I previously switched out my Buffalo router for a Linksys WRT54GL, specifically to be able to run DD-WRT. When I first did the swap, I had some horrible problems, but it turned out my cable modem was bad. However, I’d switched back to the Buffalo before I diagnosed the problem, and never got around to swapping out again.
So - just installed a Voicepulse VOIP system, and decided to swap to the WRT54GL and DD-WRT again. Read the forums, got the recommended SP2 version of DD-WRT, install went fine. Love the software and interface.
However - it seems like every day, I get major internet slowdowns I did not see on my Buffalo. Sometimes rebooting helps, but it just seems that the new setup is slower and less consistent for some reason. I set my TX Power down from 70 to 60 (70 comes up as default) and changed the channel to 8 (lots of people around me on 6 and 11) but no help. And I’m pretty ignorant on all the other settings.
What should I be looking for to optimize my performance on this setup? It would be very disappointing to have to go back to the outdated Buffalo, but I’m getting lots of “Daddy! Why is the internet so slow!” from my daughter and “Yep, mine too, been that way all day” from my wife.
Saying “it’s slow sometimes” is way too vague. But try other channels; they overlap so 8 probably has interference from 6. Maybe try channel 1. Also you may have configured QOS improperly on the router, or if you have the VOIP router next to the cable modem, it may not handle QOS properly. You might also try asking on the DDWRT forums.
I use tomato now myself. I don’t use any of the advanced features of DDWRT like VPN termination, hotspots, etc, and tomato’s QOS is infinitely easier to configure and monitor.
Yeah at this point you can’t be sure it’s the router or still something up with your internet connection. Go install something like visualroute http://www.visualroute.com/downloads.html
on a pc that is on 24/7 and hard wired into the router (take wireless out of the picture first so we can narrow this down).
See if there are spikes in packet loss or other internet side/modem/backbone/routing issues when you feel the slow down.
update: it would seem the free version kind of sucks and doesn’t even let you do continuous mode
DD-WRT can be very temperamental about multiple connections. Downgrading TX isn’t going to help, since what you -probably- need is to expand the number of simultaneous connections allowed.
Also, reboot the router as a matter of routine every day.
Well, I don’t really need anything advanced, just something that accurately allows me to monitor who’s connected, their bandwidth and the quality of the wireless connection to each client, VPN passthrough capability (for the times I need to connect to my work system via VPN,) the ability to selectively block machines if needed, and the ability to boost the TX is nice. I have not set up any QOS yet for my new VOIP Voicepulse.
Enter the following values at ‘IP Filter Settings’
Maximum Ports: 4096
TCP Timeout (s): 500
UDP Timeout (s): 90
This sets your maximum connections to 4096 and releases inactive connections more quickly. The reason I set the TCP timeout higher than the UDP is because Instant Messaging clients tend to have long ‘keep-alive’ periods, and if you make the TCP timeout too short, your IM clients will lose connection. But, anyway, this should help prevent bittorrent users from clogging your router.
Tomato’s been stable for me, but its bandwidth monitoring won’t split up the statistics by machine or type of usage though, which it sounds like he wants.
Maybe you can’t monitor it directly (I haven’t checked) but you can configure QOS by IP address, MAC address, etc. So he could guarantee his wife’s machine 50% of total bandwidth no matter what, etc.
I recently dropped my tcp ack frequency to improve latency in online games, which obviously increased my upstream bandwidth load, and it was no big deal to modify QOS in tomato so I could both bittorrent and game simultaneously again.
Hmm. Maybe I’ll try Tomato, just to see if there’s a difference.
BTW - when I read some of the Tomato install instructions for installing over a DD_WRT install, they mention having to Telnet the router to get a password, etc. How do you telnet the router?
Open a command line window
Type: telnet 192.168.1.1
(or whatever the IP address of your router is).
Judging from your current TCP timeout duration, 3600, cutting that to 500s will probably solve your slowdown problem. 3600 seconds is an hour. That’s too long of a time if you have a zillion other people connecting to your network nodes for gaming services, p2p, and the like.
I don’t see where it says that. Asking people to understand telnet is probably a bit much, even for an enthusiast activity like upgrading router firmware.
Really though, assuming that someone in your household is running an peer2peer app, changing those settings should fix your problem. DDWRT is perfectly fine, it’s just klunky in comparison to tomato.
That’s actually a known problem with the official release of SP2. There are more recent SVN releases that do not have the issue. Poke around the DD-WRT forum and you should find links to the recommended stable builds.
Yeah, actually, the build I got was not the latest version, based on some threads in the forum - it was the version recommended by people there as the most stable version.
First gonna see if the changes made above fix the issue. If not, I’ll try Tomato, since I’m not doing anything fancy at all.
Love working in command windows - reminds me of my old DOS days. ;) BUT…
I open the command window, telnet 192.168.1.1 It goes to the router and then asks for a DD-WRT login, then password. I enter the login and password that I normally enter from my browser to get into the DD-WRT menu and control, and it tells me that’s an invalid login. Hmm.
So I got out of the command screen, go back into DD-WRT from my browser, change the login and password from there just to be sure, get out, go back in to the command screen, telnet and get the login request, enter what I just changed it to, and once again am told that is incorrect.
