Linksys → [WRT54G] BitTorrent works, but not web

I have been using a Linksys WRT54G Wried/Wireless router for my home network.

When I plug into the network I can browse the internet, do email, game, chat, and use my Azureus Bit Torrent client to DL torrents.

(I leave my PC 24x7 so the network is always in use)

Each morning I will hop on my computer before work to check email and the news. I cannot browse the internet at all, but my torrents are still happily downloading.

I am doing this via a "Wired" workstation, I also get the same results from the wireless clients.

I am forced to unplug and plug in again the power cord to the router in order to get it to work again.

I have to do this 1 or 2 times daily?

I have tried a few things but nothing seems to work at maintaining an always up WWW connection.

A few ideas on my part:

*some sort of log/buffer/cache fills up on router
*router is not automaticaly receiving new dhcp lease from ISP
*should have gotten the d-link/belkin/other router instead

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to add...although my torrents (and I believe other Inet services are still running), I also cannot reach the local 192.168.1.1 for administration until I restart the router.

So I believe this rules out any problems on the WAN side of the router.

Browser problems? On two seperate machines? (One runs IE other Firefox)

My network/system specs

*WRT54g Router
*RoadRunner ISP w/motorolla modem (Model? newer black one)
*Two machine both WinXP (Fully patched, debugged virus/adware, Zonealarm, browse with Firefox on one and IE on other)
*machine with firefox I use to administer Router via wired connection
*other machine wireless connection WEP 128 bit encryption via Linksys wireless PCI adapter (which btw does NOT do WPA even though the older lesser version does!!)

Don't know if this brings anything "to the table", but maybe it could shed some light on my problem.

If you need any more details.....tell me

Hi, i would ask what service provider you have?
the reason being that maybe there is a restriction on downloading. that some how providers network could restrict part traffic? if you can carry on dowloading from bitt i am not sure how you can not browse at the same time? do you ever recieve any errors?
regards Vinny

My provider is RoadRunner in central Ohio.

I agree, it is strange that some I-net service continue to work while others shut-off.

You mentioned checking for errors, would referring to the log data kept by the router?

I do get "site not found" errors from my browser.

You have the latest firmware installed?

Yes, I have installed the latest firmware (first thing I did:)) Firmware Version : 2.04.4 for WRT54G v2

....hmmm, thinking I may switch to a static IP assignment. Maybe it could help.

You could try using the QoS function of the router: »192.168.1.1/QoS.asp (Application Priority) and assign a LOW priority to the BitTorrent ports and HIGH to HTTP, SMTP and POP3. See if it works...

Thanks for the replies.

Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't that just allow the HTTP, SMTP etc... traffic priority over "bit torrent" traffic?

I don't really see that as a solution, in that each time I have this problem, I will terminate my Bit Torrent client and then attempt web access with my browser.

However I will add it to my list of things to try.

Could it be that the router has a limit on concurrent sessions passing through it. Maybe the client and/or router is not successfully severring those sessions? Hence blocking any new "http" sessions.

There is indeed a limit on the number of current sessions. My I guess is that the NAT table is getting full because BitTorrent is making so many connections. If the table is full you can't make any new (HTTP) connections therefore you cannot open any sites after some time of BT. Perhaps QoS is a solution because it might reserves some NAT table entries for HTTP connections, also it doesn't terminate any current Bit Torrent connections, it only limits the number of connections and bandwith so that you can still surf (=HTTP) and check your mail (=POP3 & SMTP).

If i'm not mistaken there was a post not too long ago in the file sharing forum about ppl being able to dl on BT fine but not surf... and the majority of them were using zonealarm... In the end the consensus that was reached was that zonealarm v4 and up was the cause.

My suggestion to you is to completely uninstall zonealarm and just try to BT and surf with the router only for about a day or so... If your still having problems then unplug ur router and connect directly to the modem...

Now when you say BT is dling fine... who fine? (what speed up and down?)

I currently have a similar problem with my ISP Rogers Cable. Basically when i'm using BT my surfing will pretty much be at a crawl, even though i'm only uploading at 10KB/s and dling at say 25 - 30KB/s

My guess is that (at least i think that's the problem in my case) is that there are many 'heavy' users sucking up ur upload bandwidth in your area.

But still try the above and let us know what happens

Good Luck!
-=OC=-

Thanks for the replies!

Last night I took the advice to adjust my QOS settings for HTTP and other non BT related protocols. So far it seems to be working. I will keep an eye on it for a few days, if this doesn't work I will see it ZoneAlarm is the culprit.

'olivecougar' one thing you mentioned I have been experiencing.
When I first reset my router....my BT DL speeds range from 40-140KB, but after a day or so (when HTTP stops working) my BT is DL'ing 4-15KB, until I reset the router again.

I'll post in a couple of days if any of these tips resolve the problem.

Any luck getting Bittorrent running without losing Web (and others)? I am experiencing the same problem. I'm really starting to hate these routers. This is my 3rd one, and I thought 3rd time's a charm, now I find out Bittorrent won't work with this model. Don't the people who write this firmware test it?

Actually, no solution yet.

I've tried the suggestions...and no luck.

Please contribute any ideas (other than switching brands)

I'll be sure to update this if I have a solution.

Thanks!

u are not alone it happens for me too
exact same thing but i use bit tornado not azures

i have the old firmware

please help me too

if everything works fine as soon as you stop bt, start capping your upload!

http reqs are uploads too. your bt traffic is sucking up the entire upload pipe.

Has anyone tried any 3rd party firmware? I'm using HyperWRT v1.3 and no luck. I may try the new Satori if no one else has. My router is a v2, anyone else have a WRT54G running BitTorrent without lockups?

I've been using the wi-fi box firmware and have zero problem.

Similar problems here - different possible cause.

I have a WRT54GS with parental control - running 2.07.1

Starting recently Web access (http) breaks while IM and other protocols continue to work.

What I've tried so far:
- reset RTS Threshold and Fragmentation threshold to 2304 under advanced wireless (most connections are wireless)
- set MTU to auto from manual(1492)

I'll try to stop back with updates.

EDIT: I don't run BitTorrent

\\Greg
gmartin@gmartin_spam_me_not_dot_org

I'm running firmware v1.42.3 on the WRT54G v1 hardware and have noticed that if I leave Azureus running (a BitTorrent client), that after anywhere from 4 to 6 hours after initially launching the application, that the router will no longer act as a gateway to the internet.

When I check the Azureus window, all BitTorrent activity has died, and I can't use a browser or any other internet application to get anywhere or do anything. The only solution is to unplug the router, then power-cycle the DSL modem, and then finally plug the router back in. After those steps the router will re-aquire a connection with the DSL modem and everything is as it should be.

When the router stops responding, you can tell if it has this condition when you visit »192.168.1.1/Status_Router.asp and press the "Disconnect" button, wait for the disconnect, and then immediately try to re-connect to your ISP using the "Connect" button. When you press the "Connect" button you won't be able to get an IP address from your ISP, and the router's log-in process will eventually just time out.

I'm not sure if updating the firmware would work well, as I tried to run a v2.0 build at some point, and the router stopped communicating with my DSL modem altogether.

I just thought I'd add to this thread, in the hope that someone might have a solution for myself and other frustrated Linksys users.

Still no luck. Tried all the suggestions.

Wanted to point out a few commments.

Someone mentioned the HTTP_ref not being passed due to upstread bandwidth being over load by BT. When I encounter the problem (and feel like testing instead of cycling router) I terminate the BT client and use TCPView to sever all the connections remaining open from BT. Still no luck

Another comment...from Xavier
Your problem seems very similar, except that my connection fails I cannot even connect to 192.168.1.1 for administration.

Thanks again for all the replies!

a quick update...

Since resetting the MTU - things have been better - but I have had one outage. Still looking...

\\Greg

I had similar problems. Under View/Configuration/Transfer, I set KB global max upload speed to 8 and default upload slots to 2. This fixed the problem for me.

Mark

Just to let you know. I have experienced similar problems (also with some other cheap routers).

On my Wrt I lowered MTU to 1400. I tested HyperWrt 1.3 and Satori 4.0, with no success. I suspect wrt54g's pppoe client must be broken.

Currently I've switched back to non embedded Linux-box solution. Big noisy box, but 100% reliable. I hope problem will be fixed soon.

Here's an update on my situation:

I downloaded the HyperWRT v1.3 firmware and gave it a shot. I honestly thought it wasn't going to work until I power-cycled the router and was back in business! For anyone with v1.0 hardware on their WRT54G, HyperWRT is your ticket to getting v2.x firmware to work on your router.

With HyperWRT I still have the same problems as before when using BitTorrent or eMule clients. When I start my BitTorrent client (Azureus), downloads clock in at over 300 kB/s and I couldn't be happier. Within minutes transfer speed drops to under 10 kB/s and remains that way until the router is power-cycled, or Azureus is re-started.

While using BitTorrent, browsing is terribly slow, but not for all sites. For instance, this forum is decently fast, but a site like »www.worstroads.ca takes a long time to load. For the majority of other sites, they just time out and you have to try a manual re-load of that page to see if it's a problem on your end or theirs.

I'm figuring that since »192.168.1.1 isn't responding after a while, that the router must be locked up, or altogether crashed. When the web configuration is unavailable (ie: your browser just times out), it's time for a power-cycle. For most of us, this goes on once or twice a day.

The WRT54G can run Linux, and most of them do. According to »www.pbs.org/cringely/pul ··· 527.html our routers have a processor in them that should be able to handle BitTorrent's traffic.. so what gives?

The answer may lie in the operating system itself. Linksys modified Broadcom's Linux distribution and for all intents and purposes, it works wonderfully. However, for those of us that demand more out of our hardware, its limitations become apparent as soon as you run a client for a P2P network such as BitTorrent or eDonkey. There's a fellow that provides some non-permanent WRT54G tools at »www.batbox.org/wrt54g-linux.html His programs are all written to RAM, so all you have to do is power-cycle the router to get rid of them -- no permanent changes are made to your firmware. Note that these tools won't fix the BitTorrent problem, but might let us see what's going on inside the router when aa program like Azureus is running.

I guess they either have to find a way to make their Linux distro (and software that runs on top of it) more efficient, or write a new operating system specifically designed to handle the massive amount of traffic a protocol like BitTorrent is capable of producing.

Our search for a solution continues..

said by GF_Xavier:

---

The WRT54G can run Linux, and most of them do.

---

all of them do.....

Hi, all

I bought my WRT54G V1.1 router in Xmas last year. I running it in 7 x 24 for my BT and Emule. I have updated my router many times and get no problem.

After updated the firmware to v2.04.4, the nightmare comes. The following situation occur:

1) The router can't access internet, also the router admin page.
2) However, my Emule and BT work fines( the speed changes and the file can complete )
3) My second PC can still access to internet (sometimes).

I have sent email to Linksys to see if my router is incompatible. However, the help desk reply that i need to downgrade to V2.02.7 .
I suspect that there's problem in the v2.04 series. I hope they can debug the firmware harder before release.

After following this thread with great interest, I have some lurker questions:

1. Is this a Wireless router only issue? (Suggests the question, has anyone found a wireless router that works okay)

2. Does anyone have an ethernet/only router that works okay in this environment?

I have used a SMC wired router, Linksys BEFSR41 v1.1(I believe), a SMC 7004VWBR wireless router, and now a Linksys WRT54g wireless router all without issues using any BT client, I mainly use Azureus. I am not using any special settings(no QoS or anything else), and have a cable modem as internet source.

Well i've tried a lot of the things that have been suggested thus far. The only thing i've gotten to work was doing bandwidth mangaement. I put the ports i use for BT (Azureus) into the low priority destination/source ports box. The downloads are slow, but i can still use the internet and connect to my router.

I have 3 people on my net at home that use BT and it whores all of the bandwidth. But even when i'm the only one on the network, with all users disconnected, i can DL up to 200kb but still cannot browse the internet. In Azureus i've setup the ammount of upload to a reasonable ammount.

Does anyone know how to make it so in the Bandwidth management I can set it so the ports have a "higher" priority?

router-wrt54g (wireless)

*update*
I've been talking with a tech friend of mine, and he said that this issue has something to do with the packet prioritization. Anyone know whats up with that?

Hmm,
I have a BEFSX41 that's brand new. I went wireless with the WRT54G and didn't have any problems. However, due to my office being in the basement under the kitchen and my wife using a laptop in the living room, I had to move the WiFi upstairs. So I bought the BEFSX41 for routing and the content filters offered by the WRT54G.

I too have problems when using BitTorrent. I've never had problems before, not even with my WRT54G (had to move it out of the basement due to wireless interference).

I set my BEFSX41 up the same way as the WRT54G and my old BEFSR41. I gave my completely reliable original run BEFSR41 (you know, back when we paid $299) to a client and bought this unit.

This really ticks me off. First Linksys removes the logging to a specific IP on the BEFSR41 (another reason I didn't just buy a new one of those) and now they've screwed with the number of connections allowed.

Seems to me like Cisco is trying to "push" people to buy their products over Linksys' lesser expensive units.

If anyone's fixed this, let us know how.