Router issues...

[iago]

As I told some of you, I'm away in New York right now. Naturally, since I'm out of town, that = computer problems.

I narrowed it down to my Linksys WRT54g router dropping most packets for non-established connections (but, strangely, working fine for established connections). That means that once I'm SSHed in, everything's fine.

I wish I could reboot my router remotely, but it appears that Linksys WRT54g with stock firmware doesn't let you. I've been looking for a way, but it doesn't look promising.

So, if you manage to see this before I get back on Sunday, congrats!!

[Blaze]

Hurray! 

[Towelie]

Did I win? I had to refresh many times to get this far.

[Chavo]

does your wrt54g have a console interface?
You might be able to find it at Administration->Diagnostics.

If so, the "reboot" command should do the trick.

[Ergot]

Sadness

[rabbit]

1. Go to the Administration tab after logging into the router
2. Go to Config Management
3. Click Backup button and back up the Config.bin file to the default directory or of your choice.
4. Click Browse and choose the same Config.bin file.
5. Click Restore button. The router will restart.

[iago]

does your wrt54g have a console interface?
You might be able to find it at Administration->Diagnostics.

If so, the "reboot" command should do the trick.

Nope, I looked for that.

1. Go to the Administration tab after logging into the router
2. Go to Config Management
3. Click Backup button and back up the Config.bin file to the default directory or of your choice.
4. Click Browse and choose the same Config.bin file.
5. Click Restore button. The router will restart.

Hmm, interesting! I'll take a look at that one.

[Armin]

so what's with all the recent traveling?

[Joe]

Yay for x86 without CSS! I'll see you on Sunday.

[iago]

so what's with all the recent traveling?

Conference, then a course.

[MyndFyre]

I'm getting ready to offer to host it on the same server where jinxbot.net lives.  Geez.

[Chavo]

iago already turned down my offer to have it hosted on my server

[iago]

I'm getting ready to offer to host it on the same server where jinxbot.net lives.  Geez.

I think you missed the part where I'm out of town. It's hard to fix something like a broken router without physical access.

Bad luck happens. You'll get over it!

[Joe]

Ideally, someone could have set up a HTTP server that turns all requests over to your server through a tunnel, so that they're all one actual connection to your server. But oh well.

It seems to be working okay now. Did you fix something?

[iago]

Yeah, I just got home and powercycled my gear (router + switch + modem). As expected, it instantly fixed everything. Woo!

[AntiVirus]

 /cheers

[Joe]

Oh. That's cheating.

[Sidoh]

iago, have you considered putting dd-wrt on your router?  There's a feature that allows you to do scheduled reboots.

[iago]

Yeah, I've considered it. But I don't like running unofficial software like that in a production-type environment. My biggest concern is that dd-wrt has all kinds of vulnerabilities found on a regular basis.

That being said, it might be a good option. Buying a better router might be a better option.

[MyndFyre]

I'm getting ready to offer to host it on the same server where jinxbot.net lives.  Geez.

I think you missed the part where I'm out of town. It's hard to fix something like a broken router without physical access.

Bad luck happens. You'll get over it!

I knew you were out of town.  But since the site always happens to go offline whenever you're out of town, I thought you might be amicable to hosting it somewhere that's not dependent on your hardware.

[iago]

I'm getting ready to offer to host it on the same server where jinxbot.net lives.  Geez.

I think you missed the part where I'm out of town. It's hard to fix something like a broken router without physical access.

Bad luck happens. You'll get over it!

I knew you were out of town.  But since the site always happens to go offline whenever you're out of town, I thought you might be amicable to hosting it somewhere that's not dependent on your hardware.

Well, it's just bad luck. We'll see what happens next time I go away (I'm half considering going to DC in February.. dunno if that'll actually happen ).

[Camel]

My non-54g WRT has reboot.

Then again, it has DD-WRT on it, too.

[Joe]

When you restructure your Virtual Machines, I'd recommend (on no educational basis) using the host operating system for two functions: A router, and a VM host. That way, next time something bad happens, SSH into the host machine, issue a "reboot now", and then cleverly written boot scripts restart all your VMs and whatnot.

Opinion?

[Sidoh]

Yeah, I've considered it. But I don't like running unofficial software like that in a production-type environment. My biggest concern is that dd-wrt has all kinds of vulnerabilities found on a regular basis.

That being said, it might be a good option. Buying a better router might be a better option.

Do something so it doesn't die when you go out of town.  I think the forums are doing poorly enough as it is.

[Armin]

I can't imagine x86 on a server not run by iago.

[iago]

When you restructure your Virtual Machines, I'd recommend (on no educational basis) using the host operating system for two functions: A router, and a VM host. That way, next time something bad happens, SSH into the host machine, issue a "reboot now", and then cleverly written boot scripts restart all your VMs and whatnot.

Opinion?

I used to do that. The problem is, my current connection is PPPoE, and drops pretty regularly. My Linksys router is pretty good at re-establishing the connection quickly, Linux might not be so good. My friend used to use Linux for PPPoE, and he got a lot of nasty crashes.

[Sidoh]

whatever it is, it needs fixing.  FIX IT.

how do I recommend you do that?  it's a simple, three step plam:

1) FIX IT
2) FIX IT
and finally, 3) FIX IT.

[Lead]

whatever it is, it needs fixing.  FIX IT.

how do I recommend you do that?  it's a simple, three step plam:

1) FIX IT
2) FIX IT
and finally, 3) FIX IT.

You forgot 4) ?? and 5) Profit.

[Blaze]

whatever it is, it needs fixing.  FIX IT.

how do I recommend you do that?  it's a simple, three step plam:

1) FIX IT
2) FIX IT
and finally, 3) FIX IT.

I have a simple 1 step plan:

1) Succeed.

If you follow the plan, you're golden.

[Camel]

My Linksys router is pretty good at re-establishing the connection quickly, Linux might not be so good. My friend used to use Linux for PPPoE, and he got a lot of nasty crashes.

WRT-54G is Linux, so that's a pretty bad argument

When I lived in the Fraternity house, I set up a Gentoo box to serve as a gateway/NATing router. Before we spent the money on the dedicated machine, I tried several different flavors of firmware for WRT-54G (we got three of these so we could get WiFi almost everywhere in the house), and none of them could scale to the ~50 computers on the network. They simply didn't have enough ram to persist that many connections.

We also bought two 20-something-port 100MBit/2-port gigabit switches, which we planted in the attic. It took about a month for me and one other person to finish wiring every room (2 singles, 14 doubles, 2 triples). It's been 4 years, and the system only gone down once in that entire time, due to the power going out.

In going with this solution, I realized how crippled these little boxes really are. As switches, they are fine, but the minute you start relying on a limited-RAM machine to perform NAT, you're pretty screwed. Aside from the obvious benefit of not having to reboot the WRTs six times a day, the internet-bound latency dropped significantly, and WiFi connections stopped dropping.

[iago]

My Linksys router is pretty good at re-establishing the connection quickly, Linux might not be so good. My friend used to use Linux for PPPoE, and he got a lot of nasty crashes.

WRT-54G is Linux, so that's a pretty bad argument

When I lived in the Fraternity house, I set up a Gentoo box to serve as a gateway/NATing router. Before we spent the money on the dedicated machine, I tried several different flavors of firmware for WRT-54G (we got three of these so we could get WiFi almost everywhere in the house), and none of them could scale to the ~50 computers on the network. They simply didn't have enough ram to persist that many connections.

We also bought two 20-something-port 100MBit/2-port gigabit switches, which we planted in the attic. It took about a month for me and one other person to finish wiring every room (2 singles, 14 doubles, 2 triples). It's been 4 years, and the system only gone down once in that entire time, due to the power going out.

In going with this solution, I realized how crippled these little boxes really are. As switches, they are fine, but the minute you start relying on a limited-RAM machine to perform NAT, you're pretty screwed. Aside from the obvious benefit of not having to reboot the WRTs six times a day, the internet-bound latency dropped significantly, and WiFi connections stopped dropping.

It's not really an argument so much as a true story.

My friends used to use Gentoo for their PPPoE connection, and it would regularly kernel panic when the PPPoE dropped. This was as recently as maybe 6 months ago. As such, I don't trust Linux to maintain a stable PPPoE connection.

At the moment, I'm using Linux as a gateway/switch. All the router does is a dumb PPPoE connection. Everything else is handled behind it.

[Joe]

[half-sarcastic]And it can't even do that right.[/half-sarcastic]

[Camel]

I don't understand how you can keep saying that, iago. Your WRT-54G has a Linux kernel, and uses almost entirely (excluding the web interface) upstream open-source software, so it's completely absurd to blame Linux' PPPoE support. A better explanation would be that your friend just doesn't know how to use Gentoo, since Linux PPPoE has been stable for almost a decade.

[iago]

You don't understand how I tell a true story that actually happened? It's pretty easy, you start with facts and go from there. That's what I keep saying!

Whether or not WRT54g is running Linux under the hood, it's pretty specialized hardware. Definitely different than what you'd have in a standard desktop/server. That's the best explanation I can think of for the difference, but who knows? Whatever the case, I'm not going to take the effort of setting up PPPoE on a gateway machine when the potential consequences outweigh the benefits.

And for what it's worth, I'd gamble that the people running the box have more Linux experience than anybody here. They definitely knew what they were doing. It's pretty hard to cause kernel panics with stock systems by simply not knowing what you're doing.

[Camel]

Whether or not WRT54g is running Linux under the hood, it's pretty specialized hardware. Definitely different than what you'd have in a standard desktop/server.

What's special about a 125MHz ARM processor connected to a 4-port switch and some LEDs?

Whatever the case, I'm not going to take the effort of setting up PPPoE on a gateway machine when the potential consequences outweigh the benefits.

I'm not suggesting that you should; I just think the arguments you made are unfounded, because they beg the question.

[iago]

Whether or not WRT54g is running Linux under the hood, it's pretty specialized hardware. Definitely different than what you'd have in a standard desktop/server.

What's special about a 125MHz ARM processor connected to a 4-port switch and some LEDs?

The difference is, it's designed for one very special purpose in life: networking. When something is specialized, it typically handles weird cases better.

Whatever the case, I'm not going to take the effort of setting up PPPoE on a gateway machine when the potential consequences outweigh the benefits.

I'm not suggesting that you should; I just think the arguments you made are unfounded, because they beg the question.
[/quote]
What I'm saying isn't even an argument.. it's a true story. That happened. You can't really refute that..

[Joe]

I think we can conclude this now. Camel obviously wants iago to set up a Linux box as a router, and iago obviously isn't going to do it. Case closed.

[Camel]

This is what I was referring to:

My Linksys router is pretty good at re-establishing the connection quickly, Linux might not be so good. My friend used to use Linux for PPPoE, and he got a lot of nasty crashes.

I think we can conclude this now. Camel obviously wants iago to set up a Linux box as a router, and iago obviously isn't going to do it. Case closed.

When did I say iago should do this? I was just pointing out that iago was blaming the wrong thing for his friend's kernel panics.

[iago]

This is what I was referring to:

My Linksys router is pretty good at re-establishing the connection quickly, Linux might not be so good. My friend used to use Linux for PPPoE, and he got a lot of nasty crashes.

And semantics aside, I think it's still valid.

I think we can conclude this now. Camel obviously wants iago to set up a Linux box as a router, and iago obviously isn't going to do it. Case closed.

When did I say iago should do this? I was just pointing out that iago was blaming the wrong thing for his friend's kernel panics.

Don't get trolled.