Stable wireless home router?

I think you'll find that different uses of the wifi routers will have totally different answers as to the reliability.

One major cause of many small embedded systems rolling over and playing dead after a week or two of uptime is that some aspect of the firmware has either memory leaks or just fragments the memory. If you never use that buggy part of the firmware or use it sparingly you won't have any problems for a good long time. If your computers really bang on the buggy aspect, expect the device to require reboots after only a short time.

I have never had my wrt54g running openwrt need a reboot because it was wedged. I regularly see uptimes of many months when I log in to make config changes. No doubt, half the reason is that I only use the box to bridge the ethernet to the airwaves and run the wpa2-psk authentication. It doesn't do nat, dhcp, filtering/firewalling etc.

-wolfgang

On 29 Jun 2006 13:01:49 -0700, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in :

Go up a notch; e.g., Cisco, SonicWALL.

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com hath wroth:

I have several Linux boxes based on FreeSCO and other Linux router distributions that are totally stable. The problem is that you have to build the box, deal with the fan noise, and possibly replace the CF (compact flash) drive once per year. One box built around a $500 PC104 card now shows about 6 months of uptime.

The best I can do with commodity routers is my Linksys WRT54G v3.0 with DD-WRT v23 SP1 firmware. It showed 24 days of uptime when I rebooted a few nights ago (by turning off the wrong power strip). If that's not good enough, DD-WRT has a scheduled or interval reboot feature which can reboot the router every day, week, or whatever.

You'll probably find that routers do not hang by themselves. The usual problems are:

1. Power glitches causing RAM to get messed up.
2. Attacks from the internet. Run:
   formatting link
   see how you do. My BEFW11S4 v4 hangs.
3. Inability to handle BitTorrent and other Peer to peer protocols.
4. Sensitivity to RF. My 5watt UHF HT will reboot my BEFW11S4.

I think you'll find #3 to be the most common cause of hangs.

This is typical of #3 above. There are similar reviews on other routers in the web site. |

|

I don't think you can expect much more. How does one bench test for stability? If anything, it takes forever and is difficult to isolate and determine exactly what caused the hang.

Not SMC. Try: Cisco, 3com, Sonicwall, Nortel, Symbol, Netstream. Also, lots for "wireless switch" vendors. However, these are very expensive and probably overkill.

You might also seriously consider using an ethernet router and a wireless access point as seperate boxes. The main point of failure inside conglomerated wireless routers seems to be (my guess) the router section. Get a superior router/firwall (e.g. Cisco PIX) and probably any old wireless access point (or wireless router using just the access point section) will work just fine.

i'm in the same place you are...searching for a stable and reliable wireless router for the house. one that had domestic tech-support would be a huge plus. don't want to spend a fortune but i believe that you get what you pay for. i've seen and read many comments about d-link, netgear and linksys similar to the ones you referenced although i will admit that most of the current negativity seems focused on the linksys wr54g v5.

i posted a similar question on another forum and got a recommendation to look at the US Robotics 5461. price is comparable, even better with a rebate at comp usa. it supports WPA/WPA2, MIMO, etc. and tech-support is reported to be on-shore, quick and reliable. am wondering about range though as it only features a single antenna anyone on this forum use this router and if so what are your thoughts?

73, rich, n9dko

On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 14:16:39 -0700, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

I'm not so sure -- I've seen a fair number of access point failures due to such things as ARP table overflow.

John Navas hath wroth:

Ummmm.... Wireless access points don't have ARP tables. There's no need to map the MAC address to an IP address since wireless access points don't know anything about IP addresses.

However, you're correct. The learned bridge table (MAC address to network port mapping) is a potential problem. Most cheezy bottom of the line access points can only handle perhaps 32 MAC addresses total. That's normally not a problem with home access points, but gets messy with corporate LAN's and public hot spots. Even 256 MAC addresses became a problem at a hot spot because of all the transient wireless devices that would drift by, grab a slot in the learned bridge table, never move any traffic, and drive away into the sunset. I had to hack the firmware (DD-WRT) to violate some RFC and expire the bridging table (and ARP table) earlier than usual.

Very few cheapo bridges support STP (spanning tree protocol) which is another potential problem. (I'm not sure I understand exactly what can go wrong, so I'll avoid trying to explain something I don't understand).

Also, the buffer located between the ethernet port and the wireless port can overflow.

I have been using a pair of CompUSA brand 802.11g routers. These units have been absolutely rock solid. In addition, you can configure them to function in WDS repeater mode, which most other low cost routers can't do (you typically have to buy a higher priced Access Point).

The best part is the price. If I recall correctly, I paid $2.99 after rebate earlier this year. I haven't seen any deals on these quite that good recently though.

Mike Schumann

My experience of WIFI is limited but I have had a linksys WRT54GS for nearly 2 years now no reliability issues at all. I used to have lots of dropped connetions but since I uninstalled the linksys management software and let XP do the job 3 months ago it has been performing perfectly.

Mike

On Fri, 30 Jun 2006 19:14:29 GMT, Mike wrote in :

Say what? The WRT54GS is a stand-alone router. Windows XP only manages client adapters. You were apparently having problems with your client adapter, not the WRT54GS.

Thanks everyone. advice and links were a great help. I still wish there was an obvious choice for: inexpensive, commercial, no frills, never crashes. But whatcha gonna do?

-d

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in news:1151836677.818338.309580 @b68g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

LOL!!! Only 2 or 3 of those pre-requisites will ever come together in the same box.

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com hath wroth:

Easy. Buy any random wireless router or access point. Figure out how often it hangs. Install an AC power timer to reboot it before it hangs again:

I'm serious. I now have two cheap friends/customers[1] with chronic BEFW11S4 v4 routers. They get power cycled twice a day. No complaints about access issues for about 6 months. Rebooting is much easier and cheaper than finding the ultimate wireless router.

[1] The difference between customers and friends is that the customers pay me. Otherwise, they're identical.

On Sun, 02 Jul 2006 11:43:32 -0700, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

Crude but effective. I've been using that method successfully since the early days of DSL.

On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 17:49:45 -0700, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

Yep. Realized I'd been sloppy about 1 second after I clicked Send Now. :) What I should have said is forwarding database. In my defense I know of at least one product that integrates its forwarding database into its ARP table.

Looping through two or more bridges. With broadcast packets the result can be a broadcast storm.

interesting idea, john. what do you do...hook up a digital timer to shut off power at X point in time and restore power 1 minute later?

73, rich, n9dko

On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 17:44:20 GMT, Rich wrote in :

Yep. I'll usually set the time to something like 3AM when I expect the device to usually be idle. I've also used a 'deadman' with X10 power control that power cycles the router when it can't ping at least one of three remote servers.

John Navas wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

WRT54GL w/ DD-WRT firmware has a auto-reboot function in it :-)

On Sat, 10 Feb 2007 22:27:23 GMT, Spam Catcher wrote in :

Likewise less expensive Buffalo wireless router with DD-WRT.

Which buffalo router do you recommend?

Adair