Anyone know how to deal with troublesome routers?
We have a DLink DIR-615. It seems to be rather aggressive in closing /any/ connection that it sees idle for more than even a minute. This includes instant messengers such as AIM, and pretty much any of my telnet connections. (It seems to kill telnet connections if there is no out going, regardless of any incoming traffic.) There was something I found online that talked about keeplive settings in the reg keys of windows. Turns out it only works as long as a program knows about it and calls on it. I've had problems like this with routers before, but not quite as aggressive. I'm tempted to flash the firmware of the router with something called DD-WRT just so I can get the proper settings to work with, but I would have to ask the room mate who it belongs to. Unless someone could suggest something else? For now, tweeking the port forwarding for each of my connections seems to work but I'm limited on how many connections I can set. And I have to know the actual ports and address every connection goes to. (no idea where aim connects out to or the port)
Heh. That's the older version of my current router.
http://www.dlink.ca/products/?pid=565 (http://www.dlink.ca/products/?pid=565)
Try doing a firmware update. (Click Support Resources)
That was one of the first things I did, was to check the loaded firmware. It already has the latest version in it. I've made a stop-gap for the time being by adding a timer that goes off ever 55seconds through my mushclient so it keeps the connection going. Its a little messy but it'll have to do for now. The hardware that D-Link makes is alright, it is the firmware that they install which isn't the greatest. There is no way to change the idle connection time-outs. I found an open source firmware that would help alleviate my problems but my room mate want to fix her problems with her wireless connection first. Placing the router closer to the center of the suite instead fixed that problem. Now its just a matter of catching her when she isn't in her room to talk about my problem next.
Another thing to try is loading an older firmware onto the device. On my old DLink SuperG, the newer firmware caused the wifi to completely stop working after it was powered on for more than 12 hours. Flashing a new firmware broke it worse, but older fixed it.
I have an open source firmware I'm looking at putting into it called DD-WRT. It's suppose to open up a whole bunch of new options and settings that I can use. Though, like I said.. I need to wait till I had talked to the room mate about working it first. And at a time when everyone is ok for me to do so. I read some reports that other firmware for it wasn't any better but the DD-WRT had pretty much made it work a whole lot better.
Well, good luck with that. There probably is no warrenty anymore anyhow.
Hammer?
I've literally never had a router that worked perfectly. It seems like they all suck in SOME way.
My current router, also a dlink, almost never has a problem. My ISP (Telus) has problems eay more often than my router. But then, given the company, that really isn't saying much.
My last D-Link - I think it was a DI-624 - crapped out in some kind of way, but I don't quite remember what it was. My current one is a Belkin N1, which has been all right. I was thinking it was causing my occasional telnet freezes to Taps, but if I do it through my shell account I get no freezes between here and there but still freezes on Taps, so I think it's either Taps itself or something in between there and both my remote host and my network here.