I took them back to Radio Shack and got a refund. This all happened about

8 months ago (April 2004).

It's a firmware issue that was never resolved. I consider them junk.

And, I feel vindicated because about 3 months ago, I joined a business which trouble-shoots home-networks, and everyone at this business has the same recommendation when customers ask which router to buy.

The answer is always 'buy anything EXCEPT Linksys'. (e.g.D-Link and Netgear both work fine.)

My 2-cents worth...

Dave

I call to your attention that the original poster indicated that the router was working normally for 2 years prior to hanging. Unless you subscribe to the "software rot" theory, where old software deteriorates in the box, methinks such a slow deterioration could not be attributed to buggish firmware. However, a long term deterioration in stablity is an attribute of some hardware failure.

Well, I've been using a BEFW11S4v4, which admitedly is quite different from the v2 incantation. Although it does have some firmware bugs, none of them have caused a hang or lockup.

Hopefully, you get paid more than 2-cents. Linksys buys it hardware from a wide variety of manufacturers. Quality varies radically, mostly depending on the manufacturer. For example, see:

all the mutations of the Dlink DWL-900+. (My thanks to Richard Perkin for the URL). I don't think you can generalize that one vendor is defective, when all the bottom of the line wireless vendors buy similar boards from various manufacturers.

Ok.. I;ve replaced my .2 version with a .4 and it looks like the same thing is happening..

I lose internet connectivity even though all the lights stay flashing..

I ping it from several machines and get no reponse.. if I wait long enough and do an arp -a from the machines I get the mac address as 00-00-00-00-00 and invalid

I unplug it and plug it back in and everything works instantly..

I'm not sure where to go from here...

"newshosting" wrote in news:03sud.190$ snipped-for-privacy@text.usenetserver.com:

Let me repeat, it's on its way out. ;-)

Duane :)

I like tough problems. Since you've tried it from several machines, it's improbable that it's anything on the client machines. Some rhetorical questions:

- Are you testing via wireless, wired, or both?

- Duz the new BEFW11S4v4 have the latest firmware? Ver 1.50.14

- Did you reset the new router to defaults before setting up? Garbage left in memory from a previous firmware update can cause problems.

- Are there any boxes between your "several machines" and the BEFW11S4v4 router?

- Are there any other boxes or servers on your LAN side that could be running RIP or RIP2? If so, they could be advertising faulty routes sending your clients or your router off to who knows where. When you lose connectivity, and assuming your "several machines" are running Windoze, run: ipconfig to see if the default gateway has changed or run: router print to see if any of the routes have changed. I don't think this is the problem, but it's worth a try.

I suggest you test this mess in an organized fashion designed to eliminate too many possibilities and reduce the system to its simplest configuration.

- Router plus one computer plugged into the LAN. No wireless. Disconnect the wireless antenna or disable wireless to avoid neighbors. Test if it works and doesn't "lock up". If it fails, try a different computer on the LAN (no wireless). If that also fails, you need a karma recharge as you apparently have two defective routers.

- If one LAN connected computer works, plug in a 2nd computer and do some testing. If that fails, then it's something to do with the 2nd computah. If it works, continue to plug computahs into the LAN side until something either fails, or until everything is working.

- If it works with wired LAN, turn on the wireless, but do NOT try to connect with any of your computahs. See if it's something external coming from the neighbors. It could be garbage from another access point. If it craps out as before, try a different channel (1, 6, 11).

- Disconnect one and only one computah and set it up to play wireless. Do the testing thing. If it fails, there's something fishy with the wireless client or setup. If it works, continue to turn on wireless clients until a failure appears.

Note that the idea is to start with a minimal system, with everything un-necessary disabled, and build it up from there until it fails.

"newshosting" wrote in news:Yevud.197$ch5.174 @text.usenetserver.com:

And there is nothing to say that it cannot be defective out of the box too. A while back, there was one guy who posted to this NG that exchanged two brand new Linksys routers before the third one got was fully functional. They make them like pop corn and you can run into a bad batch.

Duane :)

Here is an update..

I have high speed internet with Comcast and I use the 14.95 aol account to access some email that I quite can't get rid of yet.

I left aol off for 2 days.. no disconnects..

I just had it up for an hour and 2 disc>