Linksys WRT54GL drops modem connection every week or so

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hitbyambulance
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Linksys WRT54GL drops modem connection every week or so

Post by hitbyambulance »

first off, this router is nine years old and really should be replaced. i'm keeping an eye out on the deal sites now.

i noticed back in February that I would lose internet connection with this router and that after rebooting, it would work for a few days, then it would drop connection again. it got to the point where rebooting stopped working entirely. i was running a pretty old open sourceTomato fw on this device, so i did a factory reset, then flashed the default Linksys fw on (latest available), then flashed the latest available open source DD-WRT fw. same problem, and the device system logging doesn't capture anything that goes wrong when this happens. rebooting the router always fixes the issue for another few days.

why do routers do this, and what goes wrong - i'm assuming something hardware related, but what component goes bad?
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Re: Linksys WRT54GL drops modem connection every week or so

Post by Isgrimnur »

Routers are the printers of the Internet.
It's almost as if people are the problem.
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Re: Linksys WRT54GL drops modem connection every week or so

Post by Kraken »

I am pretty sure they are magic. Science often seems powerless against them, anyway.
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Re: Linksys WRT54GL drops modem connection every week or so

Post by Z-Corn »

Chances are you have more wifi devices on your network than you did 9 years ago. Those older routers just weren't tuned for that kind of traffic.
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Re: Linksys WRT54GL drops modem connection every week or so

Post by hitbyambulance »

Z-Corn wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 9:08 am Chances are you have more wifi devices on your network than you did 9 years ago. Those older routers just weren't tuned for that kind of traffic.
good troubleshooting point, but i actually have about the same number of active wifi devices on the network than i did back then. i don't use a 'smart TV' or much of anything in that way. main PC and the Raspi 3 server are hard wired to the network and many of the wifi-connected ones are rarely powered up, much less used. there are only two devices that are continually pinging the wireless - my current iPhone 5s (when i'm home) and a Blackberry Z10 (used only for media playback).
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Re: Linksys WRT54GL drops modem connection every week or so

Post by Daehawk »

Ive heard this a lot. Ive also heard a lot of new ones do it from the start. Some people seem to feel restarting the router every week is normal..

I had a Linksys WRT54GL...least I think thats the right modem.....from about (Im guessing wildly here) 2004 - 2014 or so. It never ever needed rebooting. I used tomato or some other 3rd party firmware on it. When they upped my cable speed it would not keep up. I tried the stock software even. I was so scared of all the horror stories I read all over about needing to restart routers all the time since I never had to. I remember asking about them on here I think.

Anyways I went with a ASUS diamond model when I did upgrade. It has been perfect itself. No reboots required unless Im troubleshooting some modem or pc problem Ill sometimes just power cycle it while Im at it. But its ran for well over a year before I did that and I didn't have to. Ive had it years now and still doing great.

So if you upgrade read the reviews from owners. It helped me.
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Re: Linksys WRT54GL drops modem connection every week or so

Post by LawBeefaroni »

It may be your ISP/modem. Do you have a permanent static IP from your ISP?
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Re: Linksys WRT54GL drops modem connection every week or so

Post by hitbyambulance »

LawBeefaroni wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 3:46 pm It may be your ISP/modem. Do you have a permanent static IP from your ISP?
nope, dynamic

i have two other oooold routers bound for eRecycling i could theoretically try, but the firmware on those are years out of date and i am not sure there are updates available (and they don't support alt. fw)
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Re: Linksys WRT54GL drops modem connection every week or so

Post by johnmina »

My modem connection was also getting drop after some time for the same model then I replaced it with a new one and I think it is the best solution for this problem
Last edited by LawBeefaroni on Fri Aug 30, 2019 2:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Removing spammy sig (lte routers)
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Re: Linksys WRT54GL drops modem connection every week or so

Post by LawBeefaroni »

hitbyambulance wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 4:31 pm
LawBeefaroni wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 3:46 pm It may be your ISP/modem. Do you have a permanent static IP from your ISP?
nope, dynamic

i have two other oooold routers bound for eRecycling i could theoretically try, but the firmware on those are years out of date and i am not sure there are updates available (and they don't support alt. fw)
Missed it before. If it's dynamic it may be a problem with the modem or your router handles the IP updates. If you're comfortable messing with software settings you might want to look at the DCHP details.



Also, pretty sure the post above is spam.
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Re: Linksys WRT54GL drops modem connection every week or so

Post by Cylus Maxii »

That's a pretty old 802.11 b/g router. It operates at 2.4GHz and may have interference from other competing devices using those bands, especially if they are higher power. You might want to look up 2.4 GHz interference and take a look at what you're dealing with. You might be having issues due to other nearby network or Bluetooth devices, wireless keyboards or monitors, or even non-computer stuff like game controllers or wireless phones.
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Re: Linksys WRT54GL drops modem connection every week or so

Post by hitbyambulance »

Cylus Maxii wrote: Fri Aug 30, 2019 3:59 pm That's a pretty old 802.11 b/g router. It operates at 2.4GHz and may have interference from other competing devices using those bands, especially if they are higher power. You might want to look up 2.4 GHz interference and take a look at what you're dealing with.
thanks, tho i work for a major short-range radio company whose technology operates on 2.5GHz and begins with the letter "B", so i would hope i'm already schooled on this.
You might be having issues due to other nearby network or Bluetooth devices, wireless keyboards or monitors, or even non-computer stuff like game controllers or wireless phones.
not sure what those would be - i have almost no new wireless devices in the house since i got this router a decade ago. the cordless phones are the same, the microwave's the same, _all_ my peripherals and speakers and consoles and controllers, etc are on wired connections.
LawBeefaroni wrote: Fri Aug 30, 2019 2:26 pm
Missed it before. If it's dynamic it may be a problem with the modem or your router handles the IP updates. If you're comfortable messing with software settings you might want to look at the DCHP details.
good idea, but why would the problem persist on the router through two different firmware (Tomato and DD-WRT) with default DHCP configurations? i received a new modem last year, but the problem didn't manifest until four months after installing it. so maybe i'll throw one of the other routers on the network just to verify.

also, i have VoIP service through Comcast. when this problem occurs, the VoIP landline still works fine - it's just that the router needs to be rebooted for the data reconnection.
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Re: Linksys WRT54GL drops modem connection every week or so

Post by hitbyambulance »

old behavior: previously, when the net connection dropped, i could go to the admin page of the router and click the 'reboot' button, wait 45 seconds and it would be working again.

new behavior: attempting to access the router via the web browser no longer works - it never loads. i now need to unplug the router, wait 10 seconds and then plug it in, then wait about 45 seconds for the net connection to resume (and then i can access the router page just fine).

i hooked up a D-Link DIR-655 to see if this has any drop outs over the next week.
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Re: Linksys WRT54GL drops modem connection every week or so

Post by Zitterbacke »

Can you telnet into it, when it won't react to the WebUI? Not that this would be a solution, but at least could save you the hard powercycle, AKA getting up.
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Re: Linksys WRT54GL drops modem connection every week or so

Post by hitbyambulance »

Zitterbacke wrote: Sat Aug 31, 2019 10:41 am Can you telnet into it, when it won't react to the WebUI? Not that this would be a solution, but at least could save you the hard powercycle, AKA getting up.
thought about it, but i disabled telnet access due to wanting to close off all security holes.
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Re: Linksys WRT54GL drops modem connection every week or so

Post by hitbyambulance »

the old D-Link i hooked up to the modem last week has not dropped connection at all, so... the Linksys is somehow broken on a hardware level. looking for a new router now.
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Re: Linksys WRT54GL drops modem connection every week or so

Post by hitbyambulance »

purchased a refurbished TP-Link Archer A7 AC1750, will flash with DD-WRT when it gets here. https://slickdeals.net/f/13435366-tp-li ... e-shipping
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