ISP Quality and Asus Routers

[Elmer]

Recently I escaped from an ISP that is failing. Their stock is in a tailspin, the vulture capitalists had arrived, employees were leaving (network engineers first). The VC, as is the usual case, continued to oversell the network and do as little maintenance as possible. My modem logs were a set of critical errors and the uncorrectables were in the thousands after only hours of operation. Forums were full of complaints. I'm now paying more (unfortunately) for a pretty solid network.

So what does this have to do with Asus routers? I knew network quality was bad, but it started with just a reboot every two to three days. As things progressed, it was a reboot every day, or face the inevitable kernel panic after a raft of dsnmasq errors. When a once a day reboot was no longer enough, I first reformatted jffs and forgot about scripts. When that didn't help, I stumbled on the solution of turning off all asus/trendnet code by clicking on the non-acceptance of the privacy agreement. That worked fairly well, and allowed me to get back to a reboot every day. With the new ISP none of that is necessary - no reboots, no disabling of asus/trendnet. So what's my point?

Well, now, when I start reading posts about "what's your optimum period for rebooting, etc.," or why is this script dying (Skynet took a beating before I dropped all scripts), I have to think that one of the primary underlying causes is probably a poor internet connection. I have realized now that the connmon" script painted a pretty good picture of a bad ISP, but I had nothing to compare to at the time. But the bottom line is, you must realize that the router is very sensitive to noise when in an accelerated mode (asus/trendnet code running), and still moderately sensitive even when that code is disabled.

 

[SwampKracker]

Recently I escaped from an ISP that is failing. Their stock is in a tailspin, the vulture capitalists had arrived, employees were leaving (network engineers first). The VC, as is the usual case, continued to oversell the network and do as little maintenance as possible. My modem logs were a set of critical errors and the uncorrectables were in the thousands after only hours of operation. Forums were full of complaints. I'm now paying more (unfortunately) for a pretty solid network.

So what does this have to do with Asus routers? I knew network quality was bad, but it started with just a reboot every two to three days. As things progressed, it was a reboot every day, or face the inevitable kernel panic after a raft of dsnmasq errors. When a once a day reboot was no longer enough, I first reformatted jffs and forgot about scripts. When that didn't help, I stumbled on the solution of turning off all asus/trendnet code by clicking on the non-acceptance of the privacy agreement. That worked fairly well, and allowed me to get back to a reboot every day. With the new ISP none of that is necessary - no reboots, no disabling of asus/trendnet. So what's my point?

Well, now, when I start reading posts about "what's your optimum period for rebooting, etc.," or why is this script dying (Skynet took a beating before I dropped all scripts), I have to think that one of the primary underlying causes is probably a poor internet connection. I have realized now that the connmon" script painted a pretty good picture of a bad ISP, but I had nothing to compare to at the time. But the bottom line is, you must realize that the router is very sensitive to noise when in an accelerated mode (asus/trendnet code running), and still moderately sensitive even when that code is disabled.

Very interesting. Sounds like maybe there is inadequate error handling in some code causing kernel panics if a packet is corrupt. Is this a failure of Broadcom for not dropping garbage packets?

 

[dosborne]

Not sure why your issues (ISP stability and rebooting your router) are related. My old ISP went through a really bad stability period but this had zero effect on my router and my internal LAN. I decided not to run any scripts on my router though and let other devices (mainly raspberry pis) do that for stability as some scripts and apps used excessive CPU or memory. (I want my router doing as little as possible so that it can "concentrate" off you will, on the basics of actual routing, VPN, DHCP, etc with all possible resources)

Personally, I'm old-school, so to ensure a clean and stable environment I have a scheduled daily reboot through the GUI. Historically, I used to use a digital timer to reboot modems, routers and other infrastructure equipment.

But, you will find many users on here who run weeks or months between reboots. Setup to monitor the resources and you can determine what is best in your case, although even the monitoring has a performance hit...)

Bo

 

[Val D.]

But the bottom line is, you must realize that the router is very sensitive to noise when in an accelerated mode

No such thing in digital communications. Your bad ISP was not sending you "noise" for sure. If a packet arrives broken for some reason, it gets re-transmitted. ISP "quality" has nothing to do with your router. And what is asus/trendnet code? There is a TrendMicro software as part of the firmware and when it's running the router is not in "accelerated mode". Just the opposite, this software decreases the total throughput.

I want my router doing as little as possible so that it can "concentrate" off you will, on the basics of actual routing, VPN, DHCP, etc with all possible resources

Best strategy with best performance results. For marketing reasons ASUS decided to convert those routers into 50-in-1 devices and the result is something that works sometimes. But don't worry, a firmware update planned for 2021 will fix it. You just pay $400 now and wait, please. One of the upcoming ASUS routers will do the laundry too, software part will be provided by Whirlpool. They are working on it.

 

[Vexira]

You should get a line test, try Mac cloning the ISP unit and see that how the connection, if you are getting line noise then there is an issue either on the copper Line or something in the house is causing an issue.