Anyone played around with the MTU settings in Linksys routers? I just changed two customers having lockup problems to MTU=1472 to see if it helps, but I suspect it’s just Linksys’s poor excuse for a router.
How can such a big company known for building such great equipment take something that worked so well and make it so bad? I have old Linksys routers out there that run and run and run, never a reboot, never a problem.
In the last couple of months I have stopped recommending low end routers and am recommending Linksys RV series or better. I never ever hear from those customers due to router issues. Customers wanting to buy a lower cost router are on their own.
Anyone else have any comments?
We use the WRT54-GL and put OpenWRT on it. It’s amazing what an $80 box can do with the right firmware. We have one location where we needed a router to handle 3 networks and a WAN connection. Router that had been there for 2 years died in a generator induced electricity fit. It had to be running again same day and we had nothing standard on hand, so I took a GL, put OpenWRT on it, and broke down the VLAN for the LAN side into separate virtual networks, assigned each an IP net, and had the network up and running again in about 3 hours from the point of failure with full routing and all. But then, that requires a fair amount of Linux knowledge.
The other really good option that puts a happy GUI face on a solid Linux load is the DD-WRT project. Just check out the feature list.
Either of these replacement firmware packages takes a flaky Linksys wireless router from the factory and makes it a really powerful, reliable, single board PC.
The problem with the new Linksys gear is it is no longer Linux based. The older model WRT54G Linksys routers were all Linux based. As soon as they made the change it was all over the forums everywhere I read about what a crappy product it now was.
Hence why they made the WRT54GL. L being the key letter for Linux
Yeah, the only router we sell direct to customers for our Canopy network is the LinkSys WRT54GL. I think we buy them for around $60 and sell them for around $90 plus tax.
I’m glad to hear it’s popular with other providers.
Gives me a warm fuzzy validation feeling…
Same here. WRT54GL is all we sell, buy them for about 60 bucks and sell them for 85. We leave the stock firmware on them, but they run well.
We also sell only wrt54gl, preloaded with openwrt. We charge for instalation 50€, and if the costumer wants to buy router total price for SM+WRT54GL+Instalation is 100€. The SM stays in property of the company.
First, I don’t think the MTU would cause a link to fail. Typically if the router’s MTU is set to high, the receiving hop will break the packet up into 2 smaller packets. The disadvantage being performance, not stability.
So where is the cheapest place to get these wrt54gl’s at?
I have yet to have any luck with any of the newer linksys routers. Yes you can take all that time to put the opensource software on them and then have the management headaches.
The simpler solution is to sell the Belkin F5D7231-4. It is B/G wireless. It has an access point only mode for when you keep the NAT in the SM. It has a LIFETIME warranty. Yes true lifetime. I send in an old Belkin Wireless B router (5 years old) and they sent me back one of the F5D7231-4 as the replacement. It is also just about the most reliable I have ever found.
We had lots of problems with the WRT54G Version 5 routers. When we would check the status page of the router the IP address would show as 0.0.0.0 eventhough the router was configured with a static IP address. After many technical support contacts, I eventually received an email from them stating that, “Although the router is set to work over broadband connection, it is not designed to handle wireless ISPs. I suggest that you upgrade the firmware of the device and change its MTU settings to properly work with your connection”.
They also sent the following link for determining the correct MTU size.
Title: Determining the Proper MTU size
[/url] http://linksys.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/lin … 1084210366
I did the ping tests while our system was configured for software scheduling and ended up setting the MTU to 1302. It did seem to help.
We use only WRT54GL’s here as well, the WRT54G v5 or later just doesn’t work well. For higher end business customers we’ll use a Linksys RV042.