OT: Linksys Router Misbehaviour

Home » CentOS » OT: Linksys Router Misbehaviour
CentOS 9 Comments

I’m running a Linksys WRT54GL router from my CentOS-7 home server. Every now and then (maybe once every 2 days) the router’s WiFi cuts out, and I’ve found no way to solve this except to disconnect the power from the router, wait 10 seconds and then re-connect. This always works. The router is running under dd-wrt.

My question is – which makes it a tiny bit CentOS-related –
does anyone with such a router know of a way to wake the router up in such a case through the computer?

I wouldn’t have dared to ask this question here or anywhere until recently, as I assumed my ancient Linksys routers were obsolete. But I’ve been reading posts recently saying that there hasn’t really been a Linux router to replace the WRT54GL, and in particular Linksys’s recent 11n replacement is not as good as the old model in many ways.

Anyway, if anyone has an answer to my query I should be very grateful.

I have a couple of IP cameras working by WiFi on the computer, which I can look at remotely. I’ve connected one by TP-Link through the router, and this doesn’t cut out, but it is not wholly satisfactory. But this shows that the router is alive and well, only its WiFi side is failing.

9 thoughts on - OT: Linksys Router Misbehaviour

  • I think it depends on how it cuts out. I had an old ASUS router running openwrt which had some issues with its wireless. My workaround was to run a cronjob in router that would do

    wifi up

    every hour or so.

  • You may be able to browse to the router’s web page and find a clicable thingy there somewhere that does a reboot. I used to run that exact combination, but no longer have one around to look at, so I don’t recall any details.

    or if you can run a cron job on it, you may be able to reboot that way.

    Also note another poster suggested another way to do it via cron.

    Fred

  • thats a very odd statement. the radios on the WRT54Gx family were nowhere near as good as the N600 and such newer radios. the WRT54’s had very slow processors.

  • John R Pierce wrote:

    My broadband speed is 6.58Mbps.
    (I am in a fairly remote location.)
    I connect to my router/access point at close to the advertised speed of 54Mbps, so I don’t think there is any danger of taxing the router. I don’t think the router’s speed makes much difference unless the broadband connection is an order of magnitude greater than mine.

    I notice that the Linksys WRT54GL is still recommended by the dd-wrt wiki,
    <http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Index:FAQ
    #Which_router_should_I_buy.3F>.

  • you don’t use your network for anything other than internet access?

    I only ever saw my WRT54GS (original version, same hardware as the GL
    but with more memory) hit 50Mbps under totally optimal conditions, with a single client active, doing a single 1-way transfer, and within 30
    feet line of sight of the access point. as soon as you have two active wireless guests, the total bandwidth gets throttled, and if you’re more than 30′ away the speed falls off rapidly. even using range extender antennas on the WRT54GS, I get much better range with any of several
    802.11n class wifi access points, including a netgear N600 (WDR3600 or something?) and a UniFi AP.

  • Asus RT-AC68U

    Apparently wonderfully fast 2.4 and 5.8 GHz wifi but only for fibre/cable – no ADSL.

  • I’m running a Linksys WRT54GL router from my CentOS-7 home server. Every now and then (maybe once every 2 days) the router’s WiFi cuts out, and I’ve found no way to solve this except to disconnect the power from the router, wait 10 seconds and then re-connect. This always works. The router is running under dd-wrt.

    My question is – which makes it a tiny bit CentOS-related –
    does anyone with such a router know of a way to wake the router up in such a case through the computer?

    I wouldn’t have dared to ask this question here or anywhere until recently, as I assumed my ancient Linksys routers were obsolete. But I’ve been reading posts recently saying that there hasn’t really been a Linux router to replace the WRT54GL, and in particular Linksys’s recent 11n replacement is not as good as the old model in many ways.

    Anyway, if anyone has an answer to my query I would be very grateful.

    I have a couple of IP cameras working by WiFi on the computer, which I can look at remotely. I’ve connected one by TP-Link through the router, and this doesn’t cut out, but it is not wholly satisfactory.

  • Very OT, but I haven’t run a commercial based FW for many moons. Figure out your Fw distro of choice and run to that, my firewalls have uptimes in the year time frames. Lots of choices then use your linksys as an AP.