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konakazi · May 11, 2006, 08:11 PM

Hey hey,

I have a Netgear router in my home office, splitting the connection between my G5 and my girlfriend's laptop.

Frequently, I find the net putters out and I have to unplug the router, wait 30 seconds or so, and plug it back in and voila, we're off and running again.

The past couple of days though, some sites load fine while others choke through.

Is there any kind of adjustment I can make to my router? The drop out / unplug / plug-in scenario is the most common one and gets very tedious. RP614 V2 is the router model number, if that's of note.

Thanks!

Kona

ghporter · May 12, 2006, 08:41 AM

This sounds like a job for "new firmware!" This sort of instability is pretty typical of flakey firmware (or firmware that's been corrupted somehow). Go to Netgear's site and download the latest firmware, then install it (it's pretty easy to do). It can't hurt, and it may fix your problem and keep it fixed for quite a while.

Tomchu · May 12, 2006, 11:09 AM

If it was working before, but it's not working now, a firmware upgrade won't fix the problem.

Just recently my router started dying -- after a reboot, it would work for 15-20 minutes, and then die again. The settings hadn't changed, nothing had changed. I tracked the problem down, and it turns out that Skype on my dad's laptop was filling up the TCP connection tracking table, and the router kept having to drop connections to new things.

I would check to make sure that you guys aren't running Skype on any machine.

konakazi · May 12, 2006, 11:48 AM

Hey,

No, no Skype is being run. Actually when I did try to run Skype with my friend, it kept dropping out! lol.

The periodic drop outs have been happening since I got the router. I'm just finally trying to address it.

I think the firmware update is worth a shot, certainly. I'll give it a go when I get home tonight and give an update.

Thanks!

ghporter · May 13, 2006, 01:11 PM

Tomchu, I beg to differ. Firmware on consumer routers is notoriously non-robust. It is often easier to corrupt it than to keep it working. Reloading it, either with the same or a newer version, will almost always fix this sort of problem.

Note that I have been the "don't mess with the firmware" harridan for some time. I have changed my ways because of two things: the manufacturers have made their hardware less prone to dying during a firmware update, and I've been shown numerous examples of a "hopelessly unstable" router being brought back to life by simply upgrading (or reloading) the firmware.

konakazi, make sure you are careful in your update: IF THE ROUTER ISN'T ALREADY ON AN UPS, PUT IT ON ONE FOR THE UPGRADE. A power fluxuation could make your experience "interesting." (Of course I'm still the "use an UPS for everything" harridan...

)

Tomchu · May 13, 2006, 07:32 PM

Firmware on consumer routers is stored in flash, which is notoriously reliable as a read-only medium. Firmware on a consumer router will not just corrupt itself, unless the hardware is botched to start with.

I've never, in all my years, come across a router that corrupted its own firmware just for no reason at all. Does your Mac corrupt its own firmware? How about your iPod? DVD player? Nah. :-P

ghporter · May 13, 2006, 08:35 PM

...But it doesn't LOAD from the flash without a reboot. I don't know what electrons get turned around, but I do know that reflashing (not just rebooting) cures most of these problems. As for the reason, if you have less than perfect power, the minimally protected and filtered router power supply can let glitches through that wreak havoc with everything. My Mac corrupt its firmware? Of course not! But my Mac didn't cost $35 at OfficeMax, either. It's a product quality issue, not an electronics issue.

Tomchu · May 14, 2006, 12:04 AM

As far as I know (and I'm sure that someone like mduell will know more than me here), you can't overwrite or modify flash without issuing special commands to the controller interface first -- well, short of running something metal across a few of the pins on the flash chip.

ghporter · May 14, 2006, 04:18 PM

Originally Posted by Tomchu

As far as I know (and I'm sure that someone like mduell will know more than me here), you can't overwrite or modify flash without issuing special commands to the controller interface first -- well, short of running something metal across a few of the pins on the flash chip.

That's the way it's supposed to work. It's supposed to take something like 36V to enable writing at all (this may be an old value). But I've seen report after report of "reflashing the firmware fixed the problem." I don't have a better explanation than stuff happens, and flashing seems to fix it.

Tomchu · May 14, 2006, 06:13 PM

It's more likely that the router's configuration becomes corrupted, and a reflash just resets the configuration to default values.

NVRAM is awfully easy to corrupt/write bad values to if the router's OS is shoddy to start with.

tooki · May 14, 2006, 06:18 PM

Originally Posted by ghporter

That's the way it's supposed to work. It's supposed to take something like 36V to enable writing at all (this may be an old value). .

EEPROM ≠ Flash ROM.

tooki

ghporter · May 14, 2006, 06:38 PM

I'm glad I qualified that then...

Flash does have some serious control on how and when it can be written, but with these consumer-level routers, I would not count on the OS being "robust" enough to not accidentally enable writing at the wrong time.

I just looked at a few flash data sheets-it's all just logic levels, not anything odd, that goes to "Write Enable" (and in some cases a Write Protect pin as well), so a goobered OS could easily enable writing. This makes me even MORE glad I have all my network stuff on an UPS! Transients could be Very Bad™ for the little guys!

tooki · May 15, 2006, 09:15 AM

Yup. It's EEPROMs that use a high voltage to wipe the chip to ready it for writing with new information. Flash uses regular voltages for both reading and writing, and allows random-access reading and writing; EEPROMs are like CD-RWs, which must be erased completely before being written to.

tooki

konakazi · May 15, 2006, 10:42 AM

Wow you guys took the discussion to another level!

Back here on Earth, I did the firmware update (after erroneously trying to decode the BIN file for a while) and I haven't had a dropout since.

Pages also seem to be loading a tad faster, which is an added perk.

Thanks for the advice everyone!