Equipment Support > Hardware By Brand > Linksys > Post Your BEFW11S4 V4 Issues Here

reply to qenymin

Re: Post Your BEFW11S4 V4 Issues Here

I can confirm that the BEFW11S4 v4 with firmware v1.44.2 and 1.45 fails with wired AND wireless connections alike.

It actually gets worse if you use more than one OS behind the Linksys. I can stream for about 3 minutes with a Linux or BSD machine behind the BEF, when running singly, but can't use it for more than 30 seconds if the Windows machine sends a single packet through the BEF.

My guess at this point, is that the BEF sees different TCP sequence frames, and just resets the stack itself, which stops any communication from that machine from coming through. Example:

Windows machine sends out a stream of packets, TCP.. all with properly incremented seq values. The Linux machine comes online, and begins sending data through the BEF, starting at say seq0, while the Windows machine is at seq25623 (this is horribly simplified, but this analogy fits the symptoms I've been seeing, and this is actually how TCP works under the hood. I can further prove this with my BSD machine, which uses random seq numbers. I can't stay online with BSD for more than about 2-3 seconds before the BEF just stops receiving/sending data through it).

Once the Linksys sees packet 25624 go by (from the Windows machine), and then packet 1 (from the Linux machine), it assumes something is awry, and resets the framing, which causes both machines to just up and stop sending data. It's consistant, and I can cause it to happen every single time.

I have now tried every single MTU from 576 to 1500, in increments of 2, without success. I have also tried setting the MTU on the OS side itself to match, without success. This fails with 2 different cable modems, and 3 different operating systems. If I pull the Linksys out of the loop, and stick a hub in its place, everything works perfectly fine, through the same cable modems and the same operating systems. Here is what I've deducted:

1. The cable modems are not the problem here.

2. The operating system(s) are not the problem here (Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows2000 and WindowsXP, all current service packs)

3. My local networking hardware is not the problem (hubs, switches, and other WAP devices).

4. Changing the MTU on the router or the OS does not help.

5. The problem is consistant on wired and wireless interfaces, and actually happens MORE often when multiple different operating systems are used behind the BEF.

6. Disabling logging and DHCP on the router, and using static addressing does not help

7. Statically defining port triggers for each service, does not help.

8. The problem is consistant with two firmware revisions; 1.44.2 and 1.45 (linked from this thread, Linksys is not aware of a 1.45v4 firmware)

9. Statically setting the MAC address to a valid value, does not help. Incidentally, Linksys, a MAC of 00:00:00:00:00:00 is not valid, and can actually cause problems, ESPECIALLY for people on cable connections, if neighbors happen to have the same Linksys device broadcasting on the segment). Please take a clue from your parent company Cisco, and fix that.

10. Disabling all of the multicast, block WAN, ipset, and pptp does not help.

I hope someone from Linksys is writing this down, because I've done a LOT to diagnose this, including my dozen-or-so telephone calls to Linksys technical support itself.

If nobody at Linksys wants to do something, I'm sure a certified letter to the appropriate parties and corporate board members with a full explanation of my "history" with this device and with Linksys' technical support staff, would be rightfully in order.

reply to mikeor

said by mikeor:

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My BEFW11S4 ver.4 router cannot maintain a connection with my new Toshiba centrino laptop longer than 20 minutes.....very strange that it's almost 20 minutes exactly every time it drops out. The only way to re-connect with the network is to reboot the router.

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reply to stever80
my problem dating back 02-05-2003!

I am tired of this. Went through all the settings, firmwares, etc. I just got my Inspiron 8500- 5 hours old !!! I am having the same problems as before. I am gonna toss this POS out the window in a second ! I give up on Linksys and their BEFW11S4v2. What more is there to say? I see many people here have the same issues. I like the Linksys, maybe cause I'm a sucker for the lights like on my Netopia R7100. I feel qenymin, I FEEL YOUR FRUSTRATIONS. Linksys tech support sucks, I should have listened when they said to return the router because it's DEFECTIVE. I will be off to the store to choose another router soon. I like wireless, I want it to work.


--
94803_SBC ADSL

What I'm wondering now... is if the "silence" from Linksys is an indicator that they know the product is bad, and that a recall will soon be iminent, if enough people complain, because they can't fix it with firwmare or user-servicable settings (i.e. MTU).

I wonder now if there's an actual manufacturing defect in the Broadcom chipset used in the BEFW11S4v4, and they're reluctant to admit it, because it would cause mass returns to the store, and we all know what that will do to their profit margins, in these delicate economic times.

Seriously Linksys, speak up. We know you're listening and watching this forum. We know people have forwarded you to this forum. Why won't you refute or corroborate our diagnostics and claims here? We can't get to anyone with more than IQ of 40 on your technical support staff to help, so where do we turn? Back to the Refund aisle at our place of purchase? Believe me, you don't want the public knowledge of this to get out further.

Would a front-page story on Slashdot or Wired motivate you a bit more? I know a few editors at both places who would love to take a bite out of a vendor screwing their customers knowingly without one ounce of acknowledgement of the problem from them.

I've been calm, succinct, and detailed in my calls to technical support and my messages to this forum. I'm not your average "whiny" customer that you might get every day. I'm a professional developer, using this hardware on several platforms. I understand the technology down to the bit-level, and I'm not going to be snowed with some "Just change the MTU" excuse as to why this doesn't work. It should work with ANY setting of MTU.

My patience is slowly wearing out.

Speak up Linksys, we're definately listening...

Qenymin,

That is some incredible stuff you wrote here and so true. Why is it that linksys can sell routers that haven't even been tested properly and then require the public to test the new firmware only to turn the device into a brick?

I urge everyone seriously to email Linksys the link to this forum, do it once a day, I promise someone is listening. These problems arent acceptable. Period.

One other thing,

Qenymin, if you have the capability of having the press get involved by exposing this flaw, please do so. This will allow linksys to look at the products they are selling and do something that I do not think many technology companies do, Quality Assurance. Please, if you can, see if you can talk to your friends at Wired or Slashdot and get something published. They will listen

reply to stever80
While the problem is not fixed Linksys should

- Post a warning on their web site for potential buyers.
- Work 24/7 on a fix and TEST it before submitting it to your customers.
- Halt the sale and distribution until you have fixed the problem.
- An apology would be in order also.

I have worked over 40 years on computer R&D as a senior scientist and as a product owner. In a similar situation my people would be working day and night including the weekends to get a fix out to our customers.

Starting today I am sending an e-mail, repeating my complaint, to Linksys at

support@linksys.com,
sales@linksys.com,
robert.auci@linksys.com,
mailroom@linksys.com,
pr@linksys.com,
carl.glick@linksys.com and
success@linksys.com

I urge everyone to do the same.
Max.

reply to stever80
Hi Guys,
I am from bangkok. I got some one to buy BEFW11S4 and am stuck with it.
I can not event return it. It will cost me three times the price I bought it from Amazon.

Please if any of you guys have clout -- get this scam into the major News papers. Its a shame.
BangkokUser

reply to stever80
I started poking deeper inside the innards of my BEFW11S4 v4 today, and found some very interesting things..

1.) Two hidden tabs, LogManage.htm and weca.htm.

WECA stands for the "Wireless Ethernet Capability Alliance", which determines the standards for WiFi devices. In this case, you can change the transmit/receive power of the BEF by changing it from Japan to US. Note, Japan has lower transmit regulations, so if you want MORE power, and you're in the US, you're probably at the max, but Japan users may be interested in this feature. I'm sure changing this voids your warrantee and violates all kinds of local regulations, so insert "Standard Disclaimer Here™"

LogManage is interesting, because it purports to log much more granularly to the syslog host. Unfortunately, the BEFW11S4 v4 has a non-functioning syslog, so you won't get ANY events sent to ANY syslog host, no matter what options you choose to set. I have a functioning syslog host on my WAN/LAN here, and when configured to accept events from the router, it receives nothing. This fails with both the 1.44.2 firmware and the 1.45 firmware revisions.

Thanks again Linksys.

2.) Enabling the logging under LogManage and setting MTU to 1300 seems to somehow key a magical combination that doesn't drop off as much as before. It actually stays up for about 3 minutes before it resets. 3 MINUTES?! Are you kidding?! It took me about 6 hours to get all of the Windows Update updates, since the Linksys would consistantly stop transmitting every 300k or so, sometimes faster, if my Linux box or FreeBSD box was talking across the same segment.

Some of these may have been discussed on the web before, but I thought I'd recant them here.

I'm going to keep dissecting this and will continue to post my results here. Linksys should be paying ME for doing their legwork and diagnostics here, not their non-English-speaking technical support staff (who, I might add, is less familiar with this product than they should be).

reply to stever80
I'm glad I actually looked around for reviews on this router before I dove in and bought it. The problem is my current DLink router doesn't do something I need it to do (voice in SOCOM) that I'm told a Linksys does with no problem. So, does anyone know which version of this router has the least problems?

reply to poep
Guys,
As suggested by poep -- I did send mail to these addresses and pat came a form letter response which I give below-- for others to be aware of wonderful support by Linksys. Now I got a tel number which I plan to call.

I have decided to send these details to ONE of the major National daily which has a very good Computer support page which has wide readership in South East Asia --so that other users are aware of this scam.

Pardon me for the long post.

From: "Fritze T. Pangilinan"
Subject: RE: BEFW11S4-Ver 4 Router which fails
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 12:02:09 -0700

Dear Valued Linksys Customer,
Thank you for contacting Linksys Customer Support.
My apology for the inconvenience this has caused you but please be informed that we need to troubleshoot before we you have a replacement.
We may suggest to you to do this Power cycle:
A. Shut down your Computer
B. Unplug the power from the back of the router
C. Unplug the power from the modem
D. Wait for 1 minute
E. Power up the modem
F. Wait for the lights to stop blinking
G. Power up the router
H. Start up your computer
I. Surf the internet
If the same problem occurs try upgrading the firmware of your router. The firmware is available in our website »www.linksys.com .
Before you upgrade your firmware, perform a Hard Reset on your router. Press and hold the Reset button for about 30 seconds while the router is on. Remove power. Wait about 5 seconds, then reapply power. The router should now be restored to factory default settings and you should be able to enter the Setup page using the default password admin.
Note that before you hard reset your router, you make a copy of your router's configurations. You will need these settings when you have upgraded the firmware of your router. Unzip the new firmware for your router that I have attached in this email.

Be sure to read the readme txt before you proceed with the upgrade.
When you are already finished upgrading the firmware of your router, you may now reconfigure your router again.

If you have further questions, please contact us at (800) 326-7114 or send us an email at support@linksys.com so that we may further assist you. Please use this phone number given as reference for future support calls.
Sincerely,
Fritzie T. Pangilinan
Product Support Representative
Linksys

reply to stever80
I just bought my girlfriend a BEFW11S4 V4 and it has given her nothing but problems. Basically what ends up happening is that the router just crashes (Windows XP shows the connection as broken). We have to do a power cycle on the device and use linksys's utility to reconnect (My Cisco Aironet 350 automatically reconnects).

I have installed a number of the version 2 and version 3 of these routers without any problems other than when I get them out of the box I have to flash the BIOS. Their tech supports sucks, and you would think over the 7 months since the BIOS on this thing has been updated that they would have been able to fix the problems. Grrr!!!

- Rob

Sent my daily email to the list poep has given us. If anybody has any more email addresses we can add, please do so.

Thanks

reply to stever80
OK, first off I don't know if it's v4 I have (incidently, how can I find out?) But I bought it a couple of weeks ago. It's the BEFW11S4.
--rant--
I've already called Linksys 'support' with this issue, they were very rude and just said WAIT A MINUTE and left me so i hung up
--rant--

Ok, well the problem is I can't get Linux to work with the network. It's using the BEFW11S4 Router/WAP as the centre piece, and I'm putting all the correct address in the linux config files. So is there any known issues with this?

Ta in advance,
Matt
--
Music is Spiritual. The music business is not

you can find out by looking on the underside of the device. Look for model number and you should see something that says befw11s4 v4. Sometimes on older versions it says it on the front near all the lights.

reply to stever80
OK, well it says v3, so any idea whats going on?
--
Music is Spiritual. The music business is not

Linksys Tech,

WHere are they with the beta firmware? I see they came out with new Wireless G router firmware today. Are they going to fix the quirks with out router anytime soon or will we have to wait some more?

Thanks

reply to stever80
Guys,
This mail exchange with Linksys Support is becoming more and more kafkaesque -- unreal.
I am posting what I got in response to my last mail to them. Can you believe it ? Are there any Linksys people listening on this forum ? Can they take it to their bosses ?

Any one has any more email address of Linksys or parent company Cisco where we can send mail ?

Quote

Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 17:31:02 -0700 (PDT)
From:
Subject: RE: BEFW11S4-Ver 4 Router which fails
To: "Fritze P" , support@linksys.com,
@linksys.com
CC: @linksys.com

Hi Fritze,

Thanks for your JOKES. I really enjoyed it. I would have enjoyed it more ONLY if my Linksys Router was working. Would you please read your mail once again ( if you are a human that is).
1. Where can I find the impossible URL you gave me to down load new version of the Firmware ?
2. Where does the question of Firmware for version 4 card comes from ? I am talking about the BEFW11S4 router in case you confused my mail with some one elses.

Is there any one in this organisation who can respond to a support question simply and easily. I have been copying the mails to other email addresses -- presumably to human beings . Looks like this company does not employ human beings any more.
Will be grateful to get a sensible response.

"Fritze P" wrote:
Dear Valued Linksys Customer,
Thank you again for contacting Linksys Customer Support.
First of all please accept our sincerest apologies for the inconvenience this has caused you. The settings that I gave you before will definetly work but if it will not work there are some work arounds to be done to isolate your technical difficulty. I advise you to donwload the firmware of the router you have on our website »www.linksys.com.dwonloads. Since you have the version of the wireless card, please donwload the version 4 because if you will download other versions , this might caused you some connectivitry issuses.
If there is a personal firewall (BlackIce, Norton Internet Security, etc.) installed in any computer in your LAN, please uninstall it as it causes connectivity problems when behind the access point.
Any device operating in the 2.4 GHz spectrum may cause network interference with a 802.11b wireless devices. Some devices that may prove troublesome include 2.4 GHz cordless phones, microwave ovens, adjacent public hotspots, and neighboring 802.11b wireless LANs.

If you have further questions, please contact us at (800) 326-7114 or send us an email at support@linksys.com so that we may further assist you. Please use this phone number given as reference for future support calls.

Sincerely,

Fritzie P
Product Support Representative
Linksys
End-Quote

Mod Note: Edited out last names and email address to protect privacy. JM

[text was edited by moderator]

reply to linksys_woes
This Works!!!

An end to download stalls- no more dozens of attempts for a single download! Linksys- this might help your customers NOW.

All- have I take a security risk by implementing this fix?