LinkSys WRTG54 Problem w/ Pop & SMTP Access

How desperate are you?

Your router, depending on the hardware version (version 4 and older works best) will support third party firmware such as dd-wrt or openwrt. Assuming your hardware is happy, it might be a fresh look on the software side that makes the problem go away.

Version 4 and 5 of the wrt54g are a little different and this applies:

Best Regards,

I don't know about desperate, but I'm very hesitant to install 3rd party firmware when I can just take this back and trade it in for a Belkin or something. I saw that I have one of the "neutered" routers, version 6. I'm also hesitant because I don't even know if firmware is the answer here. Have you ever heard of a problem like this, and if so, was the third-party firmware the answer?

Thank you for your help.

I've had my share of problems with folks getting to imap/smtp servers, but never anything nailed down to a problem with a linksys router (wireless or not). I think I'd bet a quarter that if the Linksys is fingered as the problem with a specific site though, that new firmware would have oh, PFA, at least a 50% shot of taking care of the issue. I'm trying to wrap my head around any hardware defectivity issue that could cause such a failure footprint. Firmware I could more likely see being finicky about minor protocol differences though.

Curious though, have you tried simply power cycling the router in these times of trouble? Does that help at all? I've had plenty of datapoints with routers of all flavors losing their mind or having connection tables fill up thanks to connection hungry p2p software running on the lan, or whatnot.

Yeah if it's in warranty, I'd go back and trade it for the WRTG54L (L=Linux = non-neutered) or if you wanna have fun with third party firmware for cheap, Buffalo WHR-G54S. Or either of em should just work.

Seems like one of those interesting/educational/maddening problems though!

I've tried recycling power, starting over from scratch, rain dances, etc. I don't want to void the warranty by experimenting with third-party software.

The Geek Squad guys ran into a problem like this with a neighbor of mine. Their solution was to have the customer switch ISP's for email. I love those guys.

If you're in warranty and can take it back, I totally agree with ya. If yer out of warranty and feelin experimental, I'd play.

Awesome.

That's a weird one for sure. Anyone have another router you can try out in its place?

Any possibility software firewalls are involved at all? They may behave differently given that a direct connection and a router connection would give different ip ranges.

I'm veering off-topic here, but having long been in the IT business, it sure is good to see that nothing had changed in the world of technical support. Always pass the buck. LinkSys blames Microsoft, Microsoft blames Norton or McAfee, the ISP blames everyone else. Those Geek Squad guys charge 250 bills plus the hardware to install a wireless network with 2 connections. To pay that kind of money and to have them do something like that is a crime. Maybe I'm getting old, but I remember a day when you just couldn't get away that shit.

Replaced the router with a LinkSys WRT54GS and still have the same problem. There is something about LinkSys and Hostmysite.com that makes them completely incompatible.

We can't quite say that yet, but we do know your 2 new routers behaved identically.

For s**ts and giggles when you plug your wired BEFSR81 back in and are cabled in with a computer to the BEFSR81, does the problem with smtp/pop to hostmysite.com persist or go away? That unit used to work fine right?

Are the time out messages you get when trying to retrieve pop email? SMTP sending? Both? Are you connecting wireless, wired or both into the new wireless routers you're playing with?

Yes, it works perfectly.

Both. The standard 60-second time out message from Outlook Express. I installed Forte Agent and it does the same thing. I've ruled out Outlook as the problem.

This problem affects both wired and wireless connections. I've tried every computer on the network.

I went ahead and installed the firmware update for the new WRT54GS router (1.52.0). It's a version 6.

LinkSys suggested port triggering. I'm waiting for them to point me to a document on how to do that. Hostmysite.com uses ports 25 and 110 for sending and receiving respectively.

The only good part about all of this is I now know how to install a 10-node wireless network in less than 30 minutes...

So much for the Linksys = hosed idea. :-) Wonder what in the flyin f is going on with these wireless routers though.

Cool.

LOL. Awesome.

Intriguing. Hrmm...

Well, here's a shortcut to waiting on linksys

So one hypothesis: Perhaps that one ISP is relying on ident before allowing communication, maybe your old wired router cheerfully answers on ident (as does a direct wired connection to the cable modem), and perhaps the new wireless routers have a default of ident refusing all connections? So setting this up to trigger on outbound tcp/25 or tcp/110 activity to allow tcp/113 to open up for the target might be the ticket?

Sounds just logical enough to work I suppose?

Be sure to post what you find out.

The issue has been resolved. Hostmysite.com moved my account to a different email server. I connected immediately without any problem. I have asked them what the difference between the two servers is. I'll report back if I hear anything.

Thanks for helping me out.

No prob. What a strange problem. Good that the webhost took it upon themselves to fix the issue though because a stock config wrt54g or gs is hardly a unique config by any stretch.

....

Depending on what your other ISP's offer, I have one (earthlink) that allows me to create multiple (up to 8) mailboxes under the master account. I just do the smtp forward of any email sent to me at my various isp's that don't allow direct access when not on one of their native connections (roadrunner, adelphia, comcast are 3, non native is when traveling and using wifi/cellphone/other networks/etc), and even from other sources like hotmail/msn/my various domains etc.... Not only lets me get all of my email, but also however I happen to be connected when traveling (handy since I travel a lot for work, and carry a notebook with me)

I inquired as to what was different about the two mail servers, and the answer was they didn't know -- just that one was newer than the other. I really spun my wheels on this one, and I was right, the answer was simple, even though we don't really know what it is, which is about the norm for problem solving in this line of work.

On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 17:25:41 -0400, "The Walrus" wrote in :

Geek Squad folks are by and large utterly incompetent. I've spent considerable time cleaning up their messes.

I was out of IT for a while after the boom died down and I was doing some accounting work in an office a couple of years ago. On one of the PC's the NIC started to get flake out and could only get a 169.254.x.x address off of the internal NAT network. They brought in a Geek Squad guy and he spent two hours doing things like reinstalling the NIC, replacing the NIC, reinstalling the protocol stack, resetting the protocol stack, etc. etc. Finally he told them it would require an XP reinstall in repair mode or even starting over from scratch. They scheduled him back the next day for what would cost a couple of hundred bills or more. After the guy left, I sat down at the computer and picked a restore point from two days earlier and it was back up and running. I'm pretty sure my NT 4.0 MCSE has been retired by Microsoft, but I smoked the MCSE 2K on that one. :)

On Sun, 1 Apr 2007 13:32:28 -0400, "The Walrus" wrote in :

My own favorite is a friend that complained to me about terrible Internet speeds and frequent outages. This after Geek Squad had charged her over $200 for two visits plus over $50 for a new wireless router. What I found is that Geek Squad had configured her laptop to connect to a neighbor's Wi-Fi. She'd been paying for high-speed cable Internet for almost two years without actually using it. (Perish the thought Comcast should ask her why she had no traffic.) Took me less than five minutes to reconfigure her wireless, giving her fast, reliable Internet.