I've just installed Verizon FIOS (15M/2M), and replaced my venerable BEFSR41 with a WRT54G V2.2, and when it works it works flawlessly. However, the router has hung up twice in a week already (no traffic, can't ping it) and needs to be power cycled to come back to life.
It's at the latest firmware (V3.03.6), and is brand new, did I get a bad one or is there some othe diagnosis I can do?
Thanks!
I'm jealous. I want fiber speeds. What kind of benchmarks are you getting?
It's kinda hard to do diagnostics on a comatose router. If you can't ping it, it's probably hung. Hard to tell what killed it. I have a bunch of these recently installed at various hot spots and offices and they never hang. There's an internal time inside called "AP watchdog" that is suppose to help recover from hangs. This is from Satori firmware and not the stock Linksys firmware: "The AP Watchdog enables a timer that will check to see if any clients are connected in the interval seconds given. If no clients are attached, the watchdog assumes the AP needs to be reset. When clients are connected this reset will not occur. The watchdog is intended for situations where the AP becomes unavailable due to interference or internal chip problems." This can be enabled or disabled by choice. I run mine enabled.
Also, check for router exploits from the internet. My previous BEFW11S4v4 was getting locked up at increasing intervals due to attacks from the net. There were several exploits that would hang it. See:
I decided this was a good time to replace my BEFW11S4v4 with a WRT54Gv1.1 running Sveasoft Satori-4.0 v2.07.1.7sv. I ran the above exploits test and it passed without hanging. It took about 2 minutes.
I get 15M test speeds occasionally, so I know it works, but it's usually around 5M or so. The major advantage is that my wife and I don't collide when we do {gaming, downloading, streaming video, audio, etc} simultaneously, and it's only $50/month (versus the $30 1.5M/384 DSL we had before). Now I'm internet-limited instead of being ISP-limited.
Yeah, that's why I was hoping someone would say "after a certain number of bits, there's a counter overflow, use this other firmware" or something.
Is this only for the AP, or the whole router? I've got the AP off (there's a separate WAP45G in the middle of the house) for now, it's the wired router portion that's hanging...
Ran it a couple of times with no problems. Guess I'll keep an eye on it and swap it out if it has a problem.
Dunno if it matters, but there's a D-Link DI-624 with a special Verizon firmware that lets them fiddle around inside the router (dunno if it's remote management (that's disabled in the router), but some remote diagnosis stuff anyway) connected to the FIOS box. I didn't want the D-Link to be my LAN router, so I added the Linksys as a firewall.
I'll have to look at the source code to be sure, but my guess(tm) is that it's everything. It's late, I'm tired, and I don't wanna read cryptic code that I don't really understand. Maybe someone in the Sveasoft forums has a better answer.
Likewise here. So much for that theory.
Oh-oh. Do you have more than one IP address? If only one, there's no way you can run two routers on the same fiber modem on only one IP address (on the WAN side). What EXACTLY are you doing? (Connection diagram and IP numbers please).
Sounds like it, I'll give the new firmware and a fan a try, thanks!
Sorry about that, I was a little fuzzy on the details.
Verizon gave me a D-Link DI624 wireless router running a special firmware version: 2.43DDM, which allows some kind of remote management by Verizon. Since they have to do their remote management, it has to stay, but since I don't like D-Link, and don't trust the security of this special firmware, I decided I wanted my own firewall _after_ the D-Link. [I've disabled the WiFi section of this router for now, if that matters].
The D-Link's WAN address is 70.20.30.xx, it's IP address is
192.168.0.1, and it's handing out IP addresses from it's DHCP server starting at 192.168.0.100.Since the FIOS service is nominally 15 megabits, I can't use my venerable old BEFSR41, as it's WAN port only handles 10BaseT, so I bought a WRT54G V2.2, and connected it's WAN port to the LAN port of the D-Link router. It gets a "WAN" IP of 192.168.0.102, it's IP address is 192.168.1.1, and it's handing out DHCP addresses starting at 192.168.1.100. [I've also disabled the WiFi interface in this router for now, FWIW].
So it's: FIOS_Box-->D-Link(192.168.0.x)-->Linksys(192.168.1.x)-->LAN
It was hung again this morning so I swapped the WRT54G for my old BEFSR41, which works, though a bit slower than I'd like. I suppose I'll try the new firmware and a fan as pointed to by 'tinkiv', though I have to say I'm losing my respect for Linksys...
Got it. Double NAT with only one routeable WAN IP address. That will work.
Reading those articles seems to imply that it's a fairly common and chronic problem. I don't see it because my customers and I just don't do any large high speed transfers. I have a new WRT54Gv2.2 sitting on the shelf and I'll try to reproduce the problem. I like some of the features in the new beta firmware and might try that. As for overheating, I've got the case off my WRT54Gv1.1 and the chip temps seem normal but might get hotter under high traffic. Measurments later. If it turns out to be a cooling issue, then I'll try a stick on heat sink before I do the fan trick.
There were several reports that it was not a cooling issue but rather a firmware problem with various inconsistant beta firmware updates produceing every possible combination of not, partial, and fully fixed results.
I like the one that claims that mounting the router vertically fixes the problem:
Read this
:)
8*)
That would point to a cooling issue, or maybe assembly issues, poor soldering, or other QC problems. My box isn't very warm at all (with the new high-clock-rate beta firmware) maybe it's firmware after all. I'll know in a {day,week} or so...
Just to follow up: Tried the beta firmware, tried more cooling, still hung up as often as daily. [Note this is with lots of traffic.] Replaced it with a BEFSR41 V4 and (so far, knock on wood) not a single dropped packet or other problem.
Now to get Linksys to take the WRT54G back for repairs. WIsh me luck...
I'm a Linksys Partner member and I won't sell that router. Not selling anything that 3rd party firmware works better than what the manufacturer supports. I've had issues from PPTP not passing thru to being forced to power cycle a unit each time I made a config change. Basically the router works great just as long as you don't use Linksys firmware.
Yeah, so I hear, but until I can prove that it's {not} a hardware problem I'm not interested in fiddling with it any more. Linksys tech support had me do the full-scale reset (hold reset 30s, remove power, wait 30s, apply power, wait 30s, release reset), but it still gets wedged after less than 48 hours of high traffic.
The BEFSR41V4 that I tried also crashed occasionally, though it seems to have a watchdog timer, as it rebooted automatically after about 10 minutes. This one is also going back, as the reboot causes it to lose track of it's DHCP leases, and start handing out conflicting IPs to it's clients.
I think I'll try Netgear next...
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