WRN2000 Dropouts

[coronafire]

Hello,
I purchased a WRN2000 to use as a basic access point, and it's reliability is terrible. It drops connections regularly, or more to the point it appears to occasionally stops new tcp connections through the switch.

It's not neing used as a router/nat/firewall at all, it's just got an ethernet connected to one of the switch ports, and it shares that connection to the wireless. There is nothing connected to the wan port, as the firewall is unwanted, we already have other devices filling that requirement. I just want a basic bridge between wireless and ethernet.

The problem is when devices connect, which they always do fine, they sometimes don't get an ip (the dhcp server is on the ethernet network). Refreshing the ip usuelaly works the second time.
Occasionally when browsing the internet suddenly stops working, and wont start again until the dhcp is refreshed.
In mac os it's it easy to diagnose, I have to leave system preferences open, and whenever it drops out, simply pressing 'renew ip' gets it working again instantly. This doesn't reconnect the wireless at all, it just refreshes the dhcp ip.
When it's not working, I can try to ping a server (which is on the ethernet) and no pings go through, the instant I press refresh ip the pings start. ssh connections which are already open when the connection drops stay open when new ones wont go through, and stay open when I press refresh ip, so it's only new connections that wont go though, persistant ones are fine.
Connections drop simmilarly in windows, and again, renew ip in command prompt gets it going again. Or just plugging in an ethernet cable, which is always perfectly reliable.

It's being used in a mixed g/n environment, I set it to 54MB/s but that didn't seem to make it any more reliable.

I turned off the spi firewall, but as expected that made no difference, as the wan port is unused.

Wireless clients can't see each other at all, which sounds like it could be related. Can I switch off this wireless isolation, it is also highly undesired.

Regards,
Andrew

[Mars Mug]

If there is a DHCP server on your network have you disabled the one in the router?

[coronafire]

Yes I have, although that had been an issue earlier on, even after I had switched the wrn2000 dhcp off, and the web admin said the dhcp was off, it was still handing out dhcp leases. I had to reset to defaults, and switch it off again, and reboot a couple of times, before it stopped handing out leases. Now there doesn't seem to be any bad leases, just at times no leases.

If I could set up the wrn2000 to hand out it's own dhcp leases from a different range as the main server, and make the wrn2000 leases give the right gateway and dns settings and everything, I would do it, but there doesn't seem to be any way to set a gateway that the internal dhcp server will give out.

Andrew

[Mars Mug]

With some of the older routers configured as access points it was sometimes necessary to enter a dummy WAN IP address in the basic settings to get wireless working reliably (I have no idea why). You could give that a try, and valid (as in in-range) IP address should do.

[coronafire]

So I tried that, we're on a 10.10.0.x network here, with the wnr2000's lan ip being 10.10.0.2.
So I gave the wan a static ip of 10.10.0.253, up out of the way. Soon after that, I got a notification that the wrn2000 has decided to change its lan ip to 192.168.0.1 to avoid conflicts. So that's rather annoying, but it's still sharing the internet so far, so I haven't bothered changing my ip to get access to it to reset the ip setting. I haven't noticed any dropouts, but then I've barely used my laptop today, so not sure if it's fixed or not.

Andrew

[spytdi]

We have had our router for 3 months, and recently it started dropping connections too. I haven't tested to see if the problem is exactly the same. What I do notice is that any machine in the house gets a working connection for the first 3-5 minutes after reboot. After I post this (which I'm doing on a wired connection which ALWAYS works just like coronafire) I'm going to test to see if it works after I renew the DHCP.

I will also try setting the WAN IP, though I can't see exactly where to do that. In Basic settings, I can only choose to set a static IP.

[cyclone]

Did you check if there is any wireless interferance cordless phone, skype wireless phone, baby monitor, microwave? I saw some post listed their wireless drop line related to these devices. Or try to change to other channel to check too.

[mikebailey2000]

I spent over a week and swapped out access points three times troubleshooting
frequent network drops and disabled laptop wireless cards.

Turns out the network was being attacked:

A hospital had rented space in the same building as one of our clients,
and the hospital has a Cisco device which detects any nearby access points and
targets them as "rogues" and then hits them with a death flood.

We had to call the hospital and give them our MAC address so they would
classify us as a "friendly" access point and stop hammering us. This is
likely
to become an issue with anyone who uses this Cisco system, such as hospitals,
govt. security acencies, or mega-corporations.

I think the hospital uses a Cisco SWAN WLAN IDS, which "quickly detects,
locates, and automatically shuts down rogue access points."

See below:

"Jamming for Defense

One a side note, jamming is not just for malicious use. One way of
controlling
rogue access points in an enterprise is the flooding of packets to client
devices that are connected to a rogue access point. Some current wireless
network vendors include a method for creating a denial-of-service situation
for unauthorized wireless implementations by sending packets with the same
characteristics as a valid access points with disassociate packets. These
packets fool the client into thinking that the rogue access point doesn't
want
to communicate with the device anymore, effectively killing network
connectivty before it can be established. This is a very powerful feature
that
must be used carefully, as legal and political repercussions could arise."

We think the hospital may be breaking the law:

The operation of transmitters designed to jam or block wireless
communications is a violation of the Communications Act of 1934, as
amended ("Act"). See 47 U.S.C. Sections 301, 302a, 333. The Act
prohibits any person from willfully or maliciously interfering with the
radio communications of any station licensed or authorized under the Act
or operated by the U.S. government. 47 U.S.C. Section 333. The
manufacture, importation, sale or offer for sale, including advertising,
of devices designed to block or jam wireless transmissions is
prohibited. 47 U.S.C. Section 302a(b). Parties in violation of these
provisions may be subject to the penalties set out in 47 U.S.C. Sections
501-510. Fines for a first offense can range as high as $11,000 for each
violation or imprisonment for up to one year, and the device used may
also be seized and forfeited to the U.S. government.

Spread the word to all your tech buddies to be on the lookout for this
if you have any clients near hospitals, etc.