Other Manufacturers → [Zoom] X5 router resets under heavy P2P load

Anyone else noticed this? When sharing more than a couple of torrents (Azureus), I see that the X5 (5554A gateway) frequently looses connection. The speeds drop to 0 and the internet browser can't open any pages. Within a minute the connection is restored but a few minutes later the same thing occurs.

Shutting the X5 off (unplugging from power source) and turning it on again helps for a few hours, but then it starts happening again.

Is there a fix for this? Maybe I don't have it properly configured?

Thanks.

i too am having the problem. though i have not tried to open the port i am using in Azureus, since it is a bit trickier than my old linksys.
my zoom is the X6

Common problem with home routers, almost all of them run out of memory when you get more than a few hundred IP connections and freeze/reboot or just doze off. Sometimes keeping them "cool" helps as some get very warm when run hard.

If it has a SIP firewall you can try turning that off and just using the NAT. The SIP packet inspection is very CPU intensive and many times that will solve the problem.

After many brands with problems I just grabbed an old PC and put IpCOPs or MoNoWall on it and it just runs. P200 in my case with a 2GB drive and 128MB of ram.

Good luck, Ed.

Thanks for the info.

Yeah, the X5 has SPI (stateful packet inspection) firewall, but unfortunately turning it off does not fix the problem.

I'm trying a workaround of some sort since the Zoom people haven't provided any solution as of yet.

I had a Linksys WRT54G sitting around doing nothing as I gave up on the wireless idea in my apartment due to various interference, so I bridged the X5 so that it only works as an ADSL modem and then passes all traffic to the WRT54G. With WRT54G doing the firewalling and the routing, so far there's been no lockups/resets, alas it's a bit early for a final judgement. We'll see...

Concur with separaring modem function and router.
There are three P2P gaming wifi routers out there that are good. The DLINK DGL 4300, Trendnet TEW-611BRP and Zyxel X-550 wifi routers. The trendnet and zyxel have Mimo Wifi. the DLINK has gigabit ports. The zyxel has a USB port for windows quick connect - d/l wifi settings and via XP upload to PCs. (JR Music has rebate for the x-550 at $69).

Thanks for the recommendations. May come handy in the future.

Another follow-up: Zoom's tech support suggested "fix" was to limit the number of simultaneous p2p connections (in Azureus) to 60. I had it set to 100 before.

Right now with the Linksys I have the limit set 300 and no resets at all.

@Anav

The DLINK 4300/4000 has same problem i guess as the others i guess. I have noticed that my connection gets slow as hell when i do heavy bittorrent downloads, many peers. Have about a thousand now, and normally it's about then it jerks of and get slow. If i force it some more it will hang up...

I thought something was wrong with it, but after reading this and more about this problem, it seams it's a normal problem that can't really be solved.

Wonder if it's overload on the cpu or just a cap limit of sessions.

I know the fix for this, I've got the same one.

Telnet into the router.
Use the command "modify nbsize maxipsess 512"
Followed by "commit"

And everything should work. Zoom doesn't seem to know how to fix the problem, because I had the same thing with multiple multiplayer games going on at once.

Basically the chip+firmware is very similar to the Netgear DM602 router.

Hello,

I have Zoom 5585, but wasn't able to telnet - connect failed on port 23. Could you help me please, how to access CLI ?

--
Thanks,
Eugene.

Well, I had thought this fixed the problem.. it helped delay it a little bit, but it didn't last.

I'm currently awaiting my new router, and I'm going to use the modem in bridge mode to get around this annoying restriction.

Btw: Zoom's tech support sucks. 6/15/2005 they told me there was going to be a firmware patch to fix the issue. 3/25/2006, they are telling me the exact same thing. I really don't think I'll be buying zoom products again, which is a shame, because aside from that bug, it's an excellent product.

You may want to try following rocomendation from corz.org:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Whenever I startup (insert app like eMule/KAD/WinMX/etc) everything else dies!
This is similar to the above problem, your capacity has been reached, but this time it is your "Maximum TCP Sessions" limit which has been reached. By default, it's 192. If you tweak it to 512..

modify nbsize maxipsess 512

you can do a whole lot more before your limit is reached.

The next thing you can do about this, is make those old sessions die faster. By default, the voyager will keep these sessions open for quite some time. Some applications; p2p apps, games, etc, can open loads of connexions really quickly (KAD likes to open zillions of connexions), and unless you set a low "timeout", the old ones will keep hanging around, open, preventing you from making new connexions. The simple solution is to reduce the timeouts..

modify nat global udptimeout 20

modify nat global tcpidletimeout 3600

modify nat global tcpclosewait 30

modify nat global tcptimeout 20

commit always do this after entering good commands!

These are suggested guidelines. Check page 255 of the cli reference for more details. Experiment to find the values best suited to your internet usage. Game players will probably want to take the UDP timeout right down to maybe 4 or 5. The numbers above should work well for most setups.

note: even with these tweaks, you will still need to limit the maximum number of connexions inside the application. check out the recipes page for details of particular applications.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Interesting to know, would it help ?
--
Eugene.

Tried that.. more info available at »corz.org/comms/hardware/ ··· w-to.php

I'll be using it in bridge mode shortly, to get around it, so it doesn't matter to me. Got a nice gigabit ethernet router too.