Searching for reliability

[fragmaticus]

Maybe it's just me...honestly sometimes I'm convinced I could burn water...but it seems like I buy a new router ever 12-15 months. My E3000 cooks itself in to a vapor lock, the WNDR3700 I bought a little over a year ago is beginning to fail, I've had several Linksys, Netgear, Dlink models and they all seem to average under a year and a half. I've tried updating the stock firmware, replacing that with DDWRT, flashing back to the stock when the same errors occur.

It's not like I'm hosting Amazon.com or anything. I just want to surf, watch Netflix and occasionally download stuff from Steam in less than two days. Is this planned obsolescence, bad karma, crappy equipment or user error?

Any advice anyone could give on wireless routers that have been good soldiers would be most appreciated. Thank you.

 

[MaX PL]

my e3000 running tomato, while running warm, was extremely stable and it ran well for 3 or 4 years til i sold it.

its all about finding the most stable build...

 

[stevech]

Maybe it's just me...honestly sometimes I'm convinced I could burn water...but it seems like I buy a new router ever 12-15 months. My E3000 cooks itself in to a vapor lock, the WNDR3700 I bought a little over a year ago is beginning to fail, I've had several Linksys, Netgear, Dlink models and they all seem to average under a year and a half. I've tried updating the stock firmware, replacing that with DDWRT, flashing back to the stock when the same errors occur.

It's not like I'm hosting Amazon.com or anything. I just want to surf, watch Netflix and occasionally download stuff from Steam in less than two days. Is this planned obsolescence, bad karma, crappy equipment or user error?

Any advice anyone could give on wireless routers that have been good soldiers would be most appreciated. Thank you.

Buy one from a company that sells mostly to small businesses or machine-to-machine telemetry. I use Cradlepoint for that reason. Maybe ZyXel or Engenius are similar. Cradlepoint has a stable firmware based for all products, they build it, rather than buy it from Asia, Inc. on the spot market. These companies have to have stable products as their usage is often in unattended situations such as M2M.

 

[thiggins]

I've had only one router die on me. I always put them on a UPS, along with all my other networking and computing gear.

What are the "same errors" that occur?

 

[RogerSC]

The Asus RT-N66U that I've been using for over 1.5 years now is doing very well. Great wireless coverage and speed, nice feature set, good admin GUI, just a nice piece of hardware. Doesn't have wireless-AC, though, if that matters to you, but that gets you into an expensive world of needing to buy wireless-AC clients and fiddle with them. The RT-N66U has been 100% reliable, and I have changed firmware quite a bit, so it has passed that test well. Along those lines, Asus also has a nice firmware recovery utility, should you ever need to re-flash your router if you get some bad firmware, or a power failure or something.

I also endorse putting your router on a UPS. I have both my cable modem and router on a UPS, so in addition to surge protection, they both get through nearly all of the power failures that we have without losing power or browning out.

Oh yeah, by the way *smile*, my Netgear WNDR3700v1 lasted about 2 years before the wireless part stopped working on me. Seems like a lot of people saw lifetime about there. Gave good service until then, though.

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
In my house there are two routers. One for myself, Zyxel USG 20W and for the family, ASUS RT-AC66U. No matter what we had, all worked well always. If I need to update f/w for a reason I do it in the middle of night when every one is asleep. They always run without any hicoughs. Maybe I have been lucky(?) Or I know what I am doing(?). This afternoon I just got Netgear R7000 delivered to put my hands on it. Waiting for every one goes to bed to see what it does/can. Came with latest stock f/w so just plug it in and first thing I'll check on the 5GHz band range/signal strength where our HT is located compared to ASUS. And try USB 3 port and so on. If things look good, I may pull the plug on the ASUS router.

 

[RMerlin]

I always put them on a UPS

That would be my first advice if different brands are dying on you. Could be an electrical power issue.

Even an inexpensive <100$ UPS would be perfect. Mine cost less than 100$, and gives me around 2 hours of uptime with router, modem, VoIP ATA and cordless phone cradle.

 

[TonyH]

Yes, if one lives where there are lots of lightning and brown outs, etc. Since I came out here early 1970, only power outage we suffered was caused by grass fire knocking out a
pole on Bow river bank carrying feeder line across river then going under ground for our neighborhood. Since both side poles were replaced with concrete towers. Including that fire total outage was ~4 hours all these years. Our power is delivered by city owned Enmax. In my working days systems I worked on were on UPS MG set with battery banks or just 75 to 150KW Kato MG set.

 

[jlake]

I would hold off on this UPS until you post what "same errors".

At my house, I get at least 20-30 power surges per year and another 20-30 power outages per year. If it's a really hot summer, those numbers can double. I also live where thunderstorms and lightening is common year round. Ice storms will occasionally knock out power too.

I don't even use surge protectors on my routers. Plug them directly in to the wall outlets. I have three routers plugged in at all times including an old WRT54G ver. 3. I think it's from circa 2002. None of my routers have problems.

When I go to the gym, they have an E3000 and it does vapor lock on a regular basis, but it's not using latest firmware, so I can't say for sure what it's problem is.

Have you ruled out your modem being the problem?

 

[westom]

My E3000 cooks itself in to a vapor lock, the WNDR3700 I bought a little over a year ago is beginning to fail, I've had several Linksys, Netgear, Dlink models and they all seem to average under a year and a half. I've tried updating the stock firmware, replacing that with DDWRT, flashing back to the stock when the same errors occur.

Trying to fix things by just replacing parts is called shotgunning. Always an unreliable means to a solution. Fixing something better starts by first defining the problem. Specifically what failed. A port? A capacitor? Or is the line periodically suffering too much noise?

Most computer and line techs have no idea how electricity works. They only know 'when I connect this to that, then it works'. Should you want the problem solved, first the problem must be defined. Provide details that say exactly what failed (including what all front panel lights say and what happened in the neighborhood in days previous). Or find the few techs who can actually identify a part inside the modem that failed.

One means to identifying reasons for failure is to fix a modem by replacing that one failed part. Which identifies the few who actually know how electricity works.

 

[TonyH]

Replacing a component or part may be uneconomical. Labor/time could cost more than the price of new modem, LOL! Same applies to every consumer product, vehicles, appliances,
TV set, microwave,etc., etc. Present society is throw away based. So much wasteful.
Can you handle SMT component? Without special tool things like that is beyond ordinary Joe's means or ability. Luckily I can. When I retired I hoarded lot of useful tools old but all functional.

 

[westom]

Replacing a component or part may be uneconomical.

You completely missed the point.

 

[stevech]

When I go to the gym, they have an E3000 and it does vapor lock on a regular basis

"Vapor lock" translates to what, in netspeak? Stops accepting associations? Stops passing data to/from the Internet? Until power-cycled?

I have an E1200 that stops transmitting any WiFi signals, including the SSID beacons, every 2 weeks or so, until rebooted. I assume it's a firmware bug such as a memory leak. It's used as an access point, not my main router. Until I get tired of rebooting it. At which time it goes to the eWaste box.

My main router is not a mass-marketed consumer product - as mentioned in the prior post here. For good reason.

 

[jlake]

"Vapor lock" translates to what, in netspeak? Stops accepting associations? Stops passing data to/from the Internet? Until power-cycled?

I have an E1200 that stops transmitting any WiFi signals, including the SSID beacons, every 2 weeks or so, until rebooted. I assume it's a firmware bug such as a memory leak. It's used as an access point, not my main router. Until I get tired of rebooting it. At which time it goes to the eWaste box.

My main router is not a mass-marketed consumer product - as mentioned in the prior post here. For good reason.

"Vapor lock" is the term the op used and I used it to let the op know that he isn't the only one to experience a problem with an E3000. In the case of the gym E3000, it loses Internet. I'm still able to access it's webui. Power cycling it fixes it. But it doesn't have the latest firmware and it's connected to a very old router LAN to WAN which also is not using updated firmware so it could easily be a problem elsewhere..hard to say.

If you want to fix your E1200 then download latest firmware..cascade LAN to wan and put it in bridge mode.

 

[RMerlin]

Most computer and line techs have no idea how electricity works. They only know 'when I connect this to that, then it works'.

OT story:

A few months ago, I was at a customer's to install either new PCs or a new NAS (I forgot on which of these two service calls it happened). The manager had a large copier on her left, her PC in front of her, and a USB printer on her right. The copier was plugged to a weird surge protector (probably provided by the copier's installers).

While working on her stuff, I had to unplug the USB printer (on the right). Which caused the copier on the left to turn itself off. Plug USB back, copier turns back on. You can imagine how much head scratching I did over the next 10 minutes trying to figure out why the hell would the copier on the left turn itself off when I unplug the USB cable from the other printer on the right.

Then, I noticed the ground fault turning itself on on the surge protector when I was unplugging the USB cable, which led me to study the whole wiring more closely.

My conclusion was: the surge protector was probably connected to a power outlet that wasn't grounded. The USB printer was on a separate wall outlet, which did have a ground. So essentially, the copier's surge protector was obtaining its ground from something plugged to that surge protector and to the PC (I think it was a USB disk, can't remember for sure). That disk was getting its ground from the PC. The PC was getting its ground from the USB printer, which was properly grounded. So unplug the USB cable between PC and printer, and everyone on the left side of the chain lost its ground, causing the ground fault led to turn itself on, and the surge protector cut power to the printer

I probably managed to figure it out because I studied electronics, not CS. The other fun part was to explain all of this to the customer

 

[F5ing]

My conclusion was: the surge protector was probably connected to a power outlet that wasn't grounded. The USB printer was on a separate wall outlet, which did have a ground. So essentially, the copier's surge protector was obtaining its ground from something plugged to that surge protector and to the PC (I think it was a USB disk, can't remember for sure). That disk was getting its ground from the PC. The PC was getting its ground from the USB printer, which was properly grounded. So unplug the USB cable between PC and printer, and everyone on the left side of the chain lost its ground, causing the ground fault led to turn itself on, and the surge protector cut power to the printer

Wow! Certainly was a roundabout way of obtaining a ground, that can't really be called a valid ground (for the purpose). But it apparently lit the LEDs to make one think they were good.

BTW, back on topic: a UPS/surge protector is cheap insurance. And as noted by Merlin's post, it's a good idea (mandatory, actually) to ensure the wiring is up to snuff...

 

[westom]

BTW, back on topic: a UPS/surge protector is cheap insurance.

Cheap insurance from what?

 

[stevech]

If you want to fix your E1200 then download latest firmware..cascade LAN to wan and put it in bridge mode.

I have been using the latest firmware. Re bridge mode... assuming that term isn't meant to mean cascaded routers-two subnets. What I'm using the E1200 for is an access point - not a client bridge. (Irrelevant, but the E1200 firmware has no bridge mode). So the WAN port wouldn't be used - as it's an AP, not a router. And I don't want it to NAT again, have to have two subnet numbers, deal with double port forwarding and other router functions that an AP wouldn't do.

I speculated that the hang after two weeks - which reoccurs predictably- was due to a memory leak because it was retrying DHCP on the WAN port. So I changed the WAN port to a static in a different network number. No affect. I then speculated that it was failing its attempts to get time via NTP. I think I disabled that.

I've used other routers as an AP and didn't have this issue.

Well, I'll just try to remember to reboot it every week or so. The root issue is I'm too cheap to pay a premium for a product claiming real AP mode firmware. Been there, done that with use of DD-WRT for AP mode- long ago; don't want to go that road again.

 

[jlake]

I have been using the latest firmware. Re bridge mode... assuming that term isn't meant to mean cascaded routers-two subnets. What I'm using the E1200 for is an access point - not a client bridge. (Irrelevant, but the E1200 firmware has no bridge mode). So the WAN port wouldn't be used - as it's an AP, not a router. And I don't want it to NAT again, have to have two subnet numbers, deal with double port forwarding and other router functions that an AP wouldn't do.

I speculated that the hang after two weeks - which reoccurs predictably- was due to a memory leak because it was retrying DHCP on the WAN port. So I changed the WAN port to a static in a different network number. No affect. I then speculated that it was failing its attempts to get time via NTP. I think I disabled that.

I've used other routers as an AP and didn't have this issue.

Well, I'll just try to remember to reboot it every week or so. The root issue is I'm too cheap to pay a premium for a product claiming real AP mode firmware. Been there, done that with use of DD-WRT for AP mode- long ago; don't want to go that road again.

Which E1200 version do you have? V1? V2? V2.2?

I know version 2 and 2.2 support bridge mode. If you look at the V1 release notes, it says that V1 also supports bridge mode starting with firmware 1.0.02 Build 5. Maybe that's just a mistake in their release notes? Go to "Internet Connection Type" and see if you have bridge mode.

The E2500 supports bridge mode too. Maybe thiggins can confirm which versions of E1200 support bridge mode.

Anyway, here's the instructions for configuring a linksys router for bridge mode. Most of their E series and EA series support bridge mode (but not all).

http://kb.linksys.com/Linksys/GetAr...tting_up_the_Linksys_E4200_in_bridge_mode.xml

******************************************************

Cisco Consumer Products LLC

Product: Linksys E1200, Wireless-N Router
Classification: Firmware Release History
Release Date: Mar 16, 2012

Last Firmware Version: 1.0.03
_____________________________________________________________________

Note: This firmware is only compatible with hardware version 1 (v1), but not with hardware version 2 (v2).


Firmware 1.0.03 (build 4)
- Added control to the browser-based GUI, so that a user can manually enable/disable Wi-Fi Protected Setup.
- Allow value of 255 in the 4th octet of L2TP server IP address.

Firmware 1.0.02 (build 5)
- Added bridge mode support
- Added Arabic, Polish, Russian and Turkish support in the browser-based GUI
- Removed Danish support in the browser-based GUI
- Some of the help contents in the browser-based GUI have been moved from the firmware to Cisco Consumer Products� e-support web site
- Fixed various minor issues

Firmware 1.0.00 (build 11)
- Initial release

***************************************************

 

[sfx2000]

Buy one from a company that sells mostly to small businesses or machine-to-machine telemetry. I use Cradlepoint for that reason. Maybe ZyXel or Engenius are similar. Cradlepoint has a stable firmware based for all products, they build it, rather than buy it from Asia, Inc. on the spot market. These companies have to have stable products as their usage is often in unattended situations such as M2M.

I would add Asus, Buffalo, and Apple to the group of OEM's that do their own firmware and hardware designs.