Router Issues

Mister Longbaugh

I'm using a Linksys WRT54G V8 with the newest firmware, and my ISP is Shaw. For like the past three weeks I have been getting ridiculously low speeds and high pings. Like it takes me 2076ms to ping a server in Vancouver less than 20 miles away. I called Shaw tech support and they said the problem was the router. I tried bypassing the router and plugging my laptop directly into the modem and the speed was up to normal so I'm inclined to agree. Unfortunately keeping it like that isn't an option as other people use the router.

Whenever I recycle the router speeds will return to normal for like 5-10 minutes, and then bam, it's back to being all fucked up. Do we need to get a new router or what? Linksys' tech support is unhelpful because my warranty expired like 2 months ago.

Edit: And it's slow whether I'm using wireless or wired.

W2

The other people that use the router, are they using a lot of high traffic stuff like Bitorrent?

Mister Longbaugh

Some of them probably are.

Mister Longbaugh

I'm fairly unsure if that's the issue here though. If I disable the wireless signal and unplug all but my cable from the ethernet ports, the speed is still slow

shadydentist

Have you tried resetting to factory defaults? Rolling back the firmware?

Mister Longbaugh

shadydentist wrote: »

Have you tried resetting to factory defaults? Rolling back the firmware?

Just tried this and it made no difference at all.

PeregrineFalcon

Stock Linksys firmware is fucking terrible. Install DD-WRT Micro on it - while I'd normally pimp Tomato or something, for the low-memory low-flash routers I stick with that - and watch your reliability/speed/etc skyrocket.

Oh, and as a side benefit you can QoS the porn-torrenting into the "bulk traffic" category so it won't fuck up your ping/web/email.

Mister Longbaugh

PeregrineFalcon wrote: »

Stock Linksys firmware is fucking terrible. Install DD-WRT Micro on it - while I'd normally pimp Tomato or something, for the low-memory low-flash routers I stick with that - and watch your reliability/speed/etc skyrocket.

Oh, and as a side benefit you can QoS the porn-torrenting into the "bulk traffic" category so it won't fuck up your ping/web/email.

Alright I'll take a look at that.

vonPoonBurGer

PeregrineFalcon wrote: »

Stock Linksys firmware is fucking terrible. Install DD-WRT Micro on it - while I'd normally pimp Tomato or something, for the low-memory low-flash routers I stick with that - and watch your reliability/speed/etc skyrocket.

Oh, and as a side benefit you can QoS the porn-torrenting into the "bulk traffic" category so it won't fuck up your ping/web/email.

I came in here to say this, but Peregrine has it covered. Seriously, Linksys firmware is terribad, particularly their handling of connection tracking and how that interacts with most P2P apps. DD-WRT would probably improve matters greatly, especially if your roommates are torrenting. Max out the number of connections tracked (I think 4096 is the upper limit), and reduce the timeout for cleanup of stale connections (seriously, any connection that hasn't seen a packet in ten minutes is probably dead, there's no need to keep tracking it).

The only downside to flashing DD-WRT on the v7 and v8 models of the WRT54G is that it has to be done in a pretty specific way. Just be careful, follow the instructions exactly (especially the part about using a wired connection instead of wireless), and you should be fine.

Mister Longbaugh

I flashed DD-WRT successfully. That alone hasn't improved things at all but I'm currently tinkering with the settings to see if I can improve things a bit.

Aridhol

This may seem like a silly suggestion but is your router surrounded by a bunch of other wiring? I had a shitty SMC barricade router that I kept right near my powerbar/modem/computer and always had issues but the second I moved it to have a place for just the modem/router it was fine.

Also what modem do you have with Shaw? Motorola or Terayon?

Mister Longbaugh

Aridhol wrote: »

This may seem like a silly suggestion but is your router surrounded by a bunch of other wiring? I had a shitty SMC barricade router that I kept right near my powerbar/modem/computer and always had issues but the second I moved it to have a place for just the modem/router it was fine.

Also what modem do you have with Shaw? Motorola or Terayon?

Well the router itself isn't surrounded by wiring, it's on a table, but there are a lot of wires in that general area.

Also I have the motorola modem, the sb5120 I think.

vonPoonBurGer

Mister Longbaugh wrote: »

I flashed DD-WRT successfully. That alone hasn't improved things at all but I'm currently tinkering with the settings to see if I can improve things a bit.

The DD-WRT wiki has a page with things you can try to alleviate router slowdown. Basically, you increase the connection limit to 4096 and reduce the timeouts for stale TCP and UDP connections to a few minutes or less.

If that doesn't work, the next step would be to try Quality of Service (QoS). That's definitely a more complicated deal, but there's a good write-up on it for DD-WRT here. The most important thing is to make sure that any bulk traffic on your network (e.g. P2P apps being run by your roommates) is correctly set at bulk priority, and that your maximum download and upload speeds are defined correctly.

If it's still slow, then I'd start to wonder if there isn't something up with your router's hardware.