I have a curious problem with an old WRT54GL router, which I use as a WiFi access point on my LAN:
Internet->ADSL modem->CentOS-7 computer->WRT54GL router
The router has always had a slight problem of losing connection every so often - it used to be every couple of days, but recently it has become much more often.
My cure was always to disconnect the power from the router for 10 seconds or so, and then re-connect it.
Recently I discovered that running the following script on the CentOS computer seems to solve the problem (for a while)
sudo systemctl restart dhcpd sudo systemctl restart network sudo systemctl restart shorewall
(I suspect the first, dhcpd, is irrelevant.)
Incidentally, I am able to ping laptops on the LAN (but not the other way round) even when the router is in its "bad" state.
I wonder if anyone has had a similar experience, and can offer advice?
I don't like to examine the internals of the router, in case it stops working altogether. I'm planning on getting another router (N protocol), so it is not a very serious matter - I'm just puzzled by it.
- Timothy Murphy e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
On 09/17/2014 07:49 PM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
My cure was always to disconnect the power from the router for 10 seconds or so, and then re-connect it.
I had a similar problem with the same router.
I created a cronjob in the webinterface, that it was rebooted once a day. After that, the router was more stable.
Chris wrote:
On 09/17/2014 07:49 PM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
My cure was always to disconnect the power from the router for 10 seconds or so, and then re-connect it.
I had a similar problem with the same router.
I created a cronjob in the webinterface, that it was rebooted once a day. After that, the router was more stable.
How did you reboot the router, as a matter of interest. Is there any of doing this from an ethernet-connected computer?
On 09/17/2014 11:42 PM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
How did you reboot the router, as a matter of interest. Is there any of doing this from an ethernet-connected computer?
Well, I think it wasn't the genuine firmware, but dd-wrt. There's a cronjob menu in the webinterface and you can also edit them by telnet.
Chris wrote:
How did you reboot the router, as a matter of interest. Is there any of doing this from an ethernet-connected computer?
Well, I think it wasn't the genuine firmware, but dd-wrt. There's a cronjob menu in the webinterface and you can also edit them by telnet.
Thanks for your response. But have you actually done this? If so, could you be a bit more explicit, please?
I was just looking at my dd-wrt router's web-page, and I see that Remote Access is disabled in Administration=>Management. Probably that is why I don't seem able to access it with telnet; and even if I could do, I'm not sure I would know how to edit a file with telnet ...
When I have a little time, I must read up on dd-wrt's documentation.
On Tue, Oct 07, 2014 at 01:27:18PM +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Chris wrote:
How did you reboot the router, as a matter of interest. Is there any of doing this from an ethernet-connected computer?
Well, I think it wasn't the genuine firmware, but dd-wrt. There's a cronjob menu in the webinterface and you can also edit them by telnet.
Thanks for your response. But have you actually done this? If so, could you be a bit more explicit, please?
I was just looking at my dd-wrt router's web-page, and I see that Remote Access is disabled in Administration=>Management.
Remote Access means that you (or anyone else who knows the password) can log in to the router from the WAN, i.e., the outside as compared to your LAN or inside, of the router and do whatever they want. It is safest to always leave that as disabled if you don't have some overriding reason to allow it.
Probably that is why I don't seem able to access it with telnet; and even if I could do, I'm not sure I would know how to edit a file with telnet ...
Been a while since I've used dd-wrt, so I don't swear this is full truth, but I think there are options in the UI for enabling or disabling telnet and/or SSH. The default settings (if you haven't changed 'em) ought to be enabled for telnet and disabled for SSH, but of course you can change 'em to suit your needs.
On 10/07/2014 08:52 AM Fred Smith wrote:
On Tue, Oct 07, 2014 at 01:27:18PM +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Chris wrote:
How did you reboot the router, as a matter of interest. Is there any of doing this from an ethernet-connected computer?
Well, I think it wasn't the genuine firmware, but dd-wrt. There's a cronjob menu in the webinterface and you can also edit them by telnet.
Thanks for your response. But have you actually done this? If so, could you be a bit more explicit, please?
I was just looking at my dd-wrt router's web-page, and I see that Remote Access is disabled in Administration=>Management.
Remote Access means that you (or anyone else who knows the password) can log in to the router from the WAN, i.e., the outside as compared to your LAN or inside, of the router and do whatever they want. It is safest to always leave that as disabled if you don't have some overriding reason to allow it.
Yes, I'd agree with all of that. Unless there's a compelling reason for accessing the router when you're away from its LAN, it's much safer to leave Remote Access disabled.
Probably that is why I don't seem able to access it with telnet; and even if I could do, I'm not sure I would know how to edit a file with telnet ...
Been a while since I've used dd-wrt, so I don't swear this is full truth, but I think there are options in the UI for enabling or disabling telnet and/or SSH. The default settings (if you haven't changed 'em) ought to be enabled for telnet and disabled for SSH, but of course you can change 'em to suit your needs.
SSH is much more secure than telnet, so it's better to disable telnet and enable, and use, ssh.
On 10/07/2014 02:27 PM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Thanks for your response. But have you actually done this? If so, could you be a bit more explicit, please?
In DD-WRT, there is a menu scheduled reboot in the Administration tab. If this isn't working (e.g. in Client Mode), you have to setup a cronjob manually. Both is described at
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Scheduled_reboot
Chris wrote:
In DD-WRT, there is a menu scheduled reboot in the Administration tab. If this isn't working (e.g. in Client Mode), you have to setup a cronjob manually. Both is described at
Thanks, I'll check that.
On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 07:49:32PM +0200, Timothy Murphy wrote:
I have a curious problem with an old WRT54GL router, which I use as a WiFi access point on my LAN:
Internet->ADSL modem->CentOS-7 computer->WRT54GL router
The router has always had a slight problem of losing connection every so often - it used to be every couple of days, but recently it has become much more often.
My cure was always to disconnect the power from the router for 10 seconds or so, and then re-connect it.
Recently I discovered that running the following script on the CentOS computer seems to solve the problem (for a while)
sudo systemctl restart dhcpd sudo systemctl restart network sudo systemctl restart shorewall
(I suspect the first, dhcpd, is irrelevant.)
Incidentally, I am able to ping laptops on the LAN (but not the other way round) even when the router is in its "bad" state.
I wonder if anyone has had a similar experience, and can offer advice?
I have to say that though I hear other people speak of their routers needing frequent rebooting, I've never had such a problem, though I have to admit that I've only ever owned two routers.
The first of th em was a WRT54GL, and it ran fine. It would run for months, and only get rebooted after a power failure, or when changing things in its UI that required it reboot. I ran the factory firmware for a year or two then switched over to DD-WRT, and again never saw that kind of problem.
Just wondering if you've ever done a firmware update? sometimes even the manufacturer will issue a bug fix firmware update, shocking as that may seem! :)
After five or six years, it suddenly decided it didn't want to retain any of my settings across a reboot, and it was a huge pain to reset all the settings I had made, without notice, whenever it decided to drop them all. So I bought an ASUS RT-N16 and put the Linksys aside for a while.
Subsequently, someone else I knew needed a router for guest network access, and I fired up the WRT54GL and reinstalled latest Linksys firmware and it has been running fine ever since (couple of years, more or less).
Wish I could offer some actual help! :)
On 09/17/2014 09:54 PM Fred Smith wrote:
On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 07:49:32PM +0200, Timothy Murphy wrote:
I have a curious problem with an old WRT54GL router, which I use as a WiFi access point on my LAN:
Internet->ADSL modem->CentOS-7 computer->WRT54GL router
Don't you mean:
Internet->ADSL modem-> WRT54GL router -> CentOS computer
???
The router has always had a slight problem of losing connection every so often - it used to be every couple of days, but recently it has become much more often.
Yeah, I've had this problem with my android phone connecting to my home-brewed access point (a Raspberry Pi with wifi dongle and running Raspbian, a Debian derivative). The problem I was having however-- what I discovered from pinging the router from the phone over several-minute periods-- was that increasing numbers of packets were being dropped, so many that android would eventually declare that the connection was lost.
So you might want to try pinging the router... continuously for ten minutes at a time to see if packets are being dropped, as this can lead to a "connection lost" error message.
This problem was resolved after some software on the phone was upgraded and the phone was rebooted... at least I haven't had the same problem now for several months. I can't say which of those two actions fixed the problem as I did both at effectively the same time.
The odd thing was that I never had a connection problem between the phone and a variety of other access points-- public APs. This might have been because the phone was never connected to them for days on end like it often was to my home AP (the RPi). So the "connection loss" might have been due to bad code which only very gradually led to packet loss, then to increasing packet loss, and that to Connection Lost.
My cure was always to disconnect the power from the router for 10 seconds or so, and then re-connect it.
Recently I discovered that running the following script on the CentOS computer seems to solve the problem (for a while)
sudo systemctl restart dhcpd sudo systemctl restart network sudo systemctl restart shorewall
(I suspect the first, dhcpd, is irrelevant.)
Incidentally, I am able to ping laptops on the LAN (but not the other way round) even when the router is in its "bad" state.
I wonder if anyone has had a similar experience, and can offer advice?
I have to say that though I hear other people speak of their routers needing frequent rebooting, I've never had such a problem, though I have to admit that I've only ever owned two routers.
The first of th em was a WRT54GL, and it ran fine. It would run for months, and only get rebooted after a power failure, or when changing things in its UI that required it reboot. I ran the factory firmware for a year or two then switched over to DD-WRT, and again never saw that kind of problem.
Did you switch to dd-wrt *after* heartbleed was fixed?
Just wondering if you've ever done a firmware update? sometimes even the manufacturer will issue a bug fix firmware update, shocking as that may seem! :)
I'd agree with this, especially considering heartbleed. And for-profit companies normally don't expend resources (which reduce profits) to issue software updates without good reason-- "business reasons".
After five or six years, it suddenly decided it didn't want to retain any of my settings across a reboot, and it was a huge pain to reset all the settings I had made, without notice, whenever it decided to drop them all. So I bought an ASUS RT-N16 and put the Linksys aside for a while.
Subsequently, someone else I knew needed a router for guest network access, and I fired up the WRT54GL and reinstalled latest Linksys firmware and it has been running fine ever since (couple of years, more or less).
Wish I could offer some actual help! :)
ken wrote:
Just wondering if you've ever done a firmware update? sometimes even the manufacturer will issue a bug fix firmware update, shocking as that may seem! :)
I'd agree with this, especially considering heartbleed. And for-profit companies normally don't expend resources (which reduce profits) to issue software updates without good reason-- "business reasons".
Do you mean a Linksys update, or WRT update? I don't think there has been a Linksys update for years. I've never tried updating WRT, is it possible?
On 09/19/2014 06:37 AM Timothy Murphy wrote:
ken wrote:
Just wondering if you've ever done a firmware update? sometimes even the manufacturer will issue a bug fix firmware update, shocking as that may seem! :)
I'd agree with this, especially considering heartbleed. And for-profit companies normally don't expend resources (which reduce profits) to issue software updates without good reason-- "business reasons".
Do you mean a Linksys update, or WRT update? I don't think there has been a Linksys update for years. I've never tried updating WRT, is it possible?
Both (as each is relevant to a different situation), although of course the term "business reasons" obviously doesn't apply to dd-wrt.
From what I've read on the dd-wrt forums, some of its distributions contain code which is vulnerable to heartbleed, so you might want to check the version installed on your router.
As far as I know, the only way to update this firmware is to get an updated version of it and install it on top of (overwriting) the previous firmware version in pretty much the same way as you installed dd-wrt on top of the commercial firmware that came with the router. In short, you're just doing the install again with a newer firmware version.
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On 9/19/2014 6:38 AM, ken wrote:
On 09/19/2014 06:37 AM Timothy Murphy wrote:
From what I've read on the dd-wrt forums, some of its distributions contain code which is vulnerable to heartbleed, so you might want to check the version installed on your router.
As far as I know, the only way to update this firmware is to get an updated version of it and install it on top of (overwriting) the previous firmware version in pretty much the same way as you installed dd-wrt on top of the commercial firmware that came with the router. In short, you're just doing the install again with a newer firmware version.
As another suggestion, you could try installing the Tomato firmware rather than dd-wrt. I used to run dd-wrt (on a v1.2 WRT-54GS) and had similar stability issues; I've personally found Tomato (http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato) to be more stable.
- -- Nels Lindquist nlindq@maei.ca
As another suggestion, you could try installing the Tomato firmware rather than dd-wrt. I used to run dd-wrt (on a v1.2 WRT-54GS) and had similar stability issues; I've personally found Tomato (http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato) to be more stable.
Nels Lindquist nlindq@maei.ca
+1 on tomato very stable, otherwise I would look to separate the wireless function from the router and run something like pfsense.
On 10/07/2014 01:40 PM Tom Bishop wrote:
As another suggestion, you could try installing the Tomato firmware rather than dd-wrt. I used to run dd-wrt (on a v1.2 WRT-54GS) and had similar stability issues; I've personally found Tomato (http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato) to be more stable.
Nels Lindquist nlindq@maei.ca
+1 on tomato very stable, otherwise I would look to separate the wireless function from the router and run something like pfsense.
Cool that there's so many dd-wrt (and siblings) fans here.
I must have skipped a beat during the install. Things seem to be running fine, but I can't seem to save files and directories which will survive a reboot. I read that "nvram save" was meant to do that, but it doesn't work for me. I've got plenty of space on the 8M SD card, but no way to write a file which will persist, let alone install pfsense on. Help!
Tom Bishop wrote:
As another suggestion, you could try installing the Tomato firmware rather than dd-wrt. I used to run dd-wrt (on a v1.2 WRT-54GS) and had similar stability issues; I've personally found Tomato (http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato) to be more stable.
+1 on tomato very stable, otherwise I would look to separate the wireless function from the router and run something like pfsense.
Do note that I thought I read that tomato was no longer under development.
mark
On 10/7/2014 11:09 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Tom Bishop wrote:
As another suggestion, you could try installing the Tomato firmware rather than dd-wrt. I used to run dd-wrt (on a v1.2 WRT-54GS) and had similar stability issues; I've personally found Tomato (http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato) to be more stable.
+1 on tomato very stable, otherwise I would look to separate the wireless function from the router and run something like pfsense.
Do note that I thought I read that tomato was no longer under development.
the original tomato is not, but it works very well. The original tomato only runs on old school broadcom based WRT54's, not anything newer.
there are a few forks, notably "Shibby" and "Toastman" that are under active development, and run on a wider range of routers
http://tomato.groov.pl/ http://toastmanfirmware.yolasite.com/
Do note that I thought I read that tomato was no longer under development.
the original tomato is not, but it works very well. The original tomato only runs on old school broadcom based WRT54's, not anything newer.
there are a few forks, notably "Shibby" and "Toastman" that are under active development, and run on a wider range of routers
http://tomato.groov.pl/ http://toastmanfirmware.yolasite.com/
-- john r pierce 37N 122W somewhere on the middle of the left coast
Yup John's correct, the original is no longer maintained but there are many forks and some in active development. If you want to stay with that then you just have to find the one that fits your situation etc.
For most of my friends and clients I have migrated to pfsense on thin client hardware, makes a great firewall device, fairly small and low power but lots of options if wanted or needed.
Just my .02 ;)
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Can you describe from 0 what the network looks like? What are you using the WRT54GL for? as a AP? as a ROUTER? What device is the PPPOE connection initiator? Did you tried to use static IP address instead of dhcp? Can you access the device interface?
What actually the DD-WRT gives you that the basic firmware do not?(a side question)
Thanks, Eliezer
On 09/17/2014 08:49 PM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
I have a curious problem with an old WRT54GL router, which I use as a WiFi access point on my LAN:
Internet->ADSL modem->CentOS-7 computer->WRT54GL router
The router has always had a slight problem of losing connection every so often - it used to be every couple of days, but recently it has become much more often.
My cure was always to disconnect the power from the router for 10 seconds or so, and then re-connect it.
On Tue, Oct 07, 2014 at 10:52:16PM +0300, Eliezer Croitoru wrote:
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Can you describe from 0 what the network looks like? What are you using the WRT54GL for? as a AP? as a ROUTER?
Also, is this an old WRT54GL from several years ago, or is it the new model they're selling now? They're probably different, and I recall reading somewhere recently that the reviewer (whoever it was) didn't think the new one was very good. Sorry, I have no more specifics than that.
What device is the PPPOE connection initiator? Did you tried to use static IP address instead of dhcp? Can you access the device interface?
What actually the DD-WRT gives you that the basic firmware do not?(a side question)
Thanks, Eliezer
On 09/17/2014 08:49 PM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
I have a curious problem with an old WRT54GL router, which I use as a WiFi access point on my LAN:
Internet->ADSL modem->CentOS-7 computer->WRT54GL router
The router has always had a slight problem of losing connection every so often - it used to be every couple of days, but recently it has become much more often.
My cure was always to disconnect the power from the router for 10 seconds or so, and then re-connect it.
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Fred Smith wrote:
Also, is this an old WRT54GL from several years ago, or is it the new model they're selling now? They're probably different, and I recall reading somewhere recently that the reviewer (whoever it was) didn't think the new one was very good. Sorry, I have no more specifics than that.
It's several years old. Actually, I have two of them, on different servers. One is in another country, so I reluctant to play with it too much.
I've never really looked into the dd-wrt software; I hope to study the documentation fairly soon.
Eliezer Croitoru wrote:
Can you describe from 0 what the network looks like? What are you using the WRT54GL for? as a AP? as a ROUTER?
As an Access Point:
Internet -> Modem -> CentOS-7 server -> WRT54GL
Did you tried to use static IP address instead of dhcp?
Dhcp is running on the server, not the WRT56GL.
Can you access the device interface?
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "the device interface". I can access the WRT54GL's web-page, and modify it if I wish.
What actually the DD-WRT gives you that the basic firmware do not?(a side question)
I've no idea; the router was already running dd-wrt when I acquired it.
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Then now I am a bit confused. You wrote that the router has a slight problem.
The router can be the CentOS machine or the WRT54GL, choose please
If you can access the WRT54GL device web page the issue is in another level.
Where do you have the issue?? - - on machines behind the WRT54GL? - - on the CentOS server?
What ping has to say about the status of the connection between the WIFI clients and the server? and the WRT54GL? (I was reading the first post and didn't got it yet)
Since the three dhcpd\network\shorewall do resolve the issues it can be more then one problem.
You can get the output of: iptables-save ip link ip addr dmesg
I would also look at the basic system logs to see if there are any hints about the issue.
I had a similar issue with a CentOS 6 not long ago and the NIC was going up and down. When I replaced to newer kernel it got fixed. (tested couple times over a very long period)
What nic are you using there? Is there any switch over there between the WRT54GL and the Server?
Thanks, Eliezer
On 10/08/2014 02:19 AM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Eliezer Croitoru wrote:
Can you describe from 0 what the network looks like? What are you using the WRT54GL for? as a AP? as a ROUTER?
As an Access Point:
Internet -> Modem -> CentOS-7 server -> WRT54GL
Did you tried to use static IP address instead of dhcp?
Dhcp is running on the server, not the WRT56GL.
Can you access the device interface?
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "the device interface". I can access the WRT54GL's web-page, and modify it if I wish.
What actually the DD-WRT gives you that the basic firmware do not?(a side question)
I've no idea; the router was already running dd-wrt when I acquired it.
Eliezer Croitoru wrote:
Then now I am a bit confused. You wrote that the router has a slight problem.
The router can be the CentOS machine or the WRT54GL, choose please
I would not refer to a computer as a router just because it is running dhcpd. I was referring to the WRT54GL, as I think was obvious since I said "my WRT54GL router".
The problem with this device is that it sometimes loses WiFi connection. Many other people with this router have said the same thing.
Where do you have the issue??
- on machines behind the WRT54GL?
- on the CentOS server?
On the laptops and other devices (camera, TV, smart phones) behind the router. The CentOS server continues to work. And I can access the router web-page from the server. That is why I was asking if there is any way of getting the server to "wake up" the router.
What ping has to say about the status of the connection between the WIFI clients and the server? and the WRT54GL?
Actually, I can still ping the router (from the server) even when it has lost WiFi connection.
Since the three dhcpd\network\shorewall do resolve the issues it can be more then one problem.
The problem is in the router. Everything else works fine. Also the problem is easily solved by disconnecting and re-connecting the router. The difficulty with this is that the machine is in another country.
I would also look at the basic system logs to see if there are any hints about the issue.
There is nothing relevant in /var/log/messages on the server. On laptops and phones there are the messages one would expect - eg NetworkManager says at great length that it has lost connection.
I had a similar issue with a CentOS 6 not long ago and the NIC was going up and down. When I replaced to newer kernel it got fixed. (tested couple times over a very long period)
What nic are you using there? Is there any switch over there between the WRT54GL and the Server?
The server is an HP MicroServer, The ethernet card on the router link is Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5723 (according to lspci).
-
Chris -
Eliezer Croitoru -
Fred Smith -
John R Pierce -
ken -
m.roth＠5-cent.us -
Nels Lindquist -
Timothy Murphy -
Tom Bishop