Why Do We Have To Restart Routers? 936
jaypaulw writes "I've owned a WRT54G, some cheap D-Link home Wi-Fi/firewall/routers, and now an Apple Airport Extreme (100/10 ethernet ports). In the context of the discussion about the worst uses of Windows — installation in places where an embedded device is superior — I've gotten to wondering why it's necessary to reboot these devices so frequently, like every few days. It seems like routers, purpose-built with an embedded OS, should be the most stable devices on my network."
The most likely reason (Score:5, Funny)
You're doing it wrong.
Re:The most likely reason (Score:4, Insightful)
That's what I was thinking. I have a linksys wrt-54g or whatever they are running ddwrt and I've probably has to reboot a handful of times in all the years I've had it.
Re:The most likely reason (Score:5, Funny)
Mine never used to need re-booting until I added a Vista Laptop to the network???
I hope this explains a few things. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I hope this explains a few things. (Score:5, Funny)
If I had modpoints, you could have them all for that.
Re:The most likely reason (Score:4, Informative)
That was rated funny, but truth be told I have seen Vista Laptops screw up networks often.
Especially with out Linux Fileservers, XP computers and Laptops can access them fine, but while the Vista machines sees the Fileserver in the "Network and Sharing Centre" as soon as you try to access the server Vista claims that the server "Does not exist or may be switched off"
Apparently there is a registry hack for this...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The most likely reason (Score:5, Informative)
This MS KB may help.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932134 [microsoft.com]
There is also an MS KB related to the broadcast flag which may be what is being referred to.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928233 [microsoft.com]
Re:Vista (Score:5, Informative)
Same here. The condition that tripped the problem went as follows:
My laptop = Ubuntu (latest)
Wife's laptop = Vista Home Premium.
Both wireless.
We're surfing, everything is running great. I'd hit a site that had lots of images all on one page (think Fark's 'Photoshop this pic' page')
Bang, network goes dead.
I'd restart the router and my box would come back online no problem. Vista would not re-establish a connection. Repair (or whatever it's called in Vista) failed. We'd need to reboot her computer.
Searched the web and found that this same problem happens and seems to be related to the router.
Switched to a Netgear VPN824V3 and the problem has pretty much disappeared.
Re:The most likely reason (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a network admin for an ISP, and we've been recommending UPSs for the frequent-reboot routers that our customers have. We've found that routers (especially Linksys) have a real problem with power fluctuations that most other systems and devices don't notice. A decent line-conditioning UPS might solve your problems, but a cheap one will suffice.
Also, could be the device is running out of memory, if your ISP is changing the properties of your connection a lot, or you might have a duplex issue causing a lot of retransmissions. . .
Just a couple of thoughts :)
Re:The most likely reason (Score:5, Interesting)
mod parent up, as I came here to say that.
Also, the Linksys WRT54G up to version 4 was a fine router, plenty of memory, ran Linux, was very stable. Then Linksys decided that quality wasn't nearly as important as driving me batshit insane, and we started getting tons of complaints about users needing to reboot Linksys routers, which came _highly_ recommended from the geek squad over at worst buy.
The modern WRT54G, and anything past version 4, that doesn't have an 'L' in the name is an utter piece of crap, firmware revisions to the VXworks OS they now run have helped, but they are still lockup city.
Re:The most likely reason (Score:5, Insightful)
I've noticed that ALL home routers at some point will require a power cycle, and not because they're bad, but because they all seem to occasionally lose their ability to provide DNS resolution. This isn't a problem on a LAN (like mine, obviously) which has a dedicated nameserver on the inside of the LAN, but for people who (like I once did) use their router as a nameserver.
Re:The most likely reason (Score:5, Interesting)
All the Linux-based ones (decidedly few, admittedly) I have seen use the same DNS proxy (dnsmasq). I guess it's just not perfectly stable but I haven't seen a reboot anymore than once every few months.
I gave up on mine and turned it into a dumb PPPoE bridge. An OpenBSD box at the border handles the dirty guff of PPP sessions and NAT. Now my connection is perfectly stable and the modem never needs to be rebooted. To top it all off I trust the BSD box and the firewall I created on it more than I trust the router to do it properly.
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Sometimes comcast flips my IP and the modem can't keep up with it.
Re:The most likely reason (Score:5, Informative)
Mine is sitting on my server...
Have not rebooted it since I moved (~1 year)
really, I think it's power issues. This same router gave me tons of greif at my previous place, but when I moved I put it on the UPS and no issues since...
-nB
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It may have something to do with horoscopes as well. My aunt Mabel knows several people in her trailer park who had routers who had tons of problems, and they were all Pisces. Hmm. Now I don't know anything about any of this, but when they're owned by Geminis, especially ones not married to Capricorns they seem to work a bit better.
Re:The most likely reason (Score:5, Interesting)
Is that OpenBSD on a 12W device that sits silently on a shelf?
Personally I prefer to use a decent modem. I have a SpeedTouch DSL modem that seems to be more functional than most consumer routers, as well as being one of the more stable modems I've used on a marginal line. I connect my wireless devices to my network just on the switch side (use them as wireless access points and not routers). Very stable set up.
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Mine isn't, but it could be: http://www.soekris.com/ [soekris.com]
Re:The most likely reason (Score:4, Informative)
I like the way you think. alix2c3 [pcengines.ch] uses 6 Watts - a little more with a VPN card installed. I agree on keeping the wireless devices separate, they're just not gonna be rock solid.
Re:The most likely reason (Score:5, Informative)
Mine is, I have a Soekris net4501 running OpenBSD 4.2. Nice and quiet, low power, high reliability. And the smallest CF I could find was a 1gig, so I have the entire installation, sans X on that puppy. Full support for VLANS, OSPF, Pf, the works. All in a small, quiet, low power, albeit ugly green case.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a Netgear WNR834B and have never had to reboot it. I really don't know what we're doing right, but the damn thing just works, wired or wireless. Our old Linksys WRT54G worked pretty well; we gave that to my in-laws and it's been good to them, too.
Come to think of it, we had a cheap-assed Dell wireless router that worked ok, too.
Do other people generally have to screw around with their networks a lot?
Re:The most likely reason (Score:5, Insightful)
DD-WRT on my WRT54GL, I've never had to reboot it for those issues. I even have a couple separate VLAN's set up, two DHCP pools on separate interfaces, etc. I've had uptimes of over 80 days before I tweaked something else on it that required me to reboot it.
It's not the hardware... it's the generic crap software that they run on.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It required periodic reboots, which I eventually narrowed down to being most likely router DNS table problems. Now, we are using a Zyxel wireless router provided by our new ISP, on a much better network (real switches, a rack, everything).
Yeah, it's pretty much a consumer grade router on
Re:The most likely reason (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The most likely reason (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:The most likely reason (Score:5, Informative)
The problem I've had with dd-wrt and torrents is the max tcp connections is by default very low. Not something you would notice under normal traffic, but during swarms it can fill up fairly quickly.
It give the appearance the unit has locked up since it is difficult to establish a tcp connection. These will bleed away eventually and allow a connection to be established.
I just set the max number of tcp ports and it fairs fairly well using bit torrent now.
Re:The most likely reason (Score:5, Informative)
Also, jam the TCP timeout way down low. That will do wonders.
Re:The most likely reason (Score:5, Informative)
Linksys is the one manufacturer that's on my "never" list. My previous employer used to use their hubs and cascaded them into a network switch. The darn things kept losing track of what MAC addresses were hanging off them and refusing to route traffic. You only have to have one complete and utter failure like that to be written off in my book.
That said, I've recently also written off Netgear. After about my fourth or fifth Netgear card went dead (I think I have one left that is still functioning after three or four years), I started avoiding their cards like the plague. Then, I bought one of their consumer hubs a couple of months ago and it was dropping something like 80% of the packets that went through it (between any two devices including upstream). I took it back to Fry's and replaced it with a D-Link and it worked flawlessly. (And no, I didn't have something hooked up to the uplink and the non-uplink port beside it. Been there, done that.)
Bottom line is that after three hard drive failures in the course of a little over a month (yes, I have a third Seagate drive misbehaving massively, randomly corrupting data), I've pretty much come to the conclusion that nearly all electronics built today are mass-Chinese-manufactured crap that barely works and doesn't even do that for very long. Very sad, really.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know much about failure modes of Netgear routers, but your string of disk failures is alarming. Can you please provide some details?
Were these disks at home or in an office?
Were the failing disk in a server (with a lot of continual I/O) or a workstation with only intermittent I/O?
Thank you.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Bottom line is that after three hard drive failures in the course of a little over a month (yes, I have a third Seagate drive misbehaving massively, randomly corrupting data)
Are you /sure/ your power supply is sufficient and your drive(s) are sufficiently cooled?
Current firmware? (Score:3, Informative)
Constant lockups, power cycles, and constantly losing DNS service... It was batshit insane.
Sometimes a firmware update can help. Not always but I do find it worthwhile updating the firmware and it has fixed problems for me in the past.. Having it on a UPS helps too; make sure you shield the data cables as well as the power cables. There are a few linksys units however that simply never seem to work reliably. My father has one. Just can't seem to hold a reliable connection for some reason. Mine on the other hand works damn near flawlessly.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Some folks prefer a little more control. Personally, I run my own caching DNS on my laptop, as well as on my main server at home.
These stanzas in my /etc/named.conf are the only thing that make web browsing bearable for me:
zone "intellitxt.com" in {
type master;
file "junk.zone";
};
zone "doubleclick.net" in {
type master;
Re:The most likely reason (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, the Linksys WRT54G up to version 4 was a fine router, plenty of memory, ran Linux, was very stable.
Yeah, I have a 1.1, which I didn't even know until right now (checked the sticker), and I don't think I've rebooted that thing once in the entire time I've owned it. It's been running continuously right now for at least six months 24/7, and before that had a stint of probably 2 years uninterrupted. (I was forced to use Verizon's POS FiOS router for a little while.)
I was about to leave a comment wondering what the hell the submitter was talking about, because to me the WRT54G is probably the most stable router that exists. It really couldn't *be* anymore stable. But I didn't realize there were such problems with version 4 and above.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a WRT54G v8 here as well, and I don't think I've had to reboot the thing since around the first of the year (2008). Very stable, works just fine with Linux, WinXP, Win2k, Win95 OSR2, OS/2 Warp 4, eCS, and my Nokia 770's running OS2006. w00t! :-)
Re:The most likely reason (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The most likely reason (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The most likely reason (Score:5, Informative)
In theory, none of those routers should need a UPS, just a better AC-DC converter perhaps with a bigger capacitor across the DC lines. I've never investigated the quality of the wall warts they supply with routers, but my guess is they are very cheap and simply don't handle voltage fluctuations as well as they should.
Re:The most likely reason (Score:4, Informative)
My off hand guess, Bittorrents. I've noticed with the WRT54G that I had for a while would have problems if you're running multiple torrents, and don't have any cap on how many inbound and outbound connections there can be (IE, overnight runs where you don't need to use any of your bandwidth :-) A reboot always fixed the problem - I assume it's either running out of memory, or running out of ports to work with (since each connection has a timeout of an hour, IIRC)
Re:The most likely reason (Score:5, Informative)
Now I have a Buffalo G125 with dd-wrt and is AMAZING (good luck finding one of them these days in the states after their legal troubles though). The last time I had a necessary reboot was when I upgraded the firmware (to enable cool things like bandwidth graphs). Sometimes I will reboot it when it is not necessary--such as when comcast has some sort of unknown network issue so my first thought is to start powercycling things until I remember the cable modem's IP and see that there are connection errors in the log. Other than that, rock solid stable with 5 active users and a good deal of game/torrent traffic.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to have that problem, but DD-WRT on my WRT54GL fixed it. I can run torrents day and night, tons of connections, and it never gets upset. It tends to run out of memory like you said, it tries to manage state incorrectly or something, the connections don't time out soon enough.
If you have an older WRT54G (pre v4), you can just load DD-WRT, or I'd highly recommend the investment in a WRT54GL so you can run DD-WRT.
Re:The most likely reason (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, I've never had a problem with my rou
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It took me 9 years of being a broadband customer to realize that the "NO CARRIER" meme is irrelevant. Thank you.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I tried to mod you up, but my connection timed o
Re:The most likely reason (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, I've never had a problem with my rou
You know what, those jokes are fucking la
Re:The most likely reason (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, very simple: I have a fr
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
.
Yeah! And nobody *really* knows why the chicken crossed the road, or why fruit flies like a banana. What's the matter with these people?
Re:The most likely reason (Score:4, Informative)
tcpip timeout, too many connections (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
OK. So other than bashing so called "cheap crappy consumer routers" and posting your uptime, what do you suggest? Not everyone has the resources to buy a $3000 Cisco router, nor does everyone have the time or knowledge to configure a Linux machine for routing.
Re:The most likely reason (Score:5, Informative)
So pay $70 to get a WRT54GL, then use some different firmware like DD-WRT or tomato on it. Cheap, and they even make installing it and all easy, as easy as the "normal" routers are to configure, and it'll get you those long uptimes.
If you don't like your crappy router, fix it. It's not that hard.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Instead of just bashing someone for using something cheap and not offering a possible solution.
the possible solution was implied (don't use cheap crappy consumer routers). also, to clarify, my routers arent $3k ciscoezzzz and don't run Linux.
For those of us that are at a minimum technically competent this is not an issue. [...] I was just thinking there are probably a lot of people that do not have the ability or want to tinker with firmware.
I can't understand why, what I like to call, "the grandma scenario" is constantly being brought up here (my grandma can't use Openbox / my grandma can't compile shit in the command line / my grandma can't update her fucking firmware). did the OP imply he is technologically retarded and can't use more than the router equivalent of a fucking toaster? this is Slashd
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Grandma owns the basement and pays the bills.
USR8054 (Score:5, Funny)
US Robotics 8054 (USR8054). At least it has the decency to reset itself though throughout the day. Saves some manual labor I suppose.
My theory... (Score:3, Interesting)
I base this on absolutely nothing, but my primary suspect is the cheapskate power supplies that these devices come with. However I've never cared enough to test it out.
Re:My theory... (Score:5, Informative)
I think you're right. This seems to be especially common on D-Link routers. I used to run a DI-624 which was stable for years, until one day it just started rebooting itself. Did it infrequently at first, but progressed to the point where it rebooted continuously and was unuseable. Poking around, I discovered that the AC adapter (power brick) was not only VERY warm, the plastic shell was actually deformed a little on one side. I replaced the AC adapter, and the router worked good as new... until a few years later, when AGAIN it started rebooting, then stopped working entirely. And AGAIN, the AC adapter was at fault (totally dead this time). And again, replacing the AC adapter resurrected the DI-624.
It seems to me that the manufacturers of residential-class routers really skimp on the power supply, or at least D-Link does. The AC adapters they've bundled in recent years are smaller than a deck of cards, yet I'm supposed to believe that they can put out 3 amps of current at 5VDC indefinitely?
Re:My theory... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes and no. Yes, a power supply the size of 2 US quarters can (and does) generate stable 5VDC@3A forever provided you never exceed specs (lightning, bath tubs, overheating, etc.) However, these things cost more than the pennies cheap hardware makers are willing to put into the process. They go as cheap as possible... huge coil of chinese wire (read: transformer), a diode, capacitor, and regulator (ala 7805) (if it's a "good" one.) [Note: most cheap hardware has the regulator in the unit, not the wall-wart.] [Note 2: USR/3com is even cheaper... the wall-wart is 100% transformer. It turns 120AC into 20AC.]
Sure (Score:3, Insightful)
Four words: Switched Mode Power Supply. Switching supplies are extremely efficient and thus small. You've seen this already, there's one in your computer. That's how they can pack an 800+ watt supply in to something that small. You try and do that with a linear supply and it'll be massive.
Same deal for wall warts. Some companies still use linear supplies, but not many. It is to the point where SMPS is much cheaper to produce. They also have the advantage of being smaller, and running cooler.
You can see the
Because they are cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
Fast, Stable, Cheap - pick two.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Buy one that works. (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, I've used Apple Airports (previously, the "UFO" kind and currently, the Extreme (1Gb ports) and Express (for my home theater) and have never had to do "therapeutic" reboots on them.
But I have been irked due to having to reboot the router to make even the slightest of config changes - such as changing its syslog destination or adding a port to the forwarding table. You'd think that these and other operations, short of a firmware upgrade, could be handled without a full-blown reset, but apparently not. One has to wonder why that is so in this day and age.
Re:Buy one that works. (Score:5, Informative)
So you are lucky. My Airport Express needs to be rebooted from time to time (nothing damning, the express sometime stands month without needing it). My previous UFO Apple Airport also needed to be rebooted (and much more frequently than the Express).
The symptom on the Express are that DNS queries stop working. I can ping it, ping my DSL modem, and ping website for which I have IP. I can nslookup into my provider DNS. I cannot lookup into the Express DNS.
Another issue is that sometimes, I start getting more and more lag. Rebooting the mac or the DSL model doesn't fix it. But I discovered, amazed, that rebooting the express fixed it.
Btw "Buy one that works" is an extremely arrogant comment. Those units work for you, it does not prove it works for anyone else.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This may be just anecdotal evidence, but the Airport Express series has a reputation for being flaky, and typically dropping flat-out dead after about a year.
I don't want to absolutely bad-mouth the product, because I've also got an Airport Extreme base station that has never needed rebooting in the few years that I've had it, and because I've also got an AE Express that's worked fine for me the entire time I've had it. However, the Airport Express seems to be based around *much* different hardware than its
Re:Buy one that works. (Score:5, Informative)
Most likely, jcr is using MAC filtering [wikipedia.org] (capitalization == acronym; it has nothing to do with Apple's Mac computers). I have yet to use a consumer router that did not want to restart after you changed router settings, and adding a new MAC address [wikipedia.org] to the access list would require a restart. Hence, restarting the router when letting another computer use the network. Some people actually care about the security of their network; living in a major urban area with a lot of neighbors generally encourages it.
You may wish to look into using MAC filtering [wikipedia.org] and a strong WPA2 [wikipedia.org] password to protect your wireless network.
I also have a gig-E Airport Extreme, and it has been rock-solid stable for me; the only restarts have been for either changes I have made to the settings or for a firmware update. (I've done one of the latter since I got it.) It's been up continuously since it replaced a 10/100 wireless-G Netgear that constantly needed reboots, whenever I put any kind of load on my network. (It locked up constantly.*) If I hammer the Airport Extreme, it performs flawlessly. I still think that it was a great upgrade decision, but I'm sure that I'll get bashed as an Apple-fanboy because of it (most likely by people who can't differentiate between "MAC [wikipedia.org]" and "Mac [wikipedia.org]"). ;)
* To mitigate my Netgear bashing slightly: I've had nothing but success with wired Netgear products. The wired router by them that I used to have worked great, and their gigabit switch that I currently use has worked admirably well, without issue. I just should have gotten a wireless router from them that would have run Linux. ;)
Resets aren't necessary. (Score:5, Informative)
Ditto, but had to reset occasionally with defaults (Score:4, Informative)
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I have a similar setup on my Linksys WRT54GS. With the factory software it would lock up every other week -- wouldn't pass traffic and I couldn't log into it. Had to pull power to reset it. I loaded DD-WRT (23v2) and set it as you described and it has never failed to pass traffic, although every 3-4 months I can't access it from the Web GUI for some reason. I can still telnet into it though, so I just login from there and reset it.
I have a second WRT54GS (on it's own subnet providing open access to anyone i
TCP Timeout (Score:5, Informative)
TCP connection timeouts on some routers default to 3600 seconds or one hour. So, when you use some Bittorrent or such, opening lots of connections, your router keeps these connections (even after disconnection) in its memory for up to an hour. It fills up and your router grinds to a halt, opening connections very slowly.
There's other timeouts too, but I'm not sure exactly what they do. Firmware like HyperWRT lets you change these timeouts to something much shorter, like 90 seconds, which typically prevents lock-ups like that.
(I'm actually not 100% sure that this is the sole cause for router lock-ups)
Re:TCP Timeout (Score:4, Interesting)
I never have to (Score:5, Informative)
I never have to restart my DSL router or Vonage router either, and I've kept all this stuff up 24/7 often with heavy use for years at a time.
If you're restarting networking stuff all the time, perhaps you've misconfigured it...
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The manufacturer's firmware in the DI-624 I used to have, as well as the original WRT54G that I flashed with Tomato, weren't hard to crash at all. Between gaming (I run a Halflife server among other things), multiple VPNs I use with my customers, Bit Torrent, VoIP (AT&T CallVantage) and some other things on my server, Tomato hasn't even stuttered, not once.
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Ok, exactly what setting on a cheap consumer router would cause it to randomly stop working at intervals? :)
I have a cheap linksys router that had similar issues - every few days it would randomly hang. It would drive me nuts since I like to remotely connect to my home network, and I can't exactly reboot the router from outside the house.
In the end I just ended up getting another NIC and running shorewall on a linux box. I only use the linksys box as a wireless access point. Even so, it still needs an oc
bad hardware (Score:5, Informative)
A $50 Router Stable? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most routers are cheap. (Apple's is overpriced-cheap; the point stands.) A bunch of them are free after rebates. Considering that, it's a wonder they keep running for more than 5 minutes. They come off the same assembly lines as those Norcent (who?) $15 DVD players.
You can buy reliable routers of course, from the C company, or the N company, or the J company, or a couple others. That's what corporations buy. What I wonder, though, is whether there's a middle ground: a "pro-sumer" router. Maybe somebody has got some suggestions.
Yes, there is a pro-sumer router (Score:3, Informative)
I had several "consumer" grade routers before finally finding the Dlink gamer lounge.
I've never been happier. I've had it for almost 2 years and I never have to reset it. The wireless always works, the gigabit is nice and the "Gamefuel" QOS is fairly effective.
The $100+ linksys routers aren't much improved over their $50 brethren, but the $100+ Dlink most certainly is.
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Connection Up Time : 617 day(s), 12:04:53
Sick.
My last router was a WRT54GL that decided to brick itself after about three months of DD-WRT. I think I should agree with some of the above posts that offloading network servic
Re:A $50 Router Stable? (Score:4, Informative)
Here's two: Soekris [soekris.com], Mikrotik/Routerboard [routerboard.com].
It shouldn't be... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's cheap, fast development... Not bothering to pay attention to correctness, not watching for memory leaks, etc., etc.
It shouldn't be that way, of course. I got an old K6-2 system, underclocked it to 100MHz, removed CPU fan and replaced the PSU fan with a very slow and quiet model to make a nearly-silent 8watt system. Then installed OpenBSD on a 32MB CF card (stripped of unnecessary binaries for size, but otherwise completely normal), and have been using that for years. It will run indefinitely, without a reboot. My record for uptime so far is 5 months, and it's only that short because of power outages, and I don't feel the need for a UPS for my router...
There's nothing about being "an embedded OS" that should make it any more or less stable.
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There's nothing about being "an embedded OS" that should make it any more or less stable.
Except for the fact that the end-user isn't messing it up? And that there are very few programs that are installed/will be installed? Really, most embedded OSes should be very stable because the cause for most OS crashes are A) Applications B) Drivers and C) user error. Because applications are not going to be installed and it should ship with very few to begin with, that takes that out of the picture. For B, the router shouldn't need any specialized drivers, or if they do, they should be minimal, and C)
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I would appreciate even a link on how to underclock a CPU on OpenBSD.
OS is irrelevant. When the machine starts, you need to go into the BIOS. That probably means pressing F1 or Del. Somewhere in there will be speed settings (maybe "clock" and "multiplier" with that age of machine). Write down the original settings. Then, start dropping the speed. If you have "clock" and "multiplier", drop multiplier first. Drop a little bit, save, reboot. Make sure the OS still works. If it does, drop another notch. Repeat until you run out of settings, it's too slow for its intend
The problem is.. (Score:5, Insightful)
BitTorrent?? (Score:4, Interesting)
I had a WRT54GX for years that never needed a reset, until I started using BitTorrent. Then its 4KB (?) connections table would fill up and the device would hang. Had to build an OpenBSD firewall to handle the many active and inactive connections you get with BT.
You're doing it wrong? (Score:4, Interesting)
Now I've got an old PII with a CF as HDD running monowall and maximum uptime so far is about two months. It would appear that the modem is more flaky than the router so I've restarted it needlessly a few times. I'm inclined to think it's hardware causing problems when the router crashes on its own. It's a bare motherbord sitting ontop a cabinet with four NIC's (I had an abundance of NIC's but no switch) and it gets a bit jangled from time to time in its exposed position. I'm amazed that it works at all.
Try to limit the amount of open connections if you're running bittorrent and maybe the bandwidth too. If that doesn't help you should probably build your own router. m0n0wall works for me and I've heard good things about IPCop.
Ironic Connection Sharing (Score:3, Interesting)
I just use a cheap Pentium 2 running Windows XP with Internet Connection Sharing. Disabled the automatic updates and firewalled it properly over 18 months ago, and haven't had to touch the machine since.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I just use a cheap Pentium 2 running Windows XP with Internet Connection Sharing. Disabled the automatic updates and firewalled it properly over 18 months ago, and haven't had to touch the machine since.
In which case, this article is for you:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/11/003251 [slashdot.org]
I'll tell you why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The most likely causes (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok, the router software - likely ripd, xorp, quagga or zebra for any domestic ADSL router - might crash, but the worst that will happen then is that you don't learn new routes. Since DSL providers don't tend to switch their internal IP addresses very often, that should not impact any existing subnet. It means tunnels can't be generated on-the-fly, it also means your next-door neighbor can't connect their LAN party to your wireless connection, but it shouldn't impact you in the slightest.
The next question, however, is how on Earth are you noticing the router needs rebooting? The kernel is quite capable of rebooting itself under many (but not all) soft lockups. Linux provides several such mechanisms for doing just that. A simple watchdog circuit, using a bistable circuit, a couple of capacitors, a relay and a trigger line that has to change state, could be added by a manufacturer for maybe a couple of dollars. It probably doesn't even need to be that complex.
When it does reboot, LinuxBIOS is under 3 seconds and I don't imagine OpenBIOS is that much slower. Intel's Tiano probably is, but it's open source so you can rip out anything that's useless. Therefore, recovery times should be barely detectable to an end user. (Most websites vary in download times by more than 3 seconds between visits. Unless you're playing Netrek or WoW at that precise moment, I seriously doubt you'll notice a 3 second outage.)
Finally, however, why isn't the router using carrier-grade software? Again, carrier-grade Linux exists, which should give you 5N uptimes in the worst possible case. Domestic routers are not worst-possible. Even data centers rarely get the kind of stress that could be expected to force an unrecoverable state. If your router is not overheating, has plenty of RAM, and needs rebooting more than once every other year, there is something seriously defective in the software or hardware.
Crap hardware (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheap "embedded" devices like routers and NAS-es routinely have extremely bad hardware. The competition apparently is so fierce that cutting corners of everything, from basic motherboard-like functionality to network and disk controllers is ubiquitous.
I'm occasionally doing hardware reviews for a local IT magazine and it's unbelievable what you can actually buy today as a bona-fide good equipment even from "brand name" companies. CPUs are usually ARM or AMD GEODE (You think VIA is slow? Think again. - Not to say there isn't a place for slow CPUs, only that this isn't it.), network controllers are cheap Realtek's and I don't know what they use for disk controllers (probably parts of the CPUs "companion" chipset) but it sucks.
I've seen "gigabit" network controllers on NASes that actually negotiate gigabit speed, although they are connected to buses and CPUs that break a sweat even at 100Mbit/s speeds. NASes that accept 4 drives cannot service reads on even one drive at more than 15 MB/s - introducing RAID (especially RAID 5) into this setup slows things to a crawl.
Practically all of these devices use Linux, because it's free (as in beer). They usually (I'd say 90%) don't acknowledge or obey the GPL.
It's a sort-of reverse "best scenario" for Open systems (and Open source). The manufacturers have a choice between something like this:
The first choice is represented by "truly" embedded devices like ordinary small, unmanaged Ethernet switches (with which I have suprisingly good experience), but apparently it's too expensive to scale it to "smart" devices that have to support many features so everyone opts for the second one. You can (and this is verified!) build yourself a small managed router or a NAS device like the ones sold at every el-cheapo computer shop with the same cheap generic components, and the resulting device will be just as sucky.
Creating a router or a NAS just like the above but with "proper" hardware (a Duron 800 MHz based system will be excellent) won't even cost you significantly more, but will deliver orders of magnitude better performance.
Re:Maybe it's not the router... (Score:5, Insightful)
If a client is able to cause a router to crash then there is something wrong with the router design.
Re:Good question. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have frequent power interruptions, aren't they rebooting your router frequently?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That was my thought too when I saw this. If you have to reboot your router very often then you're doing it wrong.
We are heavy Internet users here at my home, especially since I work from home frequently and use VPN with the sending and recieving of large attachements, etc. I don't think I've ever *had* to reboot my WR54GT in the past year that I've had it.
Re:Good question. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why DO you have to reboot your routers? Mine, including a WR54GT almost never require rebooting. Occasionally, after a power outage, it's necessary, but not very often. Maybe once or twice a year, and I live in Panama, where power interruptions come fairly frequently.
WTF? How did this end up +5 Informative?
The power interruptions are obviously regularly rebooting his equipment. Is it any wonder he doesn't need to reboot it himself?
Re:Good question. (Score:4, Insightful)
Did it ever occur to you that you never had a problem *because* of the power failures doing the rebooting for you?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I've got 5 WRT54G's running DD-WRT out in the desert in enclosures. They routinely operate in temperatures in excess of 110 degrees, and usually have a bunch of users on them.
Is that degree C, F or K?
Re:embedded network devices (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny, I think everyone here has had to reboot their router to solve problems in the past. But, in typical slashdot fashion, 99.9 percent of the posts are people telling the author of the question that he is stupid, lacks intellectual ability, must be a high school drop out, or has some bastardized sexual persuasion that prevents his router from working.
As you say, it could be an unrelated issue that resetting the state machine fixes. In this case though I guess I superior device could do this on its own.
Re:rebooting routers? (Score:4, Funny)
It could also be possible that the firmware allows no changes at all to the running configuration, forcing a restart for any change made in an attempt at making it less hackable.
That's just stupid.
Honestly, who sacrifices convinience for security?