Router gone bad?

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

1 hour ago, BudMan said:

Not sure how anyone could possible find G ok... Do you not do anything on your local network, no streaming of movies or anything.. I take it your internet is slow and G is cable of handling it.. But wow how can you actually do anything with such connection... The files I move over to my nas in 30 seconds would take hours..

think you meant "capable"... 🤣

[+BudMan MVC]

yup did - thanks, editing it now

[inactive]

@BudMan

 

I am on DSL. I am not a fan of streaming in general even though I don't mind streaming some basic YouTube videos here and there.

 

but yeah, with 420KB/s MAX (but it's more like 400KB/s give or take a little), my older router can easily handle it and I don't really transfer files much over the network as if I did it would be limited to 10-11MB/s tops and would be a problem if I did that a lot and had plenty of data to transfer. I do have a external docking station that I can connect 3.5" and 2.5" hard drives to but that uses a USB v3.0 connection so I have no limit here as the USB 3 connection will max out my hard drives.

 

p.s. but like I was saying... what I do have going for me is unlimited data as I am sure there is faster internet available in the area but I doubt they have unlimited as I would rather have a slower line (but still usable) with unlimited data than have something fast and be capped to say 250GB a month max etc since at 400KB/s I can potentially download as much as about 1TB(1000GB) a month). even for a conservative figure of 380KB/s... would potentially give me a theoretical maximum of right around 985GB a month. because sometimes I don't go over 250GB in a month, but sometimes I do. so basically if I have to choose between 400KB/s(0.4MB/s) and unlimited data or say 1-2MB/s (or faster) but with a 250GB a month limit, I am definitely going with the 400KB/s option.

[+BudMan MVC]

Data caps would depend on your isp.. I have no such cap and download multiple TB (sometimes in a month).. Xfinity cap is 1TB a month I do believe..   I have 500/50mbps with no cap..

 

How much does this screaming uncapped 400KB connection cost you btw?  Mine is $59 a month..   For what 156x your speed   So I would hope your cost would be in the range of 60/150  so like 40 cents a month?

 

Glad you happy with it - but your phone has to have a faster connection just via cell

[inactive]

@BudMan

 

If that's the case they must have raised it as we had Comcast at one point in the past but they had a 250GB cap the last I knew. but at 1TB a month I can easily work with that as I doubt I even come close to that amount of data in a month as I 'might' reach around half of that or so at the most and those would be my higher months as even if I had a very fast line with unlimited data, there is only so much one can download before it becomes a obsession basically as I think some people download stuff just to collect it, sort of like a download addition as I pretty much stopped doing that years ago and only download stuff ill use etc which 1TB a month is clearly more than enough for me as the last I checked my routers general data info, off the top of my head, I am probably somewhere between 150-300GB (or so) per month most of the time.

 

I think my DSL is roughly $40-45 or so and I suspect your area has faster/cheaper internet than where I am at (although to be honest I have not looked around in years). I am sure Comcast has those introductory offers but I just wonder what their cheap plans are (as in straight up monthly price after the introductory offer is over) as I would be mostly concerned with the cheapest internet possible but without a data cap (or if there is a data cap it needs to be no lower than 500GB a month) and passable/usable level of speed (I would imagine anything around 3-4MB/s is plenty) because after a certain point speed becomes overkill to where it's not worth the extra monthly costs unless people are obsessed with downloading files with very little wait time. but the way I see it, if you can download a large file within a reasonable time frame, it's easily fast enough.

 

also, when you say 500/50mbps I assume that means your download speed is about 62.5MB/s, maybe a little less? ; if so, that's amazing as I don't think I ever had more than around 1-2MB/s off the top of my head. but I guess some people are spoiled nowadays as even anywhere around 2MB/s a sec would be great in my mind and it appears your WELL beyond that as you can get like  a 10GB file in like roughly a few minutes (assuming about 60MB/s) which is great as it takes me about 7-8hours for that same file.

 

your $59 a month is quite reasonable especially for that very high download speed. but personally if I could shave that down to say $30-40 or less a month for even a fraction of the speed you got I would easily do it as I am sure I would be more than happy with even 3MB/s or so as that's pretty much nearly 11GB a hour which basically means just about any large file could be downloaded in about a hour tops and I could easily wait a hour especially considering it takes me in the ball park of 7-8 hours. but anyways, since I first got my DSL, while 400KB/s sounds slow, it's MUCH better than what I originally started with which was 40KB/s.

 

just some thoughts and thanks for the suggestions

 

NOTE: I never understood why people always refer to general internet speed as kbps/mbps instead of KB/s and MB/s as the KB/s and MB/s makes more sense since it's what people generally are more familiar with as when you download a basic file it's almost always going to be in KB/s or MB/s.

 

p.s. I don't have a cell phone. I know that's rare in today's world but I simply won't use them enough to justify the monthly costs.

[+BudMan MVC]

Yeah I can see 60MBps download - normally is in the mid to high 50's.. All depends on where your getting something from to be honest..

 

Here just grabbed this 2GB file server off vps of mine in NL.

 

There is some fluctuation in that, and depending on time of day its can be slower, etc.. but yeah I do see my full pipe of what paying for..

 

I would look around for sure for better connection.. Shoot even a LTE connection would be way faster, but those sorts of connections normally do have caps.

 

You normally see speeds in mbps vs KB.. Because these are the speeds because bits is the base value and not bytes.. For example would normally refer to your speed as say 3mbps vs 400KB, as the speed increases you move into the next.. So for example you would call it 1gbps vs 1000mbps

 

 

[inactive]

@BudMan

 

Damn, that's amazing

 

hell, it could fluctuate down to anywhere near 5-10MB/s and it would still be more than great. but in your case I suspect it mostly boils down to the source speed (server) of the file more than your line being the limiting factor. when you download from random websites... is your download speed quite a bit slower at times due to the server not being able to max out your line?

[+BudMan MVC]

I don't download from "random" websites hehehe

 

Other than loading the sites themselves which are not much in total size, so its kind of hard to see how fast its actually going.. But lets just say pretty much any sites pretty much just load instantly.. If a site takes more than a couple of seconds it seems like something is wrong.

 

I guess if you have not seen faster, then you get use to what you have... But once you see how the internet is suppose to be on a decent speed connection.. Yeah going back to something like 3mbps would be like freaking watch paint dry.. And would just be frustrating as hell.. It would drive me insane

 

To be honest the internet at work is painfully slow to be honest..

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Remember the modem days, @BudMan? Those loud little ISA/PCI modem cards? That was considered SLOW...

[+BudMan MVC]

heheh dude my first modem was 600 baud... I could type faster than the data could be transferred.. the v.22 when v.32 came out wow that was screaming 2400 baud

 

There was no ISA slots even back then.. Those didn't come out to early 80's  At school had the old ones you had to put the phone handset in   Dialing into the mainframe at unlv so we could do a fortran assignments..

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

haha, I was only born in '85. I do know the older architecture, but never really used it like you.

 

Edit: And I really never got into computers until the 98/2000 days...

[+BudMan MVC]

Then yeah you prob didn't get to play with the old plug your phone  handset into the modem..

 

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

1 minute ago, BudMan said:

Then yeah you prob didn't get to play with the old plug your phone  handset into the modem..

Sadly, no... I have seen this in a computer museum once, but never used it.

[inactive]

Our first computer was 1995 (I was born 1979) which is basically 3-5 years before computers were mainstream (so about 1998-2000 which is similar with general cell phones to) as the oldest OS I used was Win v3.11 on a 486dx2 66Mhz CPU. I think that had a 2400baud modem and 4MB of RAM (upgraded to 8MB) and a 4xxMB HDD. so I don't go back to the early days, but I go back before most people were online ; I remember using 14.4/28.8 and 33 something I think and then the standard before they pretty much dumped dial-up... 56k which, is 5-6KB/s at best. so even really slow internet is lightning compared to those days but then again back then things were generally a lot less graphics heavy to keep website load times reasonable.

 

but you could basically say once Windows 95 came along it's overall interface is pretty much the same as today's, or similar enough. but it seems it was at least Windows 98 before computers hit mainstream status. I did use Win2k which was before WinXP, because as far as Microsoft goes, Win2k was the first stable OS that the average person could use although the first stable OS from Microsoft that was targeted at the home user was WinXP as prior to the Win2k/WinXP thing you generally had to reboot your computer fairly often as the OS's generally were not stable enough to go for several days or weeks or more like they have been since pretty much Win2k/WinXP to date.

 

p.s. we had high speed internet available in the area since the year 2000 as according to the person who installed it in my area said I was one of the earlier people to get it. so that will generally give you a rough idea on computers going mainstream etc. I imagine in more bigger cities it could have been a bit before that but I would say that general 1998-2000 time frame is either exactly right or pretty close to it in terms of mainstream status to where many started getting computers/internet.

 

4 hours ago, Mindovermaster said:

And I really never got into computers until the 98/2000 days

 

Yeah, that's pretty much inline with the masses. like the early day's of PC/Internet going mainstream.

 

7 hours ago, BudMan said:

I don't download from "random" websites

 

Well I just mean downloading a decent sized file from a website you can generally see how quick it's downloading unless the file is not large enough for it to take at least a few minutes for you. but I guess with your speed, since it's so fast, unless the file is pretty large, it will probably be done before you can even gauge the speed it's going (probably very shortly after you start it). lol

 

but since I noticed your old school pictures above... that appears to be clearly before my day. but internet in general was pretty much not available to the general public til roughly early 1990's? ; but from a quick search online it appears it was Aug 6th 1991 when internet first became available to the general public. so I guess given that info I was roughly in between the beginning (i.e. 1991) and mainstream status (i.e. about 1998-2000) since I was 1995.

[+BudMan MVC]

Before the internet was BBSes, use to dial into quite a few of those   Use to send messages around the world with fido, etc. Take a few days.. But was faster than snail mail hehehe

 

here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system

[inactive]

UPDATE: on Jan 31st 2020 I replaced the two 16v 470uF capacitors (with some used ones I found around the house(although they are 85c rated instead of the stocks 105c)) in the ASUS WL-520gU router and it seems to have cured it's stability/uptime issues as I am nearly 2 days 18 hours in and so far all is good. but ill probably need a full week, maybe two, before I can say for sure. but I am pretty confident replacing the capacitors fixed it since in recent memory the router has gotten worse as I noticed even the wireless was kicking out (like the light was completely off even after attempted hard-reset etc and then came back on out-of-the-blue several minutes later) and typically could not get more than about a day or so of uptime. I stumbled into this stuff over on the DD-WRT forums where someone said he's fixed quite a few routers etc this way.

 

I suspect that's what's acting up on my Linksys WRT54GS v1.1 which has four 25v 220uF caps in it which I suspect ill eventually replaced with some Panasonic ones on Ebay for only around $5 as the ones in it currently are likely generic junk as it shows HERMEI for brand name on them, which apparently are made in Taiwan, where as quality caps typically come from Japan as looking around online there are a fair amount of brands that are supposed to be top tier caps and Panasonic is one them.

 

I even re-flashed to the newest firmware (FreshTomato 2020.1) on the ASUS WL-520gU and cleared the NVRAM and reconfigured from scratch to help ensure no glitches remain.

 

so I just thought I would update this topic as this could be useful for those who have a soldering iron etc as it's a simple $5-ish fix which makes it worth doing as if it was like $20+ it would not be worth attempting.

 

p.s. I heard that can even fix PSU's and computer monitors a good portion of the time to but I never tried it on one yet as my computer monitor is 10 years old this month and still going strong. but if it dies, if I can get some caps for around $10, ill probably gamble and give it a shot.

Edited February 3, 2020 by ThaCrip

[cork1958]

On 7/24/2019 at 10:49 PM, BudMan said:

Then yeah you prob didn't get to play with the old plug your phone  handset into the modem..

 

Wow! That's some old a** stuff! Never even seen or heard of such a contraption, but then I was one of the last people to even get a computer in my circle of people. Thought a computer in the house was as dumb as dirt back then. Wife convinced me to get one and said I would probably like it. Boy, was she sorry she said that! Used to tie up the phone all day and night downloading from Napster and stuff! Don't do nearly as much online as I used to anymore. Have gotten older and realized there's way more to life than setting in front of a monitor.

[Riggers]

1 hour ago, ThaCrip said:

p.s. I heard that can even fix PSU's and computer monitors a good portion of the time to but I never tried it on one yet as my computer monitor is 10 years old this month and still going strong. but if it dies, if I can get some caps for around $10, ill probably gamble and give it a shot.

You sure can, Iv`e fixed several tv`s, monitors and other stuff over the years due to bad/blown caps. It`s quite easy to tell normally and as you say for a few quid you`re not losing much if it doesn`t work. Just got to make sure you get the same value capacitor and get the polarity right.

 

Glad you seem to have got it sorted 👍

[inactive]

@Riggers

 

But the caps on both of my routers look perfectly okay (i.e. no swollen caps or leaks (like one would normally expect)) even though it appears they were actually bad as at the moment I got 3 days 6 hours+ and everything still seems okay. because this is the same experience of the person I talked to over on the DD-WRT forums in that the caps appear to be perfectly okay from a visual standpoint even though they are not.

 

I have some caps on my old motherboard that are swollen, with some even appeared to have slightly leaked, but it's still stable the last I checked as I ran a memory test and Prime95 on it back around Jan 2019 and all was good. because there are at least 8-10 caps that are at least slightly swollen with a bit appearing to have slightly leaked. but given how much work it is, and it's just a backup computer, I probably won't bother fixing it for the foreseeable future.

 

p.s. I am aware of the whole negative/positive stuff as I take note of that before removing the old caps and I know you can increase voltage of the capacitor (like say go from stocks 16v to say 25v for example) but cannot decrease it (like if stock is 16v you cannot go lower than that).

[inactive]

UPDATE: on my ASUS WL-520gU router I just noticed that FreshTomato 2020.1 reset the uptime after about 6 days. I am currently running a recent build of DD-WRT (r41686(Dec 10th 2019)) and I am going to see if that works better as I figure if I can get a couple of weeks (maybe a month tops) out of it, chances are DD-WRT is fine. if not, ill see if the Linksys WRT54GS v1.1 fairs any better once I replace the capacitors in it soon which ill likely be doing sometime next week.

[+BudMan MVC]

17 hours ago, ThaCrip said:

WRT54GS v1.1 fairs any better once I replace the capacitors

Why would anyone waste time doing this?  Are you wanting to have a museum piece or something?

 

What could you possible be using that connects at G speeds?  Is your time and effort not worth a hundred times more than the $20 it would cost to get even the cheapest of current wifi routers that can do atleast modern wifi, N, AC..

[inactive]

@BudMan

 

My internet is nothing special to where Wireless G is much faster than it so there ain't much point in buying something faster and I got more time than $. besides at $5 I don't have much to lose besides a bit of my time and assuming all of that works I should be able to easily get several more years of use out of it.

 

even if I did get a newer router it's got to be compatible with DD-WRT etc.

 

p.s. some people are quite spoiled nowadays when they get several MB/s and think it's slow as I would be more than happy around 2-3MB/s when I currently get 0.42MB/s (420KB/s MAX) and even at 2-3MB/s, my current router could handle that. hell, even if my router handicapped speed a bit on a wired connection for example... it's LAN port limit of about 10MB/s, which is still very fast for just about any internet use short of large transfers over a local network for which gigabit LAN router ports would be a solid boost in that regard as while I would not mind getting a newer router that has gigabit LAN ports (or a bit faster WiFi for potential transfers over network), I am in no rush.

 

besides... how is reliability on newer routers in comparison to the older Wireless G kind? ; because I am the type who prefers hardware to last a long time as I am not that type who wants to upgrade every 2-4 years etc.

[+BudMan MVC]

2 hours ago, ThaCrip said:

I currently get 0.42MB/s (420KB/s MAX) and even at 2-3MB/s, my current router could handle that. hell

What sort of nonsense connection is that.. You can't even stream SD netflix with such a ###### connection..

 

If you think this is fun, then sure have at it... But my time even if 20 minutes of it wouldn't be worth the effort to use such a ###### speed device... Don't get me wrong, the wrt54s were smoking in their day... 15, shoot almost 20 years ago now.. The first model was was 2002..  dd-wrt runs on modern hardware AC models..  You could get a tplink AC1750 gig router that ddwrt works on for less than $60.. I personally couldn't be bothered dicking with such an old piece of gear..  While your internet might be slow.. Your telling me you don't have any devices that could use N or AC for wifi.. 

[inactive]

37 minutes ago, BudMan said:

What sort of nonsense connection is that.. You can't even stream SD netflix with such a ###### connection

 

I am not a fan of streaming in general short of watching a occasional YouTube video, which works fine.

 

38 minutes ago, BudMan said:

While your internet might be slow.. Your telling me you don't have any devices that could use N or AC for wifi

 

With 420KB/s MAX download (call it around 400KB/s), it won't really matter from a general internet use standpoint whether I got Wireless G or some modern stuff since Wireless G easily exceeds my internet line speed. hell, even if it did not... just from a basic browsing websites point of view, once you reach a certain level of speed your 'fast enough' as it's not like your waiting there forever for a basic website page to load (like if one goes from near instant, call it a second or two or so, to maybe 5 seconds or so), it's not a big deal if you ask me). that's kind of why I figure once your internet line reaches a certain level of speed, I would rather pay less $ for a slower internet line if possible.

 

41 minutes ago, BudMan said:

You could get a tplink AC1750 gig router that ddwrt works on for less than $60

 

Sure, but around $50 is not exactly pocket change and I would rather put that $ towards future general computer hardware upgrades especially given my situation.

 

or I could put it this way... even if I was going to upgrade from Wireless G to a more modern router I would figure about $50 would be the high end of what I would pay for a router, as that's still reasonable, although I would feel much better around $20-30 or so which is quite reasonable. around $100 for a router is just way to much money when you can get something quite a bit cheaper and not all that much worse.

[+BudMan MVC]

1 hour ago, ThaCrip said:

around $100 for a router is just way to much money

We come from different worlds then.. My router, which isn't even wireless was $750..  One of my AP was double $100 max budget of your, which not sure how you think that is too much for a wifi router..

 

All comes down to what you want/need it to do... Nothing on the market for a $100 that would do what I want..  But hey if you fine with redoing caps on a 20 year old antique.. Glad you having fun..

 

You could pick up something that is way better than some old wrt54g for a like $20..