[geeks] Home router/firewall (Linksys lockups)

[velociraptor]

On Tue, 1 Mar 2005 10:46:05 -0600, Bill Bradford <mrbill at mrbill.net> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 01, 2005 at 09:46:18AM -0500, Kevin wrote:
> > Most Linksys routers (and even some dumb hubs) seem to "lock up"
> > and have to be power cycled every so often.  I (as have
> > others) have observed this behavior under various conditions with
> > various pieces of Linksys hardware.
> > Does this firmware fix those types of issues as well?
> 
> This is very un-like the other Linksys hardware.
> 
> I've owned BEFSR11 and BEFSR41 "routers", and they were pieces of crap
> that had to be rebooted at least daily.  The only time I reboot the WRT54G
> (which is actually an "embedded" ARM LINUX box) is when I upgrade the
> firmware.  I've never had an unplanned reboot or random lockup with it.
> 
> It's also one of the few "home routers" that doesn't just choke and die
> when I throw a BitTorrent connection with 100+ other peers on it, at it -
> cheaper NetGear/Dlink routers fill up their state tables and die; the
> WRT54G and a Cisco PIX 501 are the only boxes I've seen that can handle it.

My WRT54GS (stock firmware) only "hangs" with BitTorrent software that
is not smart enough to close any HALF_OPEN TCP connections after a
computer/software crash.  My understanding from reading about this
issue is that most of the embedded Linux devices use the "normal"
Linux TCP stack defaults which has the default timeout at something
like 5 days iirc.  Sveasoft (and others) allow you to tune this, and
other, TCP stack settings.

Another limitation in most stock firmware has to do with the maximum
number of TCP connections; apparently games as well as P2P software
open up a lot more than other types of connections.

Since I had some problems flashing my first WRT54GS (now a brick as it
waits for a serial console hack), I switched to BitComet, which will
close any "half open" connections after a restart.

You'd think that the firmware manufacturers would at least give you
TCP stack profiles for say 1 computer vs 4 computers, since all of
these things have switches in them, generally.

*shrug*
=Nadine=