Linksys → How long do Linksys routers last?

The kind of flooding I am talking about usually happens below the TCPIP layer at the ethernet layer, and it would not be visible to iptables in your PC because it occurs inside the NIC and is simply not visible at all inside the PC. Typically with such a failure the NIC just sends a constant stream of garbage bits out the interface and overwhelms whatever it is connected to. Sometimes just disconnecting the interface (as would happen if the router rebooted) will cause the defective interface to reset, and everything works again (until the next failure). I am not saying this is what happened in your case, but it might explain why the problem seems to have disappeared after you upgraded your OS.

Interesting. So it's like DDoS my router on my internal tiny network (two desktops [static IP addresses] + two wifis [DHCP] + one cable modem for Internet).

It would be a DDoS only if you had multiple devices streaming.

Good point. DoS.

I like the aluminum bit buckets you put between the CPU switch and the equipment stack. It makes it easy to dump all those unwanted orphan packets.

I guess this is fixed since I don't see anymore. I will follow-up if it happens again. For now, no new router.

I spoke too soon again since it happened at about 8:48:57 AM PST for about a second. Now, I have a suspicion on my Debian/Linux's arpwatch process might be causing it but it just monitors? I noticed that it wasn't running a night ago so I manually started it, and my router rebooted again this morning.

Man says: arpwatch - keep track of ethernet/ip address pairings

$ apt-cache show arpwatch
Package: arpwatch
Priority: optional
Section: admin
Installed-Size: 632
Maintainer: KELEMEN Péter
Architecture: amd64
Version: 2.1a15-1.1+squeeze1
Depends: adduser, libc6 (>= 2.7), libpcap0.8 (>= 0.9.8)
Filename: pool/main/a/arpwatch/arpwatch_2.1a15-1.1+squeeze1_amd64.deb
Size: 188294
MD5sum: 5436f25de47de028726db436def5dea8
SHA1: 75c9d036f5a71a1769d62cda333b827b4863c2a2
SHA256: e694736b69f5571a093d5cba773ea8b88cb679ee9368ec9c54019a0ed4d763bd
Description: Ethernet/FDDI station activity monitor
Arpwatch maintains a database of Ethernet MAC addresses seen on the
network, with their associated IP pairs. Alerts the system administrator
via e-mail if any change happens, such as new station/activity,
flip-flops, changed and re-used old addresses.
Homepage: »ee.lbl.gov/
Tag: admin::monitoring, interface::daemon, mail::smtp, network::scanner, network::server, role::program, use::monitor

Or maybe just a coincident? I will keep this daemon running a few more days to see more reboots, and then turn it off to see if it still reboots.

--

1/16/2013: I saw another reboot this morning. For now, I disabled arpwatchd service to see if the problem returns again. To be continued...

1/18/2013: It happened again and with arpwatch disabled.

My main gateway befsr41 would be a great example. Not known at the time, but later known as the "version 1". Purchased November 2001 (lightly used) on Ebay, shipped to me for $79.