Router gone bad?

[+Warwagon MVC]

4 minutes ago, BudMan said:

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..

Which router do you have?

[+BudMan MVC]

https://store.netgate.com/SG-4860.aspx

 

Corner of my desk in computer room.

 

[inactive]

2 hours ago, BudMan said:

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

 

Yeah, I am sure your right as I imagine I could get a decent upgrade for around $20-30 and I would not fault someone who did just that.

2 hours ago, BudMan said:

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

 

Yeah, you clearly have money to burn then if your dropping hundreds on networking equipment for ones home. it's probably overkill for someone anywhere near average person though as even for slightly above average people I can't see shelling out more than around $100-150 or so as much beyond that is a lot of money for something you just need to give you some basic wired and wireless internet connection that's fast enough.

 

basically routers in the $100+ range are a bit steep considering most just need it to give them a decent wired/wireless internet connection when you can get one that does it 'well enough' for probably no more than $50-ish. I just can't see the $100-200+ routing equipment being enough of a benefit to justify the much higher costs as that $100-200 could be put towards other computer hardware etc.

 

2 hours ago, BudMan said:

But hey if you fine with redoing caps on a 20 year old antique.. Glad you having fun

 

I would imagine it's probably 15 years tops given the Sep 2004 FCC approval date here... http://techinfodepot.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Linksys_WRT54GS_v1.1

 

...and those Wireless G types of routers were probably in use for many for at least the late 2000's, maybe a bit beyond that, off the top of my head.

 

I would guesstimate my specific Linksys WRt54GS v1.1 does not have more than 7 years of use on it max as if you assume it's probably from about 2005 and I got a hold of it May 15th 2011 and it was pretty much collecting dust til about June/July 2019.

[+BudMan MVC]

2 hours ago, ThaCrip said:

I just can't see the $100-200+ routing equipment being enough of a benefit

For you with your 420Kb internet connection prob not ...

[inactive]

10 minutes ago, BudMan said:

For you with your 420Kb internet connection prob not ...

 

Even if I had a moderately fast connection, say several MB/s, I could still not see $100-200+ for a router as that's approaching desktop computer prices and the like when one could get something fast enough at likely half of that price or less.

[+BudMan MVC]

And clearly you don't do any networking or firewalling.. Nor do you run vlans most likely, or do any sort of multicast acls on your switches, etc. etc..   Several MBs isn't fast   My 500/50 mbps is workable.. But its not "fast"..  1000/1000 I would consider fast.. ###### I am toying with going 10ge here on my lan...

 

If my phone doesn't get 300+ something is not right with the network

[adrynalyne]

My best download speed has been 123MB/s

 

[+BudMan MVC]

123MBytes.. Yeah that is smoking gig connection.. Nice... So you run that off your $50 soho router I take it

 

Normally I see 60MBps from my server in NL..

 

Early morning it can spike and hit 70,71... But normally its right around 60.. 123 is just screaming at full gig for sure.. Nice

 

I would move to the gig plan, but upload is the same at 50.. Waiting for that to change to symmetrical.. What I need is more up.. The cost diff from 500/50 to 1000/50 not worth it for me.. For 1000/100 prob do it..

 

Whats your up on that plan?

[inactive]

 

49 minutes ago, BudMan said:

Several MBs isn't fast

 

It's far from slow as I would say it's definitely closer to fast than slow ; you can claim my internet is slow but definitely not several MB/s as @ 5MB/s one could download a HD movie in about 15-30min in most cases and if someone considers that too long to wait, they are flat out spoiled (that would be roughly 3-6 hours (maybe a bit more) on my line). that's easily on the faster side of things given it's a minimal wait time for a rather large file.

 

because one can download just about anything within reason without having to wait hours @ 5MB/s. even half of that speed I would have no trouble waiting as it would only be about 30min-1hr which is still easily fast enough.

 

5 minutes ago, adrynalyne said:

My best download speed has been 123MB/s

 

Damn! ; at that rate one could download a HD movie in roughly 1min, 2min MAX

 

hell, ones hard drive might be the limiting factor (as in the hard drive will be the bottleneck not the internet line itself) at that speed depending on it's size.

[adrynalyne]

7 minutes ago, ThaCrip said:

 

 

It's far from slow as I would say it's definitely closer to fast than slow ; you can claim my internet is slow but definitely not several MB/s as @ 5MB/s one could download a HD movie in about 15-30min in most cases and if someone considers that too long to wait, they are flat out spoiled (that would be roughly 3-6 hours (maybe a bit more) on my line). that's easily on the faster side of things given it's a minimal wait time for a rather large file.

 

because one can download just about anything within reason without having to wait hours @ 5MB/s. even half of that speed I would have no trouble waiting as it would only be about 30min-1hr which is still easily fast enough.

 

 

Damn! ; at that rate one could download a HD movie in roughly 1min, 2min MAX

 

hell, ones hard drive might be the limiting factor (as in the hard drive will be the bottleneck not the internet line itself) at that speed depending on it's size.

Yeah, even CPU can be a limiting factor at that speed. I've seen slower, old machines with SSDs not be able to handle it. My daughter's old dual core laptop stuttered through the speed test and only got about half that.

 

That said, it takes a perfect storm of conditions to get that speed, and that includes a download accelerator using 32 streams. I typically download at the 50-60 mark on downloads. Centurylink peering sucks, but hey---I can't complain for 65 a month, plus nobody in the house can slow me down with streaming and what not.

 

[adrynalyne]

@BudMan

 

Speaking of routers...what are your thoughts on the UDM Pro?

 

I am considering it, but am also considering moving away from Ubiquiti for routing and switching.

[+BudMan MVC]

Whats the up on that plan?  I pay $60 a month for my 500/50..

 

Moving files you would most always be using SSDs.. And or to cache on your nas, etc... I move files between my pc and nas at 220MBps using smb3 multichannel... Drives are not the bottleneck, network is.. Which is why toying with 10ge.

 

 

[adrynalyne]

Just now, BudMan said:

Whats the up on that plan?  I pay $60 a month for my 500/50..

 

Moving files you would most always be using SSDs.. And or to cache on your nas, etc... I move files between my pc and nas at 220MBps using smb3 multichannel... Drives are not the bottleneck, network is.. Which is why toying with 10ge.

 

 

Dunno...crazy price for sure, and most of my neighborhood cannot get it (which prevents saturation). No data cap (yet), no contract, and (allegedly) priced for life.

[inactive]

8 minutes ago, adrynalyne said:

typically download at the 50-60 mark on downloads

 

You typically get 50-60MB/s on downloads?

 

damn, it's like everything you download, even larger files, is barely any wait time. click, download starts, leave the room for a moment and come back and it's done.

 

p.s. it would be weird/kind of cool seeing your hard drive light flash rapidly, or be fairly solidly lit up, when downloading since even at 50MB/s burns up a good portion of a modern-ish hard drives transfer speed.

 

8 minutes ago, adrynalyne said:

but hey---I can't complain for 65 a month

 

This is basically what I talked about a bit earlier...

 

50-60MB/s for your typical downloads for $65 a month. to bad you could not divide that up proportionately as one could save a lot of $ if they could pay say $10-20 a month for a small fraction of that speed as it would be far more efficient use of ones $. because once you reach a certain level of speed, most things download quick enough to where it would be better just to get cheaper internet if possible.

[+BudMan MVC]

While I love their AP... And the UDM and the Pro will sure have a market.. I wouldn't get one for my own use..  Looking to see what they come out with for wifi6 when it finalizes.. I will prob update my APs then.

[inactive]

UPDATE: Well I replaced the four capacitors with some brand new Panasonic FC 220uF 25V Low-ESR 105c capacitors in my Linksys WRT54GS v1.1 router on Feb 11th 2020 and all went smoothly (I even have six capacitors left since it was a 10-pack on Ebay for only $5.xx). but this time around I noticed if I add a little solder on the end of the soldering iron it seems to help with heat transfer and speeds things up a bit with removing the old caps and installing the new caps (like sort of alternate between each capacitors prongs with soldering iron heat with a little pressure to remove them going back and fourth until removed). I had to use some wire cutters to shorten the capacitor wires of the new Panasonic caps as I just eye-balled it sitting next to the caps I removed and made them a tiny bit longer and then cut the wires and after installing them (making sure they where seated into place well and the negative/positive was correct (as the negative end of all four caps point towards the front LED lights of the router)) and soldering it into place I then use the wire cutter to snip off the excess sticking out the back of the board and that was that.

 

I am using DD-WRT r41686 at the moment (FreshTomato likely is unstable on these older routers. so avoid it!). the router defaults to 216Mhz but I overclocked it to 240Mhz (through... 'Administration > Management' in the routers interface) as that's the highest I can go with passive cooling (i.e. stock cooling (which is without a heatsink)) as any higher, which the next setting up is 252Mhz, is unstable as the wireless acts up and the router reboots once every 5-10min or so (I heard with a heatsink one can use the 252Mhz setting though but I am not going to bother with it given 12Mhz increase is not worth my time). but when I tried the 240Mhz option chances are it's fine as I left the router running over 24 hours just sitting there and everything seemed to be in good running order. but at the moment I am still testing the ASUS WL-520gU router to see if it's stable (I currently have 5 days and 17 hours of uptime and counting(I am going to keep using it so see if I can get say 9-10 days or so and then just turn it off and switch to the Linksys WRT54GS v1.1 since it's a better router and use the ASUS as a backup router)) and I am confident it will be as I think the problem the entire time was FreshTomato as it's not really made for these older routers like DD-WRT is (I think it has to do with v2.4 vs v2.6 (FreshTomato is v2.6 only) as older Tomato firmware I was using years ago like Tomato Toastman is v2.4 firmware and that had no problems on my routers. so in other words... there is no real problem with FreshTomato besides the fact it's not really designed to work on these old routers where v2.4 is needed/required which likely explains it's stability problems on my ASUS/Linksys routers). still, replacing the caps on the Linksys with some new high quality ones should give me plenty of years of use out of it as the HERMEI ones that were in it are generic china made junk unlike the Panasonic which are made in Japan and are of solid quality.

 

but if anything changes ill probably update this topic again. but if my routers stay stable, which I suspect they will, then this will probably be my last post in regard to the general topic.

 

WARNING: be careful when overclocking routers like the Linksys WRT54GS v1.1 and the like as I think if you push the overclock too far it can brick the router and you might need JTAG to recover it (even then you will need a CFE file which you can get on your working router running DD-WRT by going to... http://192.168.1.1/backup/cfe.bin ). because in the routers interface on my WRT54GS it allows up to 300Mhz. basically you can choose between the following... 192Mhz/200Mhz/216Mhz(which is default)/228Mhz/240Mhz/252Mhz/264Mhz/280Mhz/300Mhz. but I would not attempt beyond 252Mhz, although 240Mhz or less should be safe enough. also, if I read up on this stuff correctly it seems some models even if the overclock freezes the router etc holding reset button can fix it but I think with some of these older models, and I think mine is one of them, if you go too high on the Mhz it can brick the router and JTag is pretty much your only way to recover it etc.

 

on a side note.... my ASUS WL-520gU router, while it runs at 240Mhz (which can't be changed), it seems the router only truly runs at 200Mhz given the "cat /proc/cpuinfo" command after you telnet into the router. I think it has something to do with keeping a accurate time on the router if I recall correctly. but this does not seem to be a issue on the WRT54GS as when it says 240Mhz, it's actually 240Mhz dedicated to it.

Edited February 13, 2020 by ThaCrip

[+BudMan MVC]

3 hours ago, ThaCrip said:

give me plenty of years of use out

It will take you years to move anything with G speeds, so that is a good thing I guess

[inactive]

5 hours ago, BudMan said:

It will take you years to move anything with G speeds, so that is a good thing I guess

 

Not for general internet use (wired/wireless) which is about all I use it for anyways and in that regard it's proven reliable. I don't do too much file transferring over the router itself and what little bit I do here and there, it's fast enough over the wired connection.

 

in fact, routers similar to that Linksys one I have still sell pretty well as of July 2016 (which at the time those general types of routers were 11 years old)... https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/linksys-wrt56gl-router/

 

p.s. some corrections to my above post... instead of v2.4 and v2.6 I meant to say k24 and k26.

Edited February 13, 2020 by ThaCrip

[+BudMan MVC]

Well have fun - I would just go insane..  It would be like trying to watch tv on a 13" black and white tube tv..

 

Here is your old router

 

I wouldn't be able to stand even 100mbps wired..

 

This is a current router.

 

[inactive]

@BudMan

 

That's a bit of a exaggeration as going from a recent-ish TV to a old 13" black and white is a MUCH larger hit than going from a fairly modern router back to a Wireless G one (at least as far as general internet use goes which is what I would assume your typical person would measure the basic stuff by). because it's pretty obvious in terms of real world general internet use, a Wireless G router is still decent enough for many where as a 13" black and white TV is a MAJOR drop off compare to any decent TV's over the last 10-15 years or so.

 

but if 100mbps is too slow for you, your flat out spoiled, as that's like around 12.5MB/s, correct? ; because with that speed it's not going to handicap the vast majority of people online as it's more than fast enough to do just about anything within a reasonable time frame. because like I said before.... once someone's internet reaches a certain level of speed, even when you jack up the speed quite a bit there is not a lot of real world difference in time savings. like for example... going from my 400KB/s-ish to even 2-5MB/s would be a much larger real world boost then going from say 5MB/s to 10MB/s or more as in terms of download times once you hit a certain level of speed, to shave off much from download times you need A LOT more speed and it's largely overkill at that point to where I would rather keep monthly internet costs down, if possible, then pay extra $ for speed that's not much of a real world benefit.

[+BudMan MVC]

Gig is not spoiled... Dude your living in the dark ages..  100mbps is about 10MBps in a file copy - its like watching paint try compared to gig which is 113MBps..

 

Real world benefit - 400Kbps you might as well be on dial up... That is not a usable connection for anything then shell type access... How freaking long does it take you to even load the neowin home page... Glad your happy with stone knives and bear skins...

 

 

Most of the media files I work with are 3GB plus in size.. At 10MBps it would take Days to moves what I move in minutes now.. 1 gig is even too slow to be honest, which is why I use smb3 multichannel over 2x1G connection to get 220MBps file moves..

 

Last couple days been working on some files, about 70% done 73GB of files moved from my PC to my nas... Couldn't even think about doing that at 100mbps - just not viable... It would be horrible!! 

 

I'm shrinking some 500GB+ worth of files to be around only 100GB, So that is moving 500GB of data to my pc from nas, transcoding it and then putting it back.. How could anyone do that at 100mbps network speeds? Without wanting to shoot themselves?

 

Oh just dawned on my that tiny 8 second youtube clip prob take 10 minutes to buffer on your system

[inactive]

@BudMan

 

I see. since you seem to do a lot of moving of files between computers (and the like), in this case I can see having something MUCH faster than what I got as you would have to as it would not be practical to move large amounts of data over 10MB/s LAN, especially if you had to do it fairly often. so I am not faulting you here as I was mainly talking about general internet speed and in that regard a Wireless G router is still passable for most people even if not optimal simply because the speed it does give a person is clearly higher than one needs to have a enjoyable enough experience online as when you get into the MB/s range (say something in the ball park of 2-5MB/s) your internet is far from slow in the real world. NOTE: I guess if you got multiple people hammering a internet line at once then one will want more speed but even here there must become a point to where it's good enough even for these types of people and I would assume anything close to 10MB/s is probably sufficient.

 

also, I don't have '400kbps'(i.e. about 50KB/s), it's 400KB/s (i.e. 0.4MB/s), which is a rather big difference since it's about 8 times faster and when your at slower speeds it makes a rather large difference in real world speed. so while not fast, it's not THAT bad either. put it this way... someone can get by with my connection (especially as long as multiple people ain't using it downloading larger files) as general websites, while they don't load up super fast initially(even when browser cache is cleared, while there is some delay in load times, it's not like I am sitting there forever either), load up fast enough in general as it's not like your sitting there for ages for a page to load. with YouTube I generally just play SD stuff and in that regard it works well enough. I might load up a HD YouTube video here and there though. so while I agree my internet could be faster, it's not dead slow either as it's still at a point that loading websites is fast enough and YouTube works well enough, especially for SD files. but like I was saying... if you got multiple people trying to watch YouTube etc, then it could be a problem but since I am pretty much the only one who downloads any larger files on it, it's generally not a issue as outside of that as others might do a bit of basic website browsing and a small video once in a while.

 

p.s. but as far as loading Neowin, from a cleared cached browser(so everything has to load online not from browser cache)... I would not imagine more than 5 seconds or so off the top of my head. because what's the typical size of the average website? ; probably no more than a few MB off the top of my head? ; if so that's like 7-8 seconds tops for a page to load from scratch for the initial load but in the future it will be faster due to browser cache. I realize for someone with a pretty fast line there would be only a small delay on initial page load but it's not like going from say a 2-3 seconds for say a fast line to a half of minute or something as that would get fairly annoying. but I don't mind a reasonable pause of say around 10 seconds.

[+BudMan MVC]

37 minutes ago, ThaCrip said:

also, I don't have '400kbps'(i.e. about 50KB/s), it's 400KB/s (i.e. 0.4MB/s),

Dude why do you keep using B... That is Bytes... Nobody states speed in Bytes... Its bits... 400KBps would 3.2Mbits per second.

 

You would not state your speed as 0.4MBps 

 

So what speed do you have exactly?  Post a screenshot of speed test so we are clear what speed your on..

 

example here is mine

 

So lets see your actual speed..

[sc302 Veteran]

20 hours ago, ThaCrip said:

@BudMan

 

That's a bit of a exaggeration as going from a recent-ish TV to a old 13" black and white is a MUCH larger hit than going from a fairly modern router back to a Wireless G one (at least as far as general internet use goes which is what I would assume your typical person would measure the basic stuff by). because it's pretty obvious in terms of real world general internet use, a Wireless G router is still decent enough for many where as a 13" black and white TV is a MAJOR drop off compare to any decent TV's over the last 10-15 years or so.

 

 

Not really...but if you don't see it then you don't see it.  

 

Quote

but if 100mbps is too slow for you, your flat out spoiled, as that's like around 12.5MB/s, correct? ; because with that speed it's not going to handicap the vast majority of people online as it's more than fast enough to do just about anything within a reasonable time frame. because like I said before.... once someone's internet reaches a certain level of speed, even when you jack up the speed quite a bit there is not a lot of real world difference in time savings. like for example... going from my 400KB/s-ish to even 2-5MB/s would be a much larger real world boost then going from say 5MB/s to 10MB/s or more as in terms of download times once you hit a certain level of speed, to shave off much from download times you need A LOT more speed and it's largely overkill at that point to where I would rather keep monthly internet costs down, if possible, then pay extra $ for speed that's not much of a real world benefit.

When you are streaming 4k to multiple devices (6+) you kind of need some really high speed stuff and your router has to be able to process that speed, not just be able to support it.  If you are doing massive downloads, you will see it.  If all you are doing is browsing sites, you won't see it.  If youtube downgrades the video quality to your internet speed capabilities, which it does, you might not notice it especially if you can't see the difference between standard definition to HD to UHD.  

 

FWIW, my monthly download usage is over 1000GB, I am at 1.5TB per month about.  Imagine doing that on anything under 100Mb/s.

[shockz]

On 2/8/2020 at 10:41 PM, ThaCrip said:

 

Even if I had a moderately fast connection, say several MB/s, I could still not see $100-200+ for a router as that's approaching desktop computer prices and the like when one could get something fast enough at likely half of that price or less.

IDS/IPS require some pretty hefty processing power if you want to maintain your advertised connection. My old USG could only pull down 100mbit on my 1gig connection with IPS enabled. You get what you pay for when it comes to network performance with protections. I'm now back on pfsense with Suricata and happy with 1gig speeds.