my router randomly stops communicating with my ISP 1

[PPettit]

For some reason that I can't figure out, my router stops talking to the radio for my wireless internet connection. From my side of the router, everything works fine except that I can no longer get to the internet. I had the ISP come out and replace the previous router which took care of some problems but not this one. Instead, it just disconnects less often. I'd like to replace the radio but the ISP claims that it's working fine. Until I can change their mind, I think I'm stuck having to reboot the router on a daily basis.

Router: Linksys BEFSR41v3 ("EtherFast Cable/DSL Router with 4 port switch" with the latest firmware vailable)
Access Point: Orinoco Silver Turbo 11mb PCMCIA card on a circuit board without a case (it's in a metal box with the other wireless connection gear). The only thing on it that looks even somewhat informative is this: HomePoint EVT 5.0.
Network: about 10 internal users and about 5 external users running Citrix. All are using Win2K Pro.


So far, Linksys hasn't been any help and I can't find anything useful on the access point setup. I've tried running various freeware/shareware packet sniffers and network analyzers without much luck, or at least without finding any data that's obviously useful. It's been rather confusing since they all report different data.

I'm no TCP/IP expert, so maybe I'm just overlooking something. Maybe there's just too much data going back and forth for that router to handle properly. It seems like it may be a timeout problem but I can't tell for sure. Anyone have some suggestions on how I can try to troubleshoot this problem for a definitive answer?

 

[bcastner]

See all the discussions about this router, including the November, 2003 firmware changes:

http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/equip,16

It sounds like the issue being discussed in thread:

http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,8889242~mode=flat

I think there are still rough edges to V3 of this router, but I would look closely at the connection to your WAN port. My read is that, if possible, you should set that connection to 10 - Half Duplex for the V3 version of the router with current firmware.

 

[PPettit]

Thanks, bcastner

Apparently, I have been overlooking some things. I saw that firmware upgrade before but ignored it because I thought it was older. I should have looked more closely. I made the mistake of assuming that my version was the newest since it was 1.04.8 instead of 1.04.17. I was thinking that .8 represented revision 80 instead of 8. It would have made more sense to me if they had used .08 to represent the 8th revision.

Hopefully, this will solve the problem. Those discussion links you posted did seem to correspond to this problem of mine. I never would have thought to look on broadbandreports.com. I've only used that site for it's speed tests. I'll have to start browsing their forums, too.

Thanks again.

 

[GlenJohnson]

Here's a quick fix that I had to use until I figured out my problem. I would occasionally lose my IP address, so I created a batch file and placed it on my desktop.

Ipconfig /release
Ipconfig /renew


Named it TCP.bat and when I lost my connection, I would run the batch file, and would have my internet back almost at once. Turned out my problem was my isp, but this worked for a while.

Glen A. Johnson
"Fall seven times, stand up eight."
Proverb

Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884

 

[PPettit]

Update for anyone who's enterested:

The firmware upgrade seems to have taken care of my problem.

It's been a few days and I've been actively trying to crash it. It's held up against everything, so far. It didn't appear to have any trouble, even under a heavy load.

Thanks again, bcastner.