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Why Do We Have To Restart Routers?
jaypaulw writes "I've owned a WRT54G, some cheap D-Link home Wi-Fi/firewall/routers, and now an Apple Airport Extreme (100/10 ethernet ports). In the context of the discussion about the worst uses of Windows — installation in places where an embedded device is superior — I've gotten to wondering why it's necessary to reboot these devices so frequently, like every few days. It seems like routers, purpose-built with an embedded OS, should be the most stable devices on my network."
Fast, Stable, Cheap - pick two.
Most routers are cheap. (Apple's is overpriced-cheap; the point stands.) A bunch of them are free after rebates. Considering that, it's a wonder they keep running for more than 5 minutes. They come off the same assembly lines as those Norcent (who?) $15 DVD players.
You can buy reliable routers of course, from the C company, or the N company, or the J company, or a couple others. That's what corporations buy. What I wonder, though, is whether there's a middle ground: a "pro-sumer" router. Maybe somebody has got some suggestions.
If a client is able to cause a router to crash then there is something wrong with the router design.
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
...the expectations of the user. Newsflash: when you buy cheap crap it is going to perform like cheap crap.
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
That's what I was thinking. I have a linksys wrt-54g or whatever they are running ddwrt and I've probably has to reboot a handful of times in all the years I've had it.
If you have frequent power interruptions, aren't they rebooting your router frequently?
Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
crappy firmware. I flashed my WRT54G V4 with Tomato and haven't looked back. Also haven't had to reboot it in the past year or so that I've been using it, other than the occasional update. Tomato's developer obviously knows what he's doing: compared to the stock Linksys firmware he's lightyears ahead. And he's just one guy, you'd think a company with the resources of Linksys could do an even better job.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Cheap "embedded" devices like routers and NAS-es routinely have extremely bad hardware. The competition apparently is so fierce that cutting corners of everything, from basic motherboard-like functionality to network and disk controllers is ubiquitous.
I'm occasionally doing hardware reviews for a local IT magazine and it's unbelievable what you can actually buy today as a bona-fide good equipment even from "brand name" companies. CPUs are usually ARM or AMD GEODE (You think VIA is slow? Think again. - Not to say there isn't a place for slow CPUs, only that this isn't it.), network controllers are cheap Realtek's and I don't know what they use for disk controllers (probably parts of the CPUs "companion" chipset) but it sucks.
I've seen "gigabit" network controllers on NASes that actually negotiate gigabit speed, although they are connected to buses and CPUs that break a sweat even at 100Mbit/s speeds. NASes that accept 4 drives cannot service reads on even one drive at more than 15 MB/s - introducing RAID (especially RAID 5) into this setup slows things to a crawl.
Practically all of these devices use Linux, because it's free (as in beer). They usually (I'd say 90%) don't acknowledge or obey the GPL.
It's a sort-of reverse "best scenario" for Open systems (and Open source). The manufacturers have a choice between something like this:
The first choice is represented by "truly" embedded devices like ordinary small, unmanaged Ethernet switches (with which I have suprisingly good experience), but apparently it's too expensive to scale it to "smart" devices that have to support many features so everyone opts for the second one. You can (and this is verified!) build yourself a small managed router or a NAS device like the ones sold at every el-cheapo computer shop with the same cheap generic components, and the resulting device will be just as sucky.
Creating a router or a NAS just like the above but with "proper" hardware (a Duron 800 MHz based system will be excellent) won't even cost you significantly more, but will deliver orders of magnitude better performance.
-- Sig down
I've noticed that ALL home routers at some point will require a power cycle, and not because they're bad, but because they all seem to occasionally lose their ability to provide DNS resolution. This isn't a problem on a LAN (like mine, obviously) which has a dedicated nameserver on the inside of the LAN, but for people who (like I once did) use their router as a nameserver.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
Why DO you have to reboot your routers? Mine, including a WR54GT almost never require rebooting. Occasionally, after a power outage, it's necessary, but not very often. Maybe once or twice a year, and I live in Panama, where power interruptions come fairly frequently.
WTF? How did this end up +5 Informative?
The power interruptions are obviously regularly rebooting his equipment. Is it any wonder he doesn't need to reboot it himself?
Did it ever occur to you that you never had a problem *because* of the power failures doing the rebooting for you?
DD-WRT on my WRT54GL, I've never had to reboot it for those issues. I even have a couple separate VLAN's set up, two DHCP pools on separate interfaces, etc. I've had uptimes of over 80 days before I tweaked something else on it that required me to reboot it.
It's not the hardware... it's the generic crap software that they run on.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
http://www.southparkzone.com/episodes/1206/Over-Logging.html
I fear the Y2038 bug