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View Full Version : WL-500G instability and how to fix it.



Lurks
16-06-2004, 10:34
Hello, new user here. Nice to see there's a forum for this excellent router.

I'm the editor of a technical PC magazine and when I first saw the WL-500G, I knew it was something special. Sadly it also crashed inside of ten minutes when connecting to a moderately busy torrent.

It's not unusual in that regard, a lot of cheap routers do it but I expected better.

I reported the issue to Asus (at quite senior levels in several countries) and have received no real response. A new firmware came out (the latest on the Asus site) and I tried that. This improved the situation.

Now sometimes the router runs for a week but on a busy torrent, it can crash in a few hours.

What is a 'crash'. Difficult to say, I don't seem to get any detailed logs out of it other than obtaining DHCP leases. I'm baffled how some of you have gotten more detailed logs in these forums. I point the WL-500G at a syslog daemon running on a server and there's pretty much nothing in it.

Back to the crash. Router essentially stops routing. Switch still operational but the web interface fails to respond from the LAN side and the IP is not pingable from the WAN. A simple power cycle fixes it.

I've searched the forums and found reference to a setting increasing the size of a connections table. Then I just needed to work out how I make such a setting. I gather it's somehow connected with the custom firmwares posted here, which I take to mean - and really, if you've no idea what's going on it's all a bit of a stab in the dark - enables booting of a start up script from a USB flash media device?

That goes a bit beyond anything I want to achieve. First of all, I'm surprised there's not much mention of the stability problem here in this channel. The retail trade in the UK is very well aware of the stability problems of the unit and as a result, not many people stock it.

Yet for all that, it's the best domestic router I've used and I'd like it to work. Would anyone here be so good as to tell me in relative idiot terms how I might make that configuration adjustment mentioned in the other thread?

Many thanks for your patience. I've read a lot of posts before posting this thread so cut me some slack please.

-Lurks

Oleg
16-06-2004, 11:07
Please be sure you've firewall logging disabled, otherwise ASUS log will fill all the memory wl500g has and then strange things could happen.
As for connection tracking - you can execute arbitrary commands using the stock firmware backdoor, namely Main_AdmStatus_Content.asp. Just enter the command mentioned in the forum and press Refresh button to execute it.
Custom firmwares does not require USB drive or whatever. You just flash them as regular one. They provide the same things as stock firmwares and some other cool stuff. :)

Lurks
16-06-2004, 11:28
Please be sure you've firewall logging disabled, otherwise ASUS log will fill all the memory wl500g has and then strange things could happen.

Ahh right. I can't seem to find the log settings now, in the web interface. Hmm, strange - it's not on the Internet firewall page. I can't even find where I put the syslog daemon ip address in.

This is clearly a dumb question but would you happen to know what page that's in? I've RDC access to home so I can try it now. Maybe it'll stay up all day then...


As for connection tracking - you can execute arbitrary commands using the stock firmware backdoor, namely Main_AdmStatus_Content.asp.

Ah ha, that's what I need to know! Thank you very much.

With regards to the custom firmware. I looked at your page and couldn't immediately see why I'd want to install it other than the booting facility from USB and what have you. Oh and raw printing :)

-Lurks

Lurks
16-06-2004, 12:24
Worth mentioning, my problem is identical to that which is mentioned in the thread entitled "Something similar like the "wan port dies" issue". (http://wl500g.info/showthread.php?t=437)

Nice to see I'm not alone...

-Lurks