- Aug 25, 2001
- 56,571
- 10,206
- 126
I have two routers, connected to DSL. My "outer" router is a Westell 327W, which is a combo wireless G router and DSL modem. My "inner" router is a Netgear 834Bv2 refurb N 2.4Ghz router, running DD-WRT. I have an identical router running DD-WRT in another room, both Netgears are running WDS.
My "outer" router is open, no password. My "inner" router is using WPA-PSK with a decent password.
I am using an Emachine E627 laptop with wireless N 2.4Ghz. I can connect to my "inner" router, at 65Mbit/sec, using Win7 HP 64-bit.
Before I left on vaca, this was all running fine. Since I came back, I found that about 5-6 people were using my "outer" router wirelessly. Which is fine with me.
What isn't fine, is that my internet on my laptop is having issues. Pages taking a long time to load, timing out, etc. In Win7,
What's strange is, I cannot even sometimes pull up the "inner" router's own page. This would seem to indicate some sort of wireless interference.
I have a second laptop, a Toshiba C655-S5048, and when the internet was running slowly, I used it to test my "inner" router, and it too was having severe troubles. So that ruled out a problem with my Emachines laptop. So it looked like the trouble was with my "inner" router.
These routers are known to have issues with their power bricks. I unplugged the router's power brick, and the side of it was burning hot. I went into my bedroom and unplugged the WDS router's power brick (identical), and it was only just warm.
This all happened last night. Fast-forward to this morning, and ... everything is working just fine.
Now, my "outer" router is static NAT'ing any unsolicited connections towards my "inner" router.
I've worked out this theory, tell me if you think this is wrong. I think someone is running torrents on my "outer" router (the 327W), and all of the incoming connections are being forwarded to my "inner" router and bogging it down.
But the thing that seems strange is, when the "inner" router was bogging down, I connected to my "outer" router, and the internet was just fine, not slow at all.
And checking the number of active connections on the "inner" router (in DD-WRT), it says that only 46 active IP connections were being used. Which now that I think about it, seems a little high for just my little laptop, but seems low if someone was torrenting, doesn't it? But I don't know if incoming unsolicited connection attemps would be recorded in that, since they aren't valid connections.
So is it torrents (wouldn't they slow down my "outer" router, too?), or is my "inner" router just getting flaky?
Or is it wireless interference on that channel from something else? My "outer" router is on channel 6 (along with a number of other G routers in the neighborhood), and my "inner" router is on channel 1, which used to be basically clear, but it seems like there's at least one default FIOS install that is set to use that channel.
Oh, and a number of times, when attempting to connect to my "inner" router with the Emachines laptop, I would get a 169.x.x.x address - I wasn't able to pull an IP from the router.
One time when it was bogging down badly, but I did get an IP from the router, my "inner" router (DD-WRT) showed 2.x MB of RAM free, out of 16MB. So I don't think it was running out of RAM.
My "outer" router is open, no password. My "inner" router is using WPA-PSK with a decent password.
I am using an Emachine E627 laptop with wireless N 2.4Ghz. I can connect to my "inner" router, at 65Mbit/sec, using Win7 HP 64-bit.
Before I left on vaca, this was all running fine. Since I came back, I found that about 5-6 people were using my "outer" router wirelessly. Which is fine with me.
What isn't fine, is that my internet on my laptop is having issues. Pages taking a long time to load, timing out, etc. In Win7,
What's strange is, I cannot even sometimes pull up the "inner" router's own page. This would seem to indicate some sort of wireless interference.
I have a second laptop, a Toshiba C655-S5048, and when the internet was running slowly, I used it to test my "inner" router, and it too was having severe troubles. So that ruled out a problem with my Emachines laptop. So it looked like the trouble was with my "inner" router.
These routers are known to have issues with their power bricks. I unplugged the router's power brick, and the side of it was burning hot. I went into my bedroom and unplugged the WDS router's power brick (identical), and it was only just warm.
This all happened last night. Fast-forward to this morning, and ... everything is working just fine.
Now, my "outer" router is static NAT'ing any unsolicited connections towards my "inner" router.
I've worked out this theory, tell me if you think this is wrong. I think someone is running torrents on my "outer" router (the 327W), and all of the incoming connections are being forwarded to my "inner" router and bogging it down.
But the thing that seems strange is, when the "inner" router was bogging down, I connected to my "outer" router, and the internet was just fine, not slow at all.
And checking the number of active connections on the "inner" router (in DD-WRT), it says that only 46 active IP connections were being used. Which now that I think about it, seems a little high for just my little laptop, but seems low if someone was torrenting, doesn't it? But I don't know if incoming unsolicited connection attemps would be recorded in that, since they aren't valid connections.
So is it torrents (wouldn't they slow down my "outer" router, too?), or is my "inner" router just getting flaky?
Or is it wireless interference on that channel from something else? My "outer" router is on channel 6 (along with a number of other G routers in the neighborhood), and my "inner" router is on channel 1, which used to be basically clear, but it seems like there's at least one default FIOS install that is set to use that channel.
Oh, and a number of times, when attempting to connect to my "inner" router with the Emachines laptop, I would get a 169.x.x.x address - I wasn't able to pull an IP from the router.
One time when it was bogging down badly, but I did get an IP from the router, my "inner" router (DD-WRT) showed 2.x MB of RAM free, out of 16MB. So I don't think it was running out of RAM.
Last edited:
Facebook
Twitter