WRT54GL Woes

August 14, 2008 11:15 AM

My Linksys WRT54GL has stopped connecting to some (but not all) websites. Help!

I have a Linksys WRT54GL 1.1 set up as a wireless router in my home, with four macs and one Windows XP system connected. Starting about three days ago, certain websites refused to load on any of the connected machines -- Firefox pauses on "Connecting to [url]..." and then eventually displays a "cannot connect" error. There doesn't seem to be a pattern to whic websites are OK and which are not -- Google's whole family of sites are OK, as is HowardForums and all the various instant messenger services (AIM, ICQ, MSN, GTalk); Metafilter, Wikipedia and xkcd, among many others, are not. If I connect any of the machines directly to the cable modem (via an ethernet cable), there are no problems, so I know the problem is the router configuration. I was running Tomato 1.21 on the router; I just reflashed to the stock Linksys firmware. However, it looks like some data on the router persisted. I think my next step is a -FULL- reset of the router. Can anyone point out how to do this? I was hoping a firmware reflash + a reset would restore factory defaults, but it doesn't appear to. The only configuration changes I've made to my router recently are (1) reconfiguring from WPA2 to WPA to allow a new roommate with an older wireless card to connect, and (2) configuring dyndns and port forwarding to forward SSH to one of my desktops from outside the apartment. The problem did not begin occuring at the time I made either of these changes; rather, things were OK for about a week and then this happened.

Any thoughts on how to isolate the cause of this problem? I'm relatively technically saavy but I can't think of what factors might cause whole swaths of the internet to vanish to my router.

posted by Alterscape to computers & internet (16 comments total)

What happens when you connect a machine to the router via ethernet? At first glance this sounds like a subnetting issue; what are your WAN and LAN IPs and subnet masks?
posted by bizwank at 11:33 AM on August 14, 2008

There should be an option to reset to factory defaults in the configuration menu, perhaps under the Administration tab, but mine is running dd-wrt so the menus have probably changed. That's as "resetted" as it gets afaik.
posted by bizwank at 11:39 AM on August 14, 2008

Connecting via ethernet has the same problem. I'm at another location right now, can't check the configuration, but I know that the LAN IP range is 192.168.1.2 - 192.168.1.149 (192.168.1.1 is the router). I'm pretty certain that the subnet mask for the LAN is 255.255.255.0, but I'm not certain on the WAN subnet mask.
posted by Alterscape at 11:39 AM on August 14, 2008

You can reset the router by using a pen to push in the rest button on the back, while the router is powered on. Hold it in for 30 seconds.
posted by dcjd at 11:40 AM on August 14, 2008

^This is the same as resetting through the GUI, it's a backup in case you've really b0rked things up.

OP, are your computers using only your ISP's DNS servers or are they using the router as primary? It could have some old/bad entries cached, but I'd immagine a hard reset would clear those. You could disable it's local DNS caching to be sure though.
posted by bizwank at 11:46 AM on August 14, 2008

You could also try setting it's DNS servers to use OpenDNS or some similar service to see if it gets routed better.
posted by Hackworth at 11:51 AM on August 14, 2008

Is your new roommate doing a lot of torrenting? I've had problems with Linksys routers getting borked when there's too many connections.
posted by FreezBoy at 11:56 AM on August 14, 2008

It could also be getting bad upstream DNS entries; try setting the DNS on the router and/or the clients to a couple of the the old solid public standbys, 4.2.2.1 through to 4.2.2.6.

Another option is to try out dd-wrt (I prefer it to tomato) but I don't think that's your problem as such. Flashing the firmware and restoring to factory defaults should clear it out completely.

It's also not beyond possibility that your router has suffered a hardware fault, and is dropping packets or the like, or even has a damaged and/or corrupted flash memory.
posted by ArkhanJG at 11:59 AM on August 14, 2008

Oh, to do a factory reset - hold down the push-in button for about 30 seconds. It should reset back to 192.168.1.1 with DHCP.
posted by ArkhanJG at 12:03 PM on August 14, 2008

Ugh. I really do not need to be buying a new router, but it does seem like a likely solution to try. Thanks for the input everyone! Is there any way to check for a hardware fault (read/write test in DD-WRT, say?)
posted by Alterscape at 1:04 PM on August 14, 2008

I don't see how a random hardware fault could prevent you from loading certain specific sites. That's about the most far-fetched idea presented so far, and I'd strongly encourage you to eliminate the others before heading down that path.
posted by bizwank at 2:05 PM on August 14, 2008

Dodgy network card on the router dropping packets is not that far fetched. I've seen weirder network problems caused by dodgy network hardware in the last 20 years, trust me.
posted by ArkhanJG at 2:14 PM on August 14, 2008

That said, it's still worth trying all the software angles you can before binning it, to eliminate them. Bear in mind how much your time is worth though; dd-wrt supported 802.11g routers just aren't that expensive any more.
posted by ArkhanJG at 2:19 PM on August 14, 2008

I'll second that this sounds like a DNS problem - speaking from XP experience, perhaps when you connect via ethernet to the router you're using one set of settings (DHCP settings, but also DNS), and wireless uses a different set. Try to figure out what's different between them. Apologies for not being able to give mac-centric advice, but in XP, check TCP/IP Properties under your LAN Local Area Connection (when you're plugged in) and see if the DNS settings are comparable to the same TCP/IP in your wireless configuration. I'd try manually pointing to the OpenDNS addresses (but always write down your previous settings!) if this is an option.

I also doubt this is a hardware problem, just a configuration one. Your router is just treating wireless connections differently than wired ones - good luck!
posted by antonymous at 2:27 PM on August 14, 2008

Just bought a new router and all is well. Didn't really want to spend $70 but I can earn that back -- I'm on a deadline crunch and I need this to be working. I'll hang on to the old one -- it might be coerced into serving as an NAS or something. Besides that, can anyone think of something fun to do with a (mostly?) working WRT54GL that I don't mind opening up and hacking on?
posted by Alterscape at 2:47 PM on August 14, 2008

Besides that, can anyone think of something fun to do with a (mostly?) working WRT54GL that I don't mind opening up and hacking on?

WDS -> moving a wired-only computer to somewhere else. It doesn't even require "opening up and hacking".

A more hackish idea is to add more memory (I think there's a mod to add a card reader), then use it as a FTP/VPN/web/??? server.
posted by philomathoholic at 5:47 PM on August 14, 2008