Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 21:02 Post subject: Unstable WDS Connection with v23 SP1 Final on WRT54GL1.1
Hello i've got a problem with my WDS Network.
First of all heres a map of my current Wifi Network:
WRT54GL #1 is connected to the Internet via ADSL. My PC is connected over the wire. Its also connected with WRT54GL #2 over WDS. The WRT54GL #3 will be connected to #2 over WDS in the future. Most of the time the 2 Laptops are using WRT #2 because its signal is stronger in the room where they are used, but the Signal of WRT #1 is still quite good there.
The WRT's are configured as G-Only with WPA-PSK TKIP Encryption on Channel 1. There are some other WLANs around but they are running at channel 8 and 11 so they shouldnt cause trouble. All the Clients get there ip over DHCP.
Now the trouble is that sometimes the laptops (connected to WRT #2) are running without any troubles. (They can reach WRT #1). Then one of the Laptops is suddenly losing its assigned IP and Windows shows that er is trouble with the Connection. The Signal strength shows very good. And i can't reconnect to the Network. After rebooting the Router all works well. Then after some time (days, hours, minutes how WRT#2 likes it) all the laptops are losing the assigned ip address.
If i configure static ips, i cant ping anything of the network not even WRT #2. After a reboot all works great for some days or an hour depending on the current weather or something.
When one of the laptops stop working, and i went into the room where WRT #1 is situated, it reconnects to the network properly after some time. If i move back to the other room it stops working after a minute or something. And when powering down WRT #2 then the Laptops work well too because theres no WDS involved i assume.
Please report if, after several days of router uptime, clients cannot join the network anymore. Or better, they say they are associated but the routers dont show so. In this case you should find that the nas process in the router has died.
to check this, telnet the faulty router, do a ps and see if nas is running.
my router died again some minutes ago and i did a ps on my WRT #2. And you are right nas is not running anymore. If i start it again with the command
Quote:
/usr/sbin/nas /tmp/nas.lan.conf /tmp/nas.lan.pid lan &
then it works again for 1 or 2 minutes.
After that, it dies with the message
Quote:
[1] + Segmentation fault /usr/sbin/nas /tmp/nas.lan.conf /tmp/nas.lan.pid lan
I also think that load on the wireless interface causes the service to die, because after i started a real live video stream on Laptop #1, Laptop #2 can't reconnect anymore, as long as the nas isnt started again.
Is there any Statement from Brainslayer to this problem ?
Joined: 07 Jun 2006 Posts: 198 Location: Parma - Italy
Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2006 15:23 Post subject:
Himmi wrote:
Hello,
my router died again some minutes ago and i did a ps on my WRT #2. And you are right nas is not running anymore. If i start it again with the command
Quote:
/usr/sbin/nas /tmp/nas.lan.conf /tmp/nas.lan.pid lan &
then it works again for 1 or 2 minutes.
After that, it dies with the message
Quote:
[1] + Segmentation fault /usr/sbin/nas /tmp/nas.lan.conf /tmp/nas.lan.pid lan
I also think that load on the wireless interface causes the service to die, because after i started a real live video stream on Laptop #1, Laptop #2 can't reconnect anymore, as long as the nas isnt started again.
Is there any Statement from Brainslayer to this problem ?
Himmi
Normally the problem takes longer (days) for me to develop. What kind of video stream were you using? And is this feature limited to SP1? Any success story with previous releases?
It is strange that nas dies only in WDS mode, since it is used in AP mode too. Definitely some expert should take care of this bug. I had to revert to WEP for now, but WPA is a must and WDS is useless without it.
Since you are easily able to crash the router, could you please try to invoke nas in this way
#!/bin/sh
killall nas
while [ 1 ]
do
/usr/sbin/nas /tmp/nas.lan.conf /tmp/nas.lan.pid lan
sleep 5
#write something in the log
done
today i connected my third WRT (#3) over WDS with my Network and after some time the nas process also died on this device. The strange thing is, that after nas died and i connect the laptop over wire with the WRT then the complete network works very well.
So even though nas has died the WRT's can speak with each other without problems. Only Clients are not able to connect anymore Very strange.
Shoud your script be started at the startup of the router? Or when should i invoke it?
I will test if it works for me. But i guess it will still be disconnected for a second or something.
So i will post my results in the next days.
Quote:
What kind of video stream were you using?
Im Using an Standard MPEG2 Stream with 1,4 to 3 GB per hour. This results in 5 to 12MBit /s traffic over the air.
Quote:
Any success story with previous releases?
I set up an WDS Connection with WRT54G V2.2 and WRT54G V3 devices 12 months ago and i used an DD-WRT 23 prefinal version. And that devices worked well. They have over 300days uptime without fault.
Joined: 07 Jun 2006 Posts: 198 Location: Parma - Italy
Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 10:18 Post subject:
Quote:
Shoud your script be started at the startup of the router? Or when should i invoke it?
If it is helpfull the right place for it would be immediately after booting, with
nvram set rc_startup="killall nvram..... &"
(mind the final &. Also there should be spaces around the 1 in [ 1 ]. Sorry if you are already a linux guru))
For the tests you could launch it from a telnet session, but be careful to use the ethernet connection since radio telnet will drop when nas crashes. This is better for the test since you can immediately see when it crashes and it is relaunched.
Ask if you need more guidance.
Quote:
Im Using an Standard MPEG2 Stream with 1,4 to 3 GB per hour. This results in 5 to 12MBit /s traffic over the air.
I was trying to replicate your results and I noticed another strange thing:
when my notebook is associated with the gateway router it transfers data at around 15 Mbps which more or less should be a good result.
When I'm associated with the wireless repeater, speed drops to 0.7 Mbps. I was expecting a 2X slowdown, not 20X!
Signals are good, same results with encryption off, static IPs, no dns, nothing weird in configuration.
Anyway I will start another thread about this when things will be clear.
Joined: 07 Jun 2006 Posts: 198 Location: Parma - Italy
Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 13:53 Post subject:
Alberto wrote:
I was trying to replicate your results and I noticed another strange thing:
when my notebook is associated with the gateway router it transfers data at around 15 Mbps which more or less should be a good result.
When I'm associated with the wireless repeater, speed drops to 0.7 Mbps. I was expecting a 2X slowdown, not 20X!
Signals are good, same results with encryption off, static IPs, no dns, nothing weird in configuration. .
A quick update: flashed with last unstable (0619) and speed is as it should:
10-12 Mbps gateway and about 5 Mbps wds client.
I'll flash back to sp1 final and see if I had some weird configuration thing.
Joined: 07 Jun 2006 Posts: 198 Location: Parma - Italy
Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 14:25 Post subject:
Alberto wrote:
Alberto wrote:
I was trying to replicate your results and I noticed another strange thing:
when my notebook is associated with the gateway router it transfers data at around 15 Mbps which more or less should be a good result.
When I'm associated with the wireless repeater, speed drops to 0.7 Mbps. I was expecting a 2X slowdown, not 20X!
Signals are good, same results with encryption off, static IPs, no dns, nothing weird in configuration. .
A quick update: flashed with last unstable (0619) and speed is as it should:
10-12 Mbps gateway and about 5 Mbps wds client.
I'll flash back to sp1 final and see if I had some weird configuration thing.
And now sp1 final (061906) is fast too. Don't know why. I checked the configuration many times before reflashing and I am quite sure that the setup is the same as when it was slow.
And now sp1 final (061906) is fast too. Don't know why. I checked the configuration many times before reflashing and I am quite sure that the setup is the same as when it was slow.
V23 SP1 is very fast in my opinion. I dont have any speed problems.
My WRT #3 which is connected over 2 WDS Links (should divide the transfer rate by 4x) works very well with 15Mbit Connection. The MPEG stream runs without problems.
I've tested your script. I wrote a file to /tmp and started it yesterday on 2 of my WRTs an they don't have crashed since that. I will monitor it the whole week.
your script works very well. i haven't got any disconnect since using your script. The only tricky thing is, that when changing something on the WLAN configuration over the Web INterface, a second NAS Process spawnes sometimes, which disables any wireless client to connect. Killing the script and the nas processes and starting your script again and all works fine. So i would like to see some version of this script in one of the next dd-wrt releases.
Joined: 06 Jun 2006 Posts: 7492 Location: Dresden, Germany
Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 17:05 Post subject:
the nas will be already automaticly restarted if a wds link gets broken. for me its more interesting why nas is crashing since i never saw this _________________ "So you tried to use the computer and it started smoking? Sounds like a Mac to me.." - Louis Rossmann https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL_5YDRWqGE&t=60s
Same issue here where the NAS stops function I have WDS setup with 2 WRT54gs's and WPA encryption after a small amount of time new wireless connections cannot connect anymore and the WDS client works and any hardwire machines work plugged into it but no go on anymore wifi connections.. Any ideas how to fix this? Or a firmware that WDS works on possible a older ver I have the latest of DD-Wrt? Thanks I am going nutz trying to get this up and running...
the nas will be already automaticly restarted if a wds link gets broken. for me its more interesting why nas is crashing since i never saw this
mhh ok thats interesting so since what DD-WRT Version is nas restarting automatically ? Because with my v23 SP1 from 16.05.06 its not restarting automatically.
I observed, that once the nas service crashed after i created heavy load over the wireless connection. I started an High Quality MPEG 2 Livestream on Laptop #1 and some seconds later, Laptop #2 was not able to connect over WLAN anymore. So it propably has something to do with high load on the WRT ?
Joined: 07 Jun 2006 Posts: 198 Location: Parma - Italy
Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2006 6:55 Post subject:
BrainSlayer wrote:
the nas will be already automaticly restarted if a wds link gets broken. for me its more interesting why nas is crashing since i never saw this
Is this automatic restart in the alpha builds? Is it performed every 2 minutes by check_ps? Anyway if I understand correctly, you are saying that it is restarted when the wds link gets broken, but this never happens. Even with nas not running the AP talks one with the other, I seem to remember. Only the clients are not able to associate.
About the reason of the crash: I don't have any clue. It goes down without any traffic, but Himmi noticed that this condition makes things worse.
Could you suggest some test? I'm setting up two routers for this purpose.
