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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."
It's cheap, fast development... Not bothering to pay attention to correctness, not watching for memory leaks, etc., etc.
It shouldn't be that way, of course. I got an old K6-2 system, underclocked it to 100MHz, removed CPU fan and replaced the PSU fan with a very slow and quiet model to make a nearly-silent 8watt system. Then installed OpenBSD on a 32MB CF card (stripped of unnecessary binaries for size, but otherwise completely normal), and have been using that for years. It will run indefinitely, without a reboot. My record for uptime so far is 5 months, and it's only that short because of power outages, and I don't feel the need for a UPS for my router...
There's nothing about being "an embedded OS" that should make it any more or less stable.
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I had a WRT54GX for years that never needed a reset, until I started using BitTorrent. Then its 4KB (?) connections table would fill up and the device would hang. Had to build an OpenBSD firewall to handle the many active and inactive connections you get with BT.
That sounds like an excellent candidate. These cheap home routers have very small routing tables (probably less than 512 entries for the WRT54G). If they're not ejecting old entries because of these extremely long timeouts and the table fills up, you're not going to be able to connect to anything new.
mod parent up, as I came here to say that.
Also, the Linksys WRT54G up to version 4 was a fine router, plenty of memory, ran Linux, was very stable. Then Linksys decided that quality wasn't nearly as important as driving me batshit insane, and we started getting tons of complaints about users needing to reboot Linksys routers, which came _highly_ recommended from the geek squad over at worst buy.
The modern WRT54G, and anything past version 4, that doesn't have an 'L' in the name is an utter piece of crap, firmware revisions to the VXworks OS they now run have helped, but they are still lockup city.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
I have to agree on the first point about power. i have experienced that power has a big impact on stability, especially on linksys. I have had several linksys devices (WRT54G, WAP54G, WRT150N) and they all got flaky when too many devices were powered from the same outlet (I have a multiple monitor setup with a KVM and multiple computers). Moving these routers to another outlet in all cases helped, but it unfortunately was not convenient. I didn't try a UPS, but that seems logical. I have found that my Airport Extreme is less sensitive to the power on the same outlet. So I repurposed the Linksys devices, and keep the Airport near my desk, but lesson learned.
Also, the Linksys WRT54G up to version 4 was a fine router, plenty of memory, ran Linux, was very stable.
Yeah, I have a 1.1, which I didn't even know until right now (checked the sticker), and I don't think I've rebooted that thing once in the entire time I've owned it. It's been running continuously right now for at least six months 24/7, and before that had a stint of probably 2 years uninterrupted. (I was forced to use Verizon's POS FiOS router for a little while.)
I was about to leave a comment wondering what the hell the submitter was talking about, because to me the WRT54G is probably the most stable router that exists. It really couldn't *be* anymore stable. But I didn't realize there were such problems with version 4 and above.
All the Linux-based ones (decidedly few, admittedly) I have seen use the same DNS proxy (dnsmasq). I guess it's just not perfectly stable but I haven't seen a reboot anymore than once every few months.
I gave up on mine and turned it into a dumb PPPoE bridge. An OpenBSD box at the border handles the dirty guff of PPP sessions and NAT. Now my connection is perfectly stable and the modem never needs to be rebooted. To top it all off I trust the BSD box and the firewall I created on it more than I trust the router to do it properly.
I drink to make other people interesting!
Yes and no. Yes, a power supply the size of 2 US quarters can (and does) generate stable 5VDC@3A forever provided you never exceed specs (lightning, bath tubs, overheating, etc.) However, these things cost more than the pennies cheap hardware makers are willing to put into the process. They go as cheap as possible... huge coil of chinese wire (read: transformer), a diode, capacitor, and regulator (ala 7805) (if it's a "good" one.) [Note: most cheap hardware has the regulator in the unit, not the wall-wart.] [Note 2: USR/3com is even cheaper... the wall-wart is 100% transformer. It turns 120AC into 20AC.]
Funny, I think everyone here has had to reboot their router to solve problems in the past. But, in typical slashdot fashion, 99.9 percent of the posts are people telling the author of the question that he is stupid, lacks intellectual ability, must be a high school drop out, or has some bastardized sexual persuasion that prevents his router from working.
As you say, it could be an unrelated issue that resetting the state machine fixes. In this case though I guess I superior device could do this on its own.
Is that OpenBSD on a 12W device that sits silently on a shelf?
Personally I prefer to use a decent modem. I have a SpeedTouch DSL modem that seems to be more functional than most consumer routers, as well as being one of the more stable modems I've used on a marginal line. I connect my wireless devices to my network just on the switch side (use them as wireless access points and not routers). Very stable set up.