Commercial-grade ADSL router

[The Green Bean]

I have tried many different routers and each has it's own problems. I'm currently using a Dlink. After a few hours, client computers can not connect to the internet even the the router's lights show it as working. The router's page doesn't even load although I can ping it. I have the router connected to Linksys WRT54G which I can access. Before this, I had a Chinese Xytel which kept losing sync.

It's for use at home, but there are about 10 PCs connected at once and this internet dying really pisses everyone off. If it was the ISP, I would be able to access the router's page right?

Any suggestions? Budget ~$150 but I don't want to waste money. Will it really help?

 

[notposting]

Do you have any spare computer parts? Build a pfsense machine and should make the sun shine brighter, your car go faster, and your internet connection stay up.

 

[The Green Bean]

Do you have any spare computer parts? Build a pfsense machine and should make the sun shine brighter, your car go faster, and your internet connection stay up.

What do I use for the ADSL "in" port? I do have an oldish unused computer which I can perhaps use....

 

[VirtualLarry]

Torrents?

 

[drebo]

I've used a Cisco 1721 with a WIC-1ADSL many times and never had a problem with them.

Bit harder to set up, but they're rock solid.

 

[JackMDS]

I doubt that any sensible thing will help.

Get a second line, second account, second Router, and split the "warriors/pirates" into two groups. :hmm:

 

[The Green Bean]

I doubt that any sensible thing will help.

Get a second line, second account, second Router, and split the "warriors/pirates" into two groups. :hmm:

Are you sure it's torrents? I had a problem with torrents before and we did split connections (before it was 15PCs). But, when I monitor the WRT54G which manages the DHCP, there is nothing out of the ordinary for the bandwidth. I'm thinking of getting a new ISP. I got upgraded to 5mbps from 2mpbs a couple of years ago but the upload is a sucky 385. Maybe that's part of the problem?

 

[JackMDS]

It is not an ISP per-se problem.

If you have only 5 users per Router doing the "Junk" that they are doing the Routers might hold.

If few users are Normals you can diapers it like 2 "Normals" and 3 "Farengies" per Router.

 

[The Green Bean]

It is not an ISP per-se problem.

If you have only 5 users per Router doing the "Junk" that they are doing the Routers might hold.

If few users are Normals you can diapers it like 2 "Normals" and 3 "Farengies" per Router.

Can't I just get a better router?

"Farengies" - Isn't that an Urdu word?

 

[JackMDS]

Can't I just get a better router?

"Farengies" - Isn't that an Urdu word?

Sorry I meant Ferengies.

http://www.oweh.net/gast/grodenchik01.html

 

[Texashiker]

Any suggestions? Budget ~$150 but I don't want to waste money. Will it really help?

Linksys makes several small business class router / firewalls - the RV042, RV082, and RV016.

I'am running about 20 workstations behind an RV042, and have not had any problems in the past 2 years. Seems the current price of the 042 is about $150.

 

[JackMDS]

Linksys makes several small business class router / firewalls - the RV042, RV082, and RV016.

I'am running about 20 workstations behind an RV042, and have not had any problems in the past 2 years. Seems the current price of the 042 is about $150.

Might be or might not.

The main advantage of the RV line is the embedded VPN End Point, and Dual WAN.

20 work station in a normal office might task a connection much less than smaller number of Heavy p2p down-loaders.

 

[Texashiker]

Might be or might not.

The main advantage of the RV line is the embedded VPN End Point, and Dual WAN.

It would help if we knew the "exact" model of the WRT54G router. It looks like they range anywhere from 8 - 32 megs of system memory.

As for load on the RV042, our Active Directory server is plugged directly into one of the lan ports of the RV042 and and we have roaming profiles on the network.

Plus, when I backup our active directory server to a network storage device, there might be sent 25 or 30 gigs of data going through that RV042, and we experience no slowdowns.

 

[JackMDS]

Plus, when I backup our active directory server to a network storage device, there might be sent 25 or 30 gigs of data going through that RV042, and we experience no slowdowns.

Going through the WAN port, or the switch only?

 

[Texashiker]

Going through the WAN port, or the switch only?

Switch only - all of our important stuff is behind the firewall.

We have a T1 coming into a Cisco 2600 router - Linksys RV042 - Cisco 2950 Switch

Active directory server, fax server, attached storage and switch are plugged into the lan ports of the RV042.

 

[JackMDS]

It is Not the switch part that takes the Routers down.

It is the Routing circuits that are mitigating the NAT between the WAN (Internet) part and the switch.

As far as I know the RV line is an Entry Level Routers with Dual WAN and VPN Endpoint.

From that perspective they might not help users like "The Green Bean" and his "Ferengies".

 

[Texashiker]

From that perspective they might not help users like "The Green Bean" and his "Ferengies".

Maybe something from the RV series will help, maybe it wont. He asked about a commercial grade router that cost around $150 - I have been using the RV042 here at the office for several years and it fit his budget, so that is what I suggested.

Our remote offices use a Watchguard Firebox X10 on DSL connections. But the Firebox license restrictions are kinda prohibitive. If you have more then 10 workstations attached, you need to purchase extra licenses. Since we only have 3 - 4 workstations at the remote offices, I did not think the licenses where going to be an issue. If any of the Fireboxes go out, their going to be replaced with another RV042, or maybe a Netgear small business solution.

A $150 budget is not much for a business grade router / firewall.

 

[Modelworks]

Any suggestions? Budget ~$150 but I don't want to waste money. Will it really help?

I know the problem well. I had a dlink router that could not handle a lot of connections. It would hang, then reset itself.

I replaced it with a netgear DGND3300 . I push this router hard and never once has it dropped the connection. I never have to reset it or had the connection drop. I don't know about the wireless performance of it because my network is all wired. The only downside to it is the USB port isn't good for storage devices. It really is too slow for that, averages about 5MB/sec. But as a modem/router it works great.


Highly recommend it and you can get it for under $100 .

http://www.netgear.com/service-provider/products/routers-and-gateways/dsl-gateways/DGND3300.aspx

 

[masteryoda34]

Nobody's mentioned dd-wrt. Couldn't that possibly help? I realize dd-wrt won't suddenly make the router capable of handling a zillion tcp connections from the torrents, but I imagine it might improve its capability. And isn't the WRT54G like the first and best supported unit for dd-wrt.

 

[Emulex]

edimaxusa
xincom
etc

they are nice dual-wan routers. separate the modem (since it could fail), separate the switching. you can rock dual static wan and it has optimized failover modes. FAR better than the linksys/cisco junk. Actually far better than the cisco static OER in the ISR routers.

What i'm going to do is just build a pair for *bsd routers since they support the same thing and run them in vmware on two servers with carp - free and very powerful.

the edimaxusa/xincom can use PING & http at the same time to detect an outage.

Case scenario:

Primary t-1 (ssl,smtp locked) 13 static
Backup comcast 42 down 5 up business 5 static (primary ftp,http)

Primary t-1 has outage between business partner in texas at a peering partner that is not our isp nor the business partner - 20% packet loss during busy hours causes nightmares for ssl.

Router detects (or manual override optionally) and fails services to comcast which has no problems using a separate route. I'm on vacation, everyone rocks out.

cisco OER uses ICMP which is very bad method since most devices deprioritize (drop/lag) these packets,some IPS systems will block you. However and https get / to the business partner or a CDN will yield a solid method of determining uptime.

i paid $150 for the router like 5 years ago. it's starting to feel the pain and i'm suspecting when i bump the T-1's to 4.5meg and the comcast to 100meg it will be insufficient. But by then i'll route using a VM esxi on two servers.

The RV series are junk imo. i sell them and i will not recommend them anymore.

plus with *bsd you can run a ton of other activities on them as well.

spamass/clamav/qmail/webmail averages about 50-100mhz each mail server which is insanely low given the amount of traffic they are doing (X5670 is iirc 2.93mhz * 4) - ultra efficient.

Probably could run an IPS/PROXY/Honeypot on the same *Bsd box without loading it up much.

 

[The Green Bean]

It would help if we knew the "exact" model of the WRT54G router. It looks like they range anywhere from 8 - 32 megs of system memory.

As for load on the RV042, our Active Directory server is plugged directly into one of the lan ports of the RV042 and and we have roaming profiles on the network.

Plus, when I backup our active directory server to a network storage device, there might be sent 25 or 30 gigs of data going through that RV042, and we experience no slowdowns.

I'm using two routers. The Dlink is only being used as a a modem because for some weird reason I can't set up DHCP DNS. That modem is connected to a WRT54G (32MB) running DD-WRT on the WLAN port (running DHCP). I don't think there is a problem with the DD-WRT; but it is the Dlink that hangs. The WRT54G is not an ADSL modem so I need something to connect it to.

This problem occurs ranging from every 2 days to every other hour and I have a feeling this is proportional to the number of users connected and the data being transfered.

I can't seem to isolate the problem though. Could it also be my bad quality telephone line? It's still a regular copper line and I opted not to upgrade to the new fibre optic... My connection to the exchange sometimes goes down to 4896 even though I usually get 5120.

It's more pissing off when I get disconnected in the middle of a SC2 game or when I can't check my email in the morning. We decided to install the router someplace where everybody could access it in case there was a problem; this turned out to be my grandmother's lounge

Edit: My router hanged again. I wasn't even able to ping it until I manually reset it.

Edit2: I found a spare router (Aztech) which I'm trying out. For now, I'm letting it act as the modem/DHCP/NAT. I hope this makes a difference.