I am the Crown Prince of Routers

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Wed Mar 18, 2015 10:06 pm

I got rid of the DIR-655. More like DURRR-55 in a 75!

It really was a shitty router.

I did nothing but switch to this one:

ASUS RT-N66U Dual-Band Wireless-N900 Gigabit Router

and now I am getting speeds of 7MB/sec down stairs. In the dungeon. I haven't seen speeds of 7MB/sec consistently in 10 years. God. This is amazing. I downloaded so many Steam games tonight that my new favorite game on Steam is called "Watch the download speeds." IGN gives it a 7.9/10.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 6:56 am

I am the CLOWN Prince of routers.

Woke up. Turned on laptop. Tried to use the internet. After a minute or two, it stopped working. Had to reboot the router. Now everything is fine.

Fuck my life. What the fuck could be causing this?

AArdvark · Post by **AArdvark** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 2:48 pm

Are you living in the new place yet? I understand that sometimes ghosts can mess with teh wi-fi.

THE
TRAVEL CHANNEL
AARDVARK

RealNC · Post by **RealNC** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 3:21 pm

Move to China. They've got gigabit Internet there like it's rice corns.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 6:27 pm

This is the old place, Vark. The new place isn't a done deal yet - close (if it happens) got moved back a week.

Move to China. I'll do that. I guess WiFi is helped by the fact that it can ride solid matter to everyone's computers due to the air being so bad it's no longer a gas.

OK, I guess it's me or my machines since the same shit happens on two routers. Basically:

1) Everyone is reset and fine.
2) We go to work. Devices leave the house or go to sleep.
3) Come back in an hour. BACK. GET IT? Sorry. We come back home at the end of the day and now nothing can connect to the router that was previously connected.

I was reserving IP addresses for devices. I just killed off every reservation to see if it makes a difference. I really, really fucking hope the router or devices aren't going to "sleep." What it SEEMS like is that devices were connecting on their reserved IP and then going to sleep. When they wake up, it's like they are trying to get an IP address already reserved. The router doesn't understand that it's the same device requesting its own IP. That is what it seems like.

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Fri Mar 20, 2015 6:06 pm

I'm not sure how much of this you are aware of so forgive me if I go over stuff you already know.

When a device first needs to obtain an IP address it broadcasts a DHCP request to any srver, and some DHCP server that sees it assigns the device the IP address to the device's MAC address, along with other information such as the network mask and the gateway address, and, most importantly, a time limit it is promised to be granted the assignment for, which is called a "lease." Unless you set it differently the lease is usually one week.

The device will, when 1/2 of the lease time has expired, issue a request to renew its lease. If it does not get a response it will try again at 1/2 the remaining time, and keep repeating a request for a new lease at each 1/2 of the remaining lease time until it gets one or the lease expires. So, on a one week lease, it will try to renew at 3 1/2 days, then if that fails at about 30 hours, then 15 hours, and so on.

Now, if you put the mac address of a device along with the IP address in the router's permanent assignment table, the router's DHCP server simply never changes the IP address and gives that MAC address the same IP address every time it requests an assignment even if there were lower numbers available. It also never gives any other MAC address that IP.

So the point being is that a DHCP server such as your typical router / wireless router should accept DHCP lease requests all the time and it shouldn't matter whether a device already has an IP address, the device is going to ask to renew its lease from time to time. And it's possible if the device has cleared itself (like IPCONFIG /RELEASE forllowed by IPCONFIG /RENEW) that it can request a lease even if it still has time remaining on an existing lease.

As for router response problems, I have found lately that it makes sense to reboot the router on a regular basis - every few days - because sometimes the networking stops working and servers on my network suddenly vanish even when they were working a couple minutes earlier.

Tsummary · Post by **Tsummary** » Fri Mar 20, 2015 6:29 pm

Tdarcos wrote:I'm not sure how much of this you are aware of so forgive me if I go over stuff you already know.

When a device first needs to obtain an IP address it broadcasts a DHCP request to any srver, and some DHCP server that sees it assigns the device the IP address to the device's MAC address, along with other information such as the network mask and the gateway address, and, most importantly, a time limit it is promised to be granted the assignment for, which is called a "lease." Unless you set it differently the lease is usually one week.

The device will, when 1/2 of the lease time has expired, issue a request to renew its lease. If it does not get a response it will try again at 1/2 the remaining time, and keep repeating a request for a new lease at each 1/2 of the remaining lease time until it gets one or the lease expires. So, on a one week lease, it will try to renew at 3 1/2 days, then if that fails at about 30 hours, then 15 hours, and so on.

Now, if you put the mac address of a device along with the IP address in the router's permanent assignment table, the router's DHCP server simply never changes the IP address and gives that MAC address the same IP address every time it requests an assignment even if there were lower numbers available. It also never gives any other MAC address that IP.

So the point being is that a DHCP server such as your typical router / wireless router should accept DHCP lease requests all the time and it shouldn't matter whether a device already has an IP address, the device is going to ask to renew its lease from time to time. And it's possible if the device has cleared itself (like IPCONFIG /RELEASE forllowed by IPCONFIG /RENEW) that it can request a lease even if it still has time remaining on an existing lease.

As for router response problems, I have found lately that it makes sense to reboot the router on a regular basis - every few days - because sometimes the networking stops working and servers on my network suddenly vanish even when they were working a couple minutes earlier.

In this thread Tdarcos spends 4 paragraphs explaining how DHCP works. In the last paragraph, he states that he has the exact same problem that Ice Cream Jonsey is having, and is doing the exact same thing (cycling the router's power) to fix it.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Fri Mar 20, 2015 11:54 pm

Tdarcos wrote:I'm not sure how much of this you are aware of so forgive me if I go over stuff you already know.

I appreciate that.

Let me take the opportunity to say thanks for sticking with this BBS over the years. It's appreciated.

Now, if you put the mac address of a device along with the IP address in the router's permanent assignment table, the router's DHCP server simply never changes the IP address and gives that MAC address the same IP address every time it requests an assignment even if there were lower numbers available. It also never gives any other MAC address that IP.

It's weird. And what I worry about is if I have just *one* device with a reserved IP address, that they all start screwing up. I really want the Raspberry Pi boards to have a reserved IP so I can just FTP files over. That and the fact that to play the video game baseball game I like needs a static IP is what is causing all this awfulness.

I guess the weak way to fix this is to have the router reset itself at 3AM or something. I wonder if that's possible with this ASUS one, to send it a restart signal...

RealNC · Post by **RealNC** » Sat Mar 21, 2015 3:45 am

You can login to that router through SSH. Or Telnet, if SSH doesn't work. It runs Linux and has a Busybox environment. That means you could set up a cron job that reboots it.

However, if the stock firmware doesn't allow for cron jobs, then you can flash a custom firmware. That router should be compatible with DD-WRT, I think. That firmware can do everything imaginable after you flash it. It might actually even fix your original problem, so that you won't even need the cron job in the first place...

RealNC · Post by **RealNC** » Sat Mar 21, 2015 3:49 am

Forgot to mention:

If you're afraid that flashing DD-WRT will void your warranty, then don't worry. Asus actually support this:

http://www.asus.com/us/site/routers/DD-WRT

Also, Asus routers are virtually impossible to brick when flashing them.

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Sat Mar 21, 2015 4:02 am

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:It's weird. And what I worry about is if I have just *one* device with a reserved IP address, that they all start screwing up.

I'm curious, why just one? I have two NAS boxes, one computer that is Ethernet connected to the router, one that has both an ethernet and wireless connection, one that has wireless only, and my network printer that is wireless connected. All of these have permanent IP addresses on my network.

Also, since you're putting Raspberry PIs on your network, have you considered not having the PI use a DHCP client or the router's DHCP server, but simply inserting its static IP address set up in the router's table in the Pi's .hosts file? Or both, leave the DHCP client on in the PI, but also include its static IP address in its .hosts file?

AArdvark · Post by **AArdvark** » Sat Mar 21, 2015 11:26 am

I got lost right after the router going to sleep. What is a cron job?

THE
DUM AS ROCKS
AARDVARK

RealNC · Post by **RealNC** » Sat Mar 21, 2015 12:32 pm

AArdvark wrote:I got lost right after the router going to sleep. What is a cron job?

It's a Unix system facility that allows you to schedule tasks to run at specific intervals. Like doing a reboot at 3am each day.

Wikipedia is your friend ;-)

AArdvark · Post by **AArdvark** » Sat Mar 21, 2015 2:53 pm

Shhhhh! I didn't care that much, really. All I want is for the device to see the router and have them connect so I can come here.

There's a line from the movie 'Baby Boom' where whatsherface screams: "I just want hot water! I don't care where it comes from!" Sadly, that's how I feel when it comes to stuff like wi-fi.

SOMETIMES THE
DETAILS DON'T MATTER
AARDVARK

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Tue Mar 24, 2015 2:10 pm

I start my DHCP address lease space at .100 which allows me to use anything less than for static IP addresses. I usually put servers in the .2-.9 range, admin workstations in the .20 range, printers in the .30 range and now Raspberry Pis in the .40 range. Helps me keep track of stuff.

Jizaboz · Post by **Jizaboz** » Wed Mar 25, 2015 10:30 am

There you go yeah. I do the same thing as Flack. Use #s like 192.168.1.60 for a server or printer, and automatically hand out IPs like 192.168.1.133

The Happiness Engine · Thu Mar 26, 2015 4:03 pm

Ogod. ICJ, did you hand out static IPs that overlap your dynamic range maybe?

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Mar 26, 2015 8:03 pm

Yep. I did do that.