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KamikaseRider
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Urgent Small Office Help

Tue Oct 11, 2011 7:40 am

Hi guys, need your help.

I work on a small office and we've been having some wireless problems.

The network setup is a motorola cable modem connected to a D-link WBR-2310 wireless / wired router.

The router is configured so:

WPA2 / TKIP
802.11 b/g (mixed)
Channel 10

We have around 10 computers connected using Wi-Fi, a printer and a server connected by cable, but the router keeps looping and restarting.

Are 10 connections too much for my router? Is there an advanced configuration that I'm forgetting to setup?
Any advice is good. I'm not a complete noob on networking but some of the advanced stuff and troubleshooting are beyond me.
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bthylafh
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Re: Urgent Small Office Help

Tue Oct 11, 2011 8:22 am

Don't know what your specific problem might be, but one thing jumps out at me: you shouldn't be running your router on channel 10. There are really only three channels you should ever use: 1, 6, and whatever the highest channel you're allowed to use in your country (13?). Roughly speaking, the other channels are too close to each other and leave you open to interference.

Also if your router and all the wireless devices support it, you should be on WPA2/AES instead of /TKIP, because TKIP is rather less secure.
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KamikaseRider
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Re: Urgent Small Office Help

Tue Oct 11, 2011 8:34 am

bthylafh wrote:
Don't know what your specific problem might be, but one thing jumps out at me: you shouldn't be running your router on channel 10. There are really only three channels you should ever use: 1, 6, and whatever the highest channel you're allowed to use in your country (13?). Roughly speaking, the other channels are too close to each other and leave you open to interference.

Also if your router and all the wireless devices support it, you should be on WPA2/AES instead of /TKIP, because TKIP is rather less secure.


Done the modifications. Now I'll have to wait and see. I'll post back with info. Thank you very much.

Any other suggestions are welcome.
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frumper15
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Re: Urgent Small Office Help

Tue Oct 11, 2011 8:49 am

IMHO, if you're trying to do business and your network connection depends on it, do what it takes to get wired networking going. I know wireless has come a long way and is pretty darn reliable for the most part, but using a consumer-grade router/wap seems like a recipe for instability and headaches.

Are you using desktop computers with wireless adapters or laptops? If you absolutely need to use wireless for some reason, i would look into more of a professional grade solution. That being said, I don't have a great recommendation for you. Hopefully someone else could chime in.

I would at least try a test to see if it is the wireless that is giving you issues or the router itself. in other words, buy or borrow a switch or two and a bunch of longer network cables to get everyone hooked up wired to a lan port on the router and see if you still get the reboots. If you do, i would say you need a new router/WAP. I've had decent luck with linksys products if you're looking to stay cheap and cheerful. If you get total reliability and no problems whatsoever when everyone is wired, I would say you either need a better wireless solution or figure out how to get wired permanently.
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just brew it!
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Re: Urgent Small Office Help

Tue Oct 11, 2011 8:57 am

In addition to what bthylafh and frumper15 suggested:

1. Have you checked whether there are any newer firmware versions available for that router?

2. What sort of things are these 10 users doing? Are they mainly using the router to access the Internet, or are they pounding on the local server? If it is the latter, expecting a consumer wireless router to keep up may be expecting too much.

3. How long have you had this router? Has it always had this problem, or did it start recently? If it is still under warranty, perhaps an RMA is the way to go. If it is older, it may just be dying (I've seen routers and switches from a few years ago that have died due to exploding capacitors).

4. Any chance that someone on the network is using Bittorrent (or other P2P) software? P2P can overload some routers.

5. I've seen consumer routers that get a bad case of indigestion from the DNS port randomization security measure which was rolled out by all of the major OS vendors a couple of years back. AFAICT it overloads the router's internal connection tracking tables. The symptom I've seen is that connections just fail or time out, but it is not inconceivable that buggy firmware could result in the router crashing or rebooting.
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KamikaseRider
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Re: Urgent Small Office Help

Tue Oct 11, 2011 9:14 am

just brew it! wrote:
In addition to what bthylafh and frumper15 suggested:

1. Have you checked whether there are any newer firmware versions available for that router?

2. What sort of things are these 10 users doing? Are they mainly using the router to access the Internet, or are they pounding on the local server? If it is the latter, expecting a consumer wireless router to keep up may be expecting too much.

3. How long have you had this router? Has it always had this problem, or did it start recently? If it is still under warranty, perhaps an RMA is the way to go. If it is older, it may just be dying (I've seen routers and switches from a few years ago that have died due to exploding capacitors).

4. Any chance that someone on the network is using Bittorrent (or other P2P) software? P2P can overload some routers.

5. I've seen consumer routers that get a bad case of indigestion from the DNS port randomization security measure which was rolled out by all of the major OS vendors a couple of years back. AFAICT it overloads the router's internal connection tracking tables. The symptom I've seen is that connections just fail or time out, but it is not inconceivable that buggy firmware could result in the router crashing or rebooting.


1- Yes, it's up to date.

2- Mainly internet and e-mail clients. Server usage low, just some common files.

3- It's kind of a new router (1 - 1,5 years). Is that old or new?

4- No torrents. I leave all my torrents to download at home and the others have no idea what a torrent is.

5- It started recently, so I'm not sure if it's related to DNS.

I'm setting up a new router and I'll keep you guys posted. Thanks
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just brew it!
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Re: Urgent Small Office Help

Tue Oct 11, 2011 9:20 am

If there haven't been any significant changes in load or usage patterns recently, I'd say the router is going bad. Check whether it is still under warranty...
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KamikaseRider
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Re: Urgent Small Office Help

Tue Oct 11, 2011 9:49 am

Installed new router and apparently things got back to normal. Thank you guys for the help.
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