[PLUG] (Semi-OT:) Linksys router messes up my LAN

[Steve Jorgensen]

At one time, I had a former boss of mine install one of those routers at 
his home, and he had no end of troubles.  Eventually, we tried exchanging 
it at the store for another of the same type of unit, and all the problems 
went away.  It turns out he just had a flakey unit.

On Saturday, July 19, 2003 10:22 AM, David Fleck [SMTP:dcf at aracnet.com] 
wrote:
> A few weeks ago, I got a Linksys wireless router.  This router acts as 
the
> gateway/firewall between the internet and our home LAN.  It's a pretty
> crude firewall, and not nearly as configurable as what I used to have - a
> Linux box running floppyfw - but that's not the problem here.
>
> Everything seemed OK at first, but then I noticed that getting large
> (10MB+) files to download didn't work very well.  Transfers would 
progress
> for about 5 - 10 MB and then hang, indefinitely. The amount downloaded
> varied, but would always crap out at about the same point for a given
> file.  Attempting to re-download gets either the same result, or an even
> smaller amount downloaded, or simply no connection at all.
>
> At first I thought that FTP wasn't configured right, but then I noticed
> that the problems occurred with large http transfers as well, and also
> with just about any network activity that couldn't be completed in 10
> seconds or so.  So lots of little files (like web browsing) works OK, but
> downloading kernel source invariably fails.  This behavior was the same 
on
> the 3 machines in the LAN - FreeBSD 4.6, SuSE 8.2, W2K.
>
> At first I thought it was the cableco.'s fault - but they had me connect
> the W2K machine (UNIX? We don't support no stinkin' UNIX) directly to the
> cable modem, without the router, and downloads worked fine.
>
> As a further test, I tried ftp'ing one of the big files I downloaded from
> the W2K box to the FreeBSD box.  The transfer hung, just as it did across
> the internet.  I took the two machines off the network and connected them
> to each other with a hub, and the transfer worked fine.
>
> Linksys tech.support has had me do a firmware upgrade, reset the router's
> MTU to 1492, and reset the MTU on the local machines' NICs to 1492.  It
> seems to have helped the W2K machine, but doesn't seem to have done much
> for the other two, which I use and need a lot more.  I'll call Linksys
> back soon after I do some more poking around, but does anyone have ideas
> as to what might be causing this?
>
> --
> David Fleck
> dcf at aracnet.com
> david.fleck at mchsi.com
>
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