Problems with 8-port Linksys router

[Chriz]

I have the Linksys 8-port router (BEFSR81) with the latest firmware installed, and it's been working ok for the most part, but i do have a couple problems. I use it with AT&T Broadband (formerly mediaone) and have a Toshiba PCX1100U cable modem. The biggest is with Everquest. Before I got this router, it worked fine. But every hour or so I go "Linkdead" in everquest, where i get totally disconnected from the server. To experiment, I turned the DHCP mode of the router off, and unplugged my cable modem from the WAN port on the router and plugged it into the Uplink port. I did that for two days, and it worked just fine. What could be the problem there?

Also, it may just be me, but my connection seems "slower" when DHCP mode is on and modem is plugged into the WAN port, and this is just with one computer plugged in. Could it really be slower, even if the AT&T cap is 1.5 mbps?

 

[Scarpozzi]

It sounds like you're router isn't handling DHCP the way it should. However, since your router is running DHCP on a restricted OS, it may have some other features installed (possibly pinging the clients) since you probably are limited to how long the leases expire. So if your lease time is set low, it may be pinging your computer and causing the connection to drop while it renews the lease on your IP address. In theory, this shouldn't happen, but this is just a guess as to what might be causing it. If you don't have a lot of clients, you don't really need to even enable DHCP. It's just an extra step when installing new computers on your network to enable static IPs and might save you a lot of trouble in the long run....epecially if you ever decide to run NAT to connect to any computers through your router... You'll always know their IP. Good luck!

 

[Chriz]

Good idea Scar, I should have thought of that. I just applied the settings and everything works....now the test is to see if I don't get disconnected in EQ. For some reason I think this will work Thanks for the tip!

 

[Chriz]

Ok I tried it with EQ and now i seem to have a different problem. Every minute or so the game will just completely freeze up for about 3 seconds and then start again like nothing ever happened. WHen I bypassed the router that problem seemed to vanish. What could be causing this now that I am not using DHCP?

 

[Chriz]

Doh, i was just playing some more, and besides those jerks i get, i just got disconnected/linkdead again. Are there possibly some ports i need forwarded in my router settings or something? I'm not sure what else to do.

 

[Chriz]

Ok i don't get the jerks anymore, but i still get disconnected from EQ after about an hour (packet loss % keeps going up to 93 or 98 then it says i've been disconnected), which was the original problem, even though now I am using static ip's. Anyone else have any ideas? I wouldn't think it would have anything to do with port forwarding, cause if that was the case i probably wouldn't even be able to start playing at all. This is really bugging me.