Router dying?

A

AshleyG

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 5, 2007
Messages
272
I'm trying to solve some annoying network issues, and after consulting with some guys at DSLReports it looks like my router is the culprit rather than the DSL modem. If figuring this out means posting the DSL status, let me know and I'll take care of it.

My current router is a Netgear WNDR3700 v1 running DD-WRT. Everything has been fine for the past week or so, with consistent Speedtest.net and Testmy.net readings of around 5Mbps down. Last night while watching ESPN3 my connection went absolutely batty - fast, slow, fast, slow, slow for a long time, fast, no connection. I rebooted the router and it was lather, rinse, repeat. Today I've been holding a steady average of 1.8Mbps down. after a morning city-wide outage. AT&T did a remote line test and everything checked out, and my DSL modem status page checked out for maximum connected speed and clean, error-free connection.

That leads me to believe the router is the culprit. I've noticed that it takes a significantly longer amount of time to save configuration changes or even change pages today. Even after rebooting the router and letting it settle in, loading the status page takes upwards of a minute.

I've been planning on picking up a MikroTik 750GL and a UniFi wifi module and will most likely do that, but I need to stretch the current router's lifespan while I wait to order those and get them in. Any recommendations on what to look for in troubleshooting the low speeds from the router or configuration settings to try would be greatly appreciated.
 
Well, we've almost double our speeds! Up to 2.9 Mbps according to AT&T's own speed test tool. Speedtest.net has me hovering around 4.2-4.5 Mbps. Page loads do feel a little snappier. But, we're back to having the occasional wireless hangs that prompted me to give DD-WRT a try in the first place. Can't win for losing, eh? :D
 
DD-WRT is not known for its wireless performance.

That said.. Load SSIDinsider on a notebook and see what shows up. See if there are other signals and on what channels.
 
First thing I did when we moved here. We've got a Subway a block down with an AP that occasionally shows up in the living room. I've made sure that they're not on the same channel and that there is as much space between each AP's channels as possible.
 
DD-WRT isn't as great as people claim, if anything OpenWRT (trunk) works fairly well on that router in my experience but you might as well go for stock firmware.
//Danne
 
I've had bad experiences with the stock firmware on the WNDR3700. Apparently being an access-point only bridge is an unsupported config on those routers, even though it works.. mostly. I was noticing in that config on stock firmware, the wireless would occasionally just stop routing packets, even tho I'd be connected. DD-WRT got around that problem.
 
Damacus, that's exactly what happened to me - wifi would stay connected, but nothing would go anywhere. DD-WRT solved that problem but screwed up other things.

Ehren8879, I'll have to give Gargoyle a try when I get home tonight. if it works, It'll save me some money. If not, then it's time to drop some coin on a new setup.
 
Ashley, eagerly awaiting to hear of your experience with Gargoyle. While DD-WRT has been fine for me, I'd be open to try out an OpenWRT build.
 
damacus said:
Ashley, eagerly awaiting to hear of your experience with Gargoyle. While DD-WRT has been fine for me, I'd be open to try out an OpenWRT build.
Click to expand...

Maybe I didn't dig deep enough, but I got rid of Gargoyle after not being able to find the PPPoE configuration section. Gargoyle also seemed to be very much tailored for the beginning tweaker; I'm not knocking it for that, but I found the interface to be overly simplistic. From what I could tell the router was running without a hitch (sans internet connection though).

I tried OpenWRT next. Two installations went belly-up on me within 15 minutes of getting the router configured. I couldn't even log back in to try changing settings except after a 30-30-30 reset.

At this point I'm just shelving the router. I have an ASUS RT-N56U en route to try out this weekend. I'm not going to get to put together the network setup I want until next Taxmas, so I have high hopes for the N56U.
 
AshleyG said:
Maybe I didn't dig deep enough, but I got rid of Gargoyle after not being able to find the PPPoE configuration section. Gargoyle also seemed to be very much tailored for the beginning tweaker; I'm not knocking it for that, but I found the interface to be overly simplistic. From what I could tell the router was running without a hitch (sans internet connection though).
Click to expand...

I'll have to check mine when I get home, but I believe you select pppoe from the internet type drop down (e.g. dhcp, static etc.). While Gargoyle has a nice simple interface compared to luci gui builds you can still ssh into it to install and configure packages. At the end of the day I simply wasn't taking advantage of the Arokh feature builds, so I went with something that had a slightly smaller foorprint.
 
Ehren8879 said:
I'll have to check mine when I get home, but I believe you select pppoe from the internet type drop down (e.g. dhcp, static etc.). While Gargoyle has a nice simple interface compared to luci gui builds you can still ssh into it to install and configure packages. At the end of the day I simply wasn't taking advantage of the Arokh feature builds, so I went with something that had a slightly smaller foorprint.
Click to expand...

I probably should have spent more time in the depths of the firmware, but when your wife is in panic mode because there's no available connection and she has orders to process (antique sales, she handles the web side while her parents do the B&M) you don't have time to thoroughly investigate.

I'm going to keep the 3700 to play around with during my plan period at school. I've been trying to get some better wifi coverage in my band room, if I can keep it alive it would fit the bill perfectly.
 
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