Linksys Router Crash

I don't think he's experiencing any load or traffic when it crashes.

My BEFW11S4 will hang with the proper exploit or attack. Try the test at:

Oh yeah, insert my usual nasty remarks about leaving out the model numbers of the hardware and operating systems involved. I'm a bit lazy today and really don't wanna overwork my crystal ball.

Yeah, they do that. Little known secret in the SOHO router market is that nearly every router will fall over with enough traffic. I tried every router I could find a while back and ended up with the D-Link DI-624 that Verizon supplied with a special firmware (2.43DDM) that doesn't fall over under heavy load.

Dunno what the solution is...

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In all of the many routers I've used I've never seen such a problem -- other problems, sure, but not falling over under heavy traffic.

is there any way that this can be fixed? Like a firmware update or anything?

Not that I know of. I'm using the latest greatest firmware from Linksys for the BEFW11S4 1.52.02 as of April 7, 2005. I rechecked last week and once again, it hung when I ran all the exploit tests. My WRT54G with DD-WRT or Sveasoft firmware doesn't die. I'm not sure if there are going to be any furthur firmware updates. Linksys is still selling the BEFW11S4v4 on closeouts and discounts, so it's possible.

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item #17 in the current revision firmware. "Heart Beat" is probably the watchdog timer event driver, which is intended to detect if the router is hung and reboot as required. It's not fixed.

So, reduce the number of streams in BitTorrent. Something like: btdownloadgui.exe --minport 10000 --maxport 10029 --responsefile %1 which will limit the number of streams to 30.

So which router should I ultimately replace? Should I trash both and get a Wireless Vonage Router? Wouldn't want that one to be a dud either though...

Well, get yourself a Verizon FIOS line and fire up some BitTorrent. Dunno if it's the bandwidth, the number of connections, the number of unresolved external connection attempts, or what, but it killed every router I tried.

Got my FIOS the end of April, so grep google news thereafter...

I've seen this as well on my Dell Wireless router(i think it is a Dlink inside). Most of the time the box didn't hang completely but the incoming traffic from peer-clients who rush to connect to me is so large that performance dies to a trickle of what is available. If I shut down my bittorrent client it takes 5-15 minutes for most of the internet hosts to stop slamming my connection. Then things work fine.

The problem seems to be the sheer number of connections being made from outside-to-inside. I have no problem sustaining 3Mbps downloads for hours at a time, but open one bittorrent peering client and I can't do more than 100k. DiGiTAL_ViNYL (no email)

Replace which ever Linksys router is crashing. You didn't specify which router was hanging.

Before you add to the e-waste at the landfill, I suggest you try using just the unknown model Vonage Linksys router with the wired laptops. If that works reliably, take your unspecified model Linksys 802.11b wireless router and convert it to an access point by disabling the DHCP server, setting IP address to something that doesn't duplicate the Vonage router, and connecting a cable from a LAN port of the Vonage to a LAN port on the 802.11b wireless router.

Any particular reason you didn't bother disclosing the model numbers of your Linksys hardware?

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I've run lots of very heavy Bittorrent tests and have never seen such a problem. That might be because I choose my gear with care.

Ah, I've been careless, I figured it had to be something like that. What SOHO router are you using, John, and what firmware?

Thanks!

Which model, and what firmware? I've avoided the SonicWall products due to their pricing, upgrade, and per-node models, but it might be worth looking at them again, though at 10X the cost of the lowend SOHO routers we're discussing, I'm not sure it's worthwhile.

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Didn't say that.

SonicWALL.

Well I'm having similar problems with the Vonage Linksys RT31P2 wired router. At times when under heavy load it drops the LAN interface then brings it back up (apparently a self re-boot) but at other times it just gets into a strange state where it doesn't pass DNS traffic and it is impossible to even log into the router, the http server appears to not be running. When it gets into that state it never seems to recover and yanking the power plug is the only solution. It is very annoying and I'm considering placing a "real" router upstream from the Linksys box to filter out some of the unwanted traffic.

Norm

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I have several, from low to medium scale. All are excellent.

Well is there any other way to use p2p without hanging the router? Usenet nzb's are no problem and neither are torrents... quite odd if you ask me.

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The D-Link DGL-4300 Wireless 108G Gaming Router has handled everything I've thrown at it.

Other than replacing the router with one that is known to work, like John's suggestions of the $500 SonicWall or D-Link DGL-4300 Wireless

108G Gaming Router, or the D-Link DI-624 with 2.43DDM firmware that I have some experience with, there's probably not a lot you can do.

You can try other routers, but make sure you buy from a place with a good return policy, so you can return it if it hangs too...

There's always third-party firmware for the Linksys boxes, but given that (AFAICT) they are based on the Linksys code, which we know is buggy, trying to determine ahead of time if any of the third-party firmware releases have found and fixed the problem is probably _more_ difficult than trying it.

Please let us know what you do!