WRT54G V2.2 keeps hanging up

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!

On Tue, 03 May 2005 07:57:45 -0400, William P. N. Smith wrote:

>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.

I'm jealous. I want fiber speeds. What kind of benchmarks are you
getting?

>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?

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:
http://www.pcflank.com/exploits.htm
Run the tests and see if you can make it hang. Also, I would like to
know the results of your testing of v3.03.06. Last time I tried it on
a slightly earlier version, I could NOT make it hang.


--
Jeff Liebermann (E-Mail Removed)
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Tue, 03 May 2005 09:21:41 -0700, Jeff Liebermann
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>On Tue, 03 May 2005 07:57:45 -0400, William P. N. Smith wrote:

>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:
> http://www.pcflank.com/exploits.htm
>Run the tests and see if you can make it hang. Also, I would like to
>know the results of your testing of v3.03.06. Last time I tried it on
>a slightly earlier version, I could NOT make it hang.

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.


--
Jeff Liebermann (E-Mail Removed)
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 AE6KS 831-336-2558

Jeff Liebermann <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>On Tue, 03 May 2005 07:57:45 -0400, William P. N. Smith wrote:
[FWIW, it's probably not nessesary to quote the timestamp...]

>I'm jealous. I want fiber speeds. What kind of benchmarks are you
>getting?

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.

>It's kinda hard to do diagnostics on a comatose router.

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.

>This is from Satori
>firmware and not the stock Linksys firmware:
> "The AP Watchdog enables a timer

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...

> http://www.pcflank.com/exploits.htm

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.

On Tue, 03 May 2005 15:13:00 -0400, William P. N. Smith wrote:

>>This is from Satori
>>firmware and not the stock Linksys firmware:
>> "The AP Watchdog enables a timer

>Is this only for the AP, or the whole router?

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.

>> http://www.pcflank.com/exploits.htm

>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.

Likewise here. So much for that theory.

>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.

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).


--
Jeff Liebermann (E-Mail Removed)
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 AE6KS 831-336-2558

Read this

http://www.linksysinfo.org/modules.p...ewtopic&t=2601

http://www.linksysinfo.org/modules.p...ewtopic&t=4516

"tinkiv" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>http://www.linksysinfo.org/modules.p...ewtopic&t=2601
>http://www.linksysinfo.org/modules.p...ewtopic&t=4516

Sounds like it, I'll give the new firmware and a fan a try, thanks!

Jeff Liebermann <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>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).

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...

On Wed, 04 May 2005 08:01:07 -0400, William P. N. Smith wrote:

>So it's: FIOS_Box-->D-Link(192.168.0.x)-->Linksys(192.168.1.x)-->LAN

Got it. Double NAT with only one routeable WAN IP address. That will
work.

>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...

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:
http://www.angelfire.com/ga/govandy/...ical_linky.jpg
Perhaps it's caused by gravity?


--
Jeff Liebermann (E-Mail Removed)
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 AE6KS 831-336-2558

Jeff Liebermann <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>I like the one that claims that mounting the router vertically fixes
>the problem:
> http://www.angelfire.com/ga/govandy/...ical_linky.jpg
>Perhaps it's caused by gravity?

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...