overloading a router????

[Exile Machine]

dd-wrt rocks. Good choice there. If I'm going into a massively parallel bittorrent session I'll stick a spare 12v muffin fan on the top just to keep things cool. Usually it's the cable company's bargain basement cable modem that can't hack it, so I upgraded to the latest gen Motorola.
-Mark

[high_revs]

i actually switched my routers as i have 2 different wrt-56g but not the same manufacture date. if any, the one i bought from ebay that with upgraded ram and has a heatsink has older chip but a newer ddwrt build. unbelievable that the backup each router have, you do cannot be put on the other router even if same model. i figure this is because of the h/w chip? but nonetheless, i just reconfigured it.

i still end up the same situation though a little better. last night i had to restart the router a few times. actually even getting to it is pretty slow compared to getting to the admin console of the bridged router. i do have all 4 ports used on the primary router and one of those goes to a non-intelligent hub that has another 2 ports used. maybe i'm taxing it more thru hard wired ports vs/ wifi? hmmm

i do have 2 machines with torrents as i've not migrated everthing to my nas. one is just uploading though i don't see much activity on it. wonder if that adds to the taxation of the router even if 1 is inactive?

i've always had problems checking if i can get to the port i use though for torrent, but seem to upload ok though my nas seems slower.

maybe it's time for 802.11n but i'd need to upgrade the cards for all machines @ home on 802.11g. that's not to say i won't get the same effect though on a new router unless they really are improved h/w, i.e. from P-II to a P-4 chip as an analogy.

[hcbr]

i'm downloading constantly every night, going to upgrade to an ASUS so i can have a gig E on the wired side, but yeah, both my linksys and one netgear are just taxed and overloaded. My friend recommend asus since he' downloads alot too and streams and his is still rockin.

look to dump it, and find something that can handle the throughput your hash on it

[chaunbot]

I forget how to see how many active connections but torrents will establish and maintain connections for some time. Depending on how many people are on the torrent etc. You can also try updating DD-WRT maybe that version has memory leaks etc. I consider myself a "power user " and I would seed 20+ torrents 24/7 and DD-WRT did well for being abused. My Internet is 2.5 Meg down and 200k up.

[high_revs]

Like how much?

actually, i think it might be the streaming that's killing it. the past few times, i looked thru my nas' torrent app and there's no activity at all. but i was streaming some anime, outlook always connected to work (unsure how much polling it does and what that bandwidth usage is like). but someone is watching some asian shows. i also have a ooma but no one is on the phone.

there were times i may have made the network unavailable to others when i was doing d/l and d/l speeds were around 200-400kbps (fluctuating).

Stop downloading so much BBW pr0n and switch to midget pr0n. Its smaller. Shouldn't overload as much.

haha.. damn those japanese hd pr0n and large file sizes!

chaunbot,
i'll have to check in real time next time. i enabled QOS on my router to and put premium priority (max bandwidth allowable) on my machine's mac, nas' mac and the other laptop mac. tested it against some video and seemed OK. it did slow down yesterday a little when someone was streaming from laptop but at least i didn't bring down the router.

odd, before i left for airport, the touchpad said no wifi available. nothing going on network (no d/l or streaming) yet i come back a few hours later, it was back up and running. usually requires a unplug/re-plugging for me.

i figure the QOS is an easy/free approach for now rather than learning scripting and ip tables to limit bandwidth to some machines. just go the other way around and put priority on my machines (heck i pay for all of the bill).

[chaunbot]

I believe DD-WRT has a load graph,or you can ssh Into the router ( with putty)
And check the load averages. What are you downloading ? Torrents with hundreds of connections? I believe that's the only time my router ever slowed down.

[ibanezfoo]

Like how much?

Stop downloading so much BBW pr0n and switch to midget pr0n. Its smaller. Shouldn't overload as much.

[paul0660]

maybe d/l'ing too much?

Like how much?

[ibanezfoo]

lol ivanimal. what part of a car is a router?

It connects the rotator splint to the radiator bearings. Just be careful when plugging it in so you don't leak any of your hub cap fluid.

[loose_electron]

I was going to say buy a Bosch then realized where I was....................

Porter-Cable...

[loose_electron]

if you're getting heat related space-cadet-ing of your wifi router then it's time to consider replacing it. Heat induced failures in electronics only get worse with time. Once you've gone over temp 1 time you can have physical problems at the solder joints, especially (ala X-box 360) problems with solder flowing from connections and causing spotty contact. Apart from the desoldering problem one or more of the IC's in the device may be damaged. We're talking 60 nanometer circuit sizes so it doesn't take a lot to literally fry one. All you have to do after it's been damaged is expose it to heat again and you'll get these sort of random failures. Your hose be leaky, get a new hose. Same principle applies here.

two possibles here - newer chips in ultra small CMOS geometry (90nm and smaller) are less reliable. Faster, but less relaible in many cases -

RoHS soldering is less relaible than good old fashioned lead-tin mixes.

R&R the thing would be my suggestion.

[high_revs]

lol ivanimal. what part of a car is a router?

i'm thinking of switching my wrt-54's. my original was pretty strong but can't remember which wrt-54 version it was (l, m, etc.). hope it's as easy as exporting the settings and reimporting them after switching.

else, i have to learn about ip tables, or learn the QoS setup, or just buy the version of dd-wrt that allows bandwidth control per mac.

[Peter.Steele]

yeah you can overload them. you did good by loading dd-wrt or buying one with it preloaded. ive yet to come across a linksys/cisco router that has a long life.

I've got a WRT-54GS that's been going strong since 2006. Only replaced it because I needed (wanted, really) Wireless-N.

[ivanimal]

I was going to say buy a Bosch then realized where I was....................

[Syst3m Ov3rrid3]

Yeah you can overload them. They will usually over heat or freeze, the freezing is usually packet translation issues or other packet issues. I have DD-WRT loaded on my WRT54GL with a Fan on top of it. Keeps the router real cool.