Linksys router, is it broken, or just plain evil?

[Fixxors]

Hi folks, I have a webserver I run from home. Its a nice pc on a good connection. I have all our PC's on a hub, and from the hub I have the webserver behind the linksys router. Thus it is protected by the firewall whilst the other pcs use other static IP addresses for other nerdly shtuff I do. I do use the NAT and DHCP of the router and have forwarded port 80 to the webserver's IP.

NOw the issue:

If I hook up the webserver directly to the hub it goes fast

If I hook up the webserver to the router it lags and hangs.
Sometimes a page will load in seconds, sometimes it lags a bit, and sometimes it hangs on a certain picture file (oftain a background) for looong periods of time.

Put the router in front of the hub, same issue.

use the router alone, same issue.

use the hub or connect right to the modem, fast as can be.

I upgraded firmware and it was no help.

COuld it be that the domain name is bound to 66.122.90.221 which goes to the router, but the webserver is at an internal IP?

Any help is greatly GREATLY appreciated...

 

[skyking]

I am using much the same situation at an office i administer for, with an smc router. I notice your pages are loading OK now.
I suggest you do not use DHCP at all in this configuration, and assign a static IP to the webserver. It sounds like you are only trying to employ the firewall features of the router in this case, and it is a poor firewall at best.
If you want a firewall in front of your server, consider one of the boxed firewalls, or build a 'nix 486 firewall.

 

[Fixxors]

thanks for checking it out!

yes im only usin it for a firewall, and only because ive found software firewalls like zonealarm like to make trouble.

have any boxed firewalls you'd recomend? (cost is an issue)

 

[cmetz]

You didn't say which Linksys router you have, but the general answer is the same. The SOHO routers are made to do PAT from a 10/100 internal network to a cable modem or DSL external WAN connection. They normally can only deliver on the scale of 5-10Mb/s of network throughput, because they're architected as two Ethernet interfaces and some low-cost/low-power/moderate-speed CPU (e.g., ARM). For a cable modem or DSL connection, the WAN is the bottleneck and you don't as much notice the performance of the SOHO router. But inside a LAN, switching from a 100Mb/s switched connection (or a 100Mb/s full duplex = 200Mb/s) to going through a device that can handle an aggregate of 5-10Mb/s... you're definitely going to be bottlenecking on the SOHO router and notice.

My suggestion is to get a spare PC and put OpenBSD or Linux on it and to build a PC-based firewall to wrap around your web server. You will still have a performance decrease, but not nearly as much. A fairly beefy network-only PC can be built for not a whole lot of money these days (if you build one, you should be able to build a totally adequate box for circa $200, just omit things like video and CD and such).

 

[skyking]

Linksys router, is it broken, or just plain evil?

I vote for evil

 

[Fixxors]

hehe

 

[piasabird]

The standard Linksys Wired 4 Port Router has a WAN port that is 10 Mbps speed. That limits the total bandwidth if a lot is being transmitted to and from multiple users. I think their firewall router uses a 10/100 WAN port. It is possible their 8 port version has a 10/100 port also.

 

[PCMarine]

Ewww Linksys routers Not only are they suited for the average n00b, but they are slower than molasas(sp?). Mmmmm...my Asante 10/100 router with print server is great...

 

[minendo]

Originally posted by: PCMarine
Ewww Linksys routers Not only are they suited for the average n00b, but they are slower than molasas(sp?). Mmmmm...my Asante 10/100 router with print server is great...

Not if you know how to correctly configure them.

 

[Jackal&Cash]

Originally posted by: skyking

Linksys router, is it broken, or just plain evil?

I vote for evil

Another vote for evil. Their tech cant even program the damn firmware right. They might fix one thing but then other problem pop-up. Firmware after firmware and they still haven't fix the reboot problem on my router.

 

[cmetz]

Jackal&Cash, if you haven't already, try going to the dslreports.com forums' Linksys forum and posting a detailed description of your problems. There are several Linksys employee techs there who seem to be pretty helpful. You should try to communicate the problem to the people who can actually cause it to get fixed and give them the chance. If Linksys engineering knows about the problem and doesn't do anything to fix it, then that speaks very poorly of Linksys (I specifically say engineering, because almost always in my experience, anyone's "tech support" is worthless if you have an actual bug in the product you want to get fixed). Yes, it shouldn't have bugs to begin with, but anyone who's done real software development knows that's a lot easier said than done. So often the question is, when presented with a problem, do they actually put forth the effort and fix it.

Unfortunately, all of the SOHO routers are very solidly in the realm of you get what you pay for. None of these vendors have an all-star software team doing their firmware. And I have a feeling that these vendors' tech support is, uh, PC industry standard.