UVerse RG + WRT-54GL (dd-wrt v24-sp2 13064) + 10 Minute DHCP Lease = Frustration

[RealSkudd]

I have spent a large amount of time trying to research this issue but have come up empty-handed, as none of the solutions I've found have been helpful to me.

My configuration is pretty simple:

UVerse RG -> Linksys WRT-54GL -> Home network

The  Linksys router is configured in the DMZ-Plus of the RG, and is currently running the most recent dd-wrt firmware (as of a couple of weeks ago when I last spent time working on this issue).

 The Linksys router is configured to obtain an IP on the WAN interface via DHCP, which seems to work okay. However, the lease it is given is done so with a 10 minute expire. Under normal conditions, this would be fine, as the client obtaining the IP would just receive the same information and take no action. However, anything that is connected to the RG in this manner (I've tried the Tomato and factory firmwares on my Linksys) yields the same results: All existing connections are dropped, as if the RG cycled the ports. This is happening every 10 minutes exactly, and the most detail I get from my router's logs is the restart of all services, which is triggered when the WAN link is brought down and/or up.

 All my research has pointed me to the firewall settings in my router, in that they have been blocking the DHCP updates from the RG. Well, this isn't exactly right, as I have completely disabled the firewall and the same thing happens. I have even inserted explicit rules in the firewall of the router, as per the numerous links that are likely to be suggested in response to this thread, and none of them give me any relief from this rather irritating issue.

I have attempted to contact the UVerse support for this issue, but I suspect that ticket volumes are high enough that my request has been either triaged as low priority, or it just hasn't reached a front row seat in the queue yet.

Can anyone offer any suggestions or help on this matter? I'm getting very irritated with having to reconnect to my SSH sessions every 10 minutes because this is happening, but I really need to be able to use my Linksys router for QoS and more controlled port forwarding.

Thanks. 

[nwrickert]

What's the LAN IP for the WRT-54GL?

In particular, make sure that it is not 192.168.1.x, because that conflicts with the RG LAN ip range.

Incidently, I'm running a ZyXEL router behind the RG and I am not having any problems with it renewing its lease.

[RealSkudd]

I switched the LAN network of the Linksys to 192.168.2.x, so that's not the issue. In fact,
the LAN side isn't the issue at all; it's the WAN side. The Linksys router is getting the
public IP thanks to being in the DMZ-Plus setting, but that's where the problem lies. When
the lease on the WAN expires, everything gets a hard reset, it seems.

I'm going to try flashing to the latest dd-wrt and see if that
fixes it, but I'm not convinced that it will.

Edit: I thought dd-wrt published a new release since I last flashed the
router, but they haven't.

Message Edited by RealSkudd on 01-17-2010 08:07 AM

[nwrickert]

The linksys is supposed to renew its lease after 5 minutes, instead of waiting until it expires after 10 minutes.  If it were doing that properly, you would not be having problems.  For some reason, the lease renewal is failing.  The last thread on a similar issue with dd-wrt turned out to involve the firewall, so you might want to recheck that.

It might be useful to plug a computer directly intot the RG (so it gets a 192.168.1.x IP address), and then attempt to communicate with that from behind your linksys.  That would be to test whether packets can get through to the RG wan.

If all else fails, a workaround is for you to statically define the WAN ip of your linksys.  You then become independent of DHCP renewals.  The downside is that you will have a problem if the dynamically assigned public IP ever changes.  However, people have been reporting that they have keep to same IP for a year or more.

[RealSkudd]

I hadn't considered that little troubleshooting technique. I'm certain it's not the firewall on the Linksys that's causing the issues though, as there have been absolutely no dropped or rejected connections since I have turned off the multicast filtering. 

I'll give the other bit a try though and report my results. 

[RealSkudd]

Well, no dice. I whipped up a single-threaded python script to act as a server which wrote a single "." character to the connected client every second. I then connected to that script in a loop from my linux box using netcat, sleeping 10 seconds between iterations. I then connected my laptop (which was running the python script) to the RG directly via a wired connection, disabled the wifi card on said laptop, then pointed the linux box (behind the Linksys) to the script running on my laptop. Over a course of 2 hours, no connections or disconnections were logged, other than the initial connection and disconnections. 

This is really weird, and suggests to me that it's an issue with the bridge in the RG between the DMZ-Plus-enabled connection and the WAN connection, or something of the sort. Regardless, I'm all out of ideas and I'm starving for a solution. :-/ 

[paperbag]

I have UVerse RG + WRT54GL (Ver.4.30.13) + 10 mins. DHCP Lease = no problem.  RG is 192.168.1.254 and WRT54GL is 192.168.2.1 in DMZ Plus.  It's been running smooth in this setup before I upgraded to WRT160NV3 because I wanted to run wireless-n.

On a side note, I've been playing with the Buffalo WHRG300N router with dd-wrt (firmware 13064) and it can cause the RG to crash where I have to reset the RG to factory default to get my TV services to work again.  While running dd-wrt, my son's friends has reported to him that he goes online/offline every 10 mins on AOL IM.  I went back to the WRT54GL because I got tired of troubleshooting the online/offline stuff with dd-wrt and Buffalo router.

I would recommend you to flash back to Ver. 4.30.13 and do a hard reset of the WRT54GL and reconfigure again.  If you are in DMZ Plus, your ip address on the linksys router should not start with 192.168.x.x.  Mine is 240.67.x.x  Good luck and I hope you find the problem.

[SomeJoe7777 ACE - Geek]

Also make sure that the LAN IP address of your 2nd router (whatever brand it is and whatever firmware it is running) is not the same subnet as the RG.  The RG by default uses addresses in the 192.168.1.0/24 subnet.  Your LAN subnet on your router must be different. 192.168.2.0/24 is one example.

If the subnets are the same, there will be problems, including potentially this DHCP renewal issue.

[RealSkudd]

I apologize if the tone of this response is less than positive, but did you really even read the thread? I stated above that the Linksys is running on 192.168.2.* (the same as .2.0/24). While your information may be helpful to others, it's not really helpful in this particular thread.

[SomeJoe7777 ACE - Geek]

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RealSkudd wrote:
I apologize if the tone of this response is less than positive, but did you really even read the thread? I stated above that the Linksys is running on 192.168.2.* (the same as .2.0/24). While your information may be helpful to others, it's not really helpful in this particular thread.

---

Yep, my bad.  Went and replied this morning before I had coffee, and only about 1/4 of what was in the thread made it into my brain.

As I was unaware that mistakes weren't permitted in your thread, I'll refrain from posting further.

[nwrickert]

If you have not already seen it, take a peek at this thread:

 http://utalk.att.com/utalk/board/message?board.id=Uverse_TV_Equipment&message.id=34933#M34933

[RealSkudd]

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SomeJoe7777 wrote:

As I was unaware that mistakes weren't permitted in your thread, I'll refrain from posting further.

---

Okay, that's taking it to a little of an extreme. I worked tier 1 and tier 2 technical support for the web hosting industry for 2 years and this was a problem that even our own techs couldn't overcome. As I said though, while your suggestion may be helpful to others, it wasn't in my particular situation.

[RealSkudd]

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paperbag wrote:

I would recommend you to flash back to Ver. 4.30.13 and do a hard reset of the WRT54GL and reconfigure again.  If you are in DMZ Plus, your ip address on the linksys router should not start with 192.168.x.x.  Mine is 240.67.x.x  Good luck and I hope you find the problem.

---

Well, while this did solve the problem of the resets, I'm back to the land of the primitive in regards to what I can do with my router. This has given me a very helpful stepping point though, so thanks! 

[RealSkudd]

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nwrickert wrote:

If you have not already seen it, take a peek at this thread:

 http://utalk.att.com/utalk/board/message?board.id=Uverse_TV_Equipment&message.id=34933#M34933

---

Yeah, I have already seen that thread and many others like it, hence my comment about "the numerous links that are likely to be suggested in response to this thread" in the initial post of this thread. Thanks though.

[fgriffintx]

Did you ever achieve a solution? I am struggling up the learning curve, and my goal is to install a WRT54GL to serve as a wireless access point closer to a "remote" PC that is getting a too-weak signal from the UVerse RG. I want to plug this Linksys router into the RG and run a Cat 5 cable partway across the house.

My first dumb question is: " Is the WRT54GL the best device for this purpose, or should I get some other Linksys box that would be easier to configure?"

The second dumb question is: "Does there exist anywhere a step-by-step set of instructions that are specific to the Uverse RG box, that explain how to install a router to extend the range of the signal?" There must be more than a few people who have the same problem (weak wireless signal). I have read a number of erudite-seeming suggestions to do this or that to solve a problem, but is it unreasonable to ask for a fool-proof procedure (say with a main-line vendor like Cisco) that will work in a plain-vanilla environment?

[Glynne]

Thank you for posting this topic!  I've been struggling with this issue for as long as we have had Uverse (10 months!)  Never thought to check the DHCP leases.  Now I have a place to look anyway.

For those out there wondering why I don't just use AT&T supplied services and hardware.  The Linksys with this firmware gives me access to my network remotely by VPN.  This is handy for security when I'm away.  If AT&T even offered such a service it would come at $$$ and likely have bloatware attached with it!

Thanks again.

Glynne

[paperbag]

If you have a weak signal to your linksys router, buy some wireless-n adapter card.  I have a belkin wireless-n pci card (room 1) and a linksys wireless-n notebook (room 2) card on 2 pcs with 5 bars rating.  I recommended this to a friend and now his son has 5 bars on his pc on the 2nd floor of his house.  He didn't have to go out and buy a wireless-n router.

[naren8642]

I am seeing the same (kind of) issue too! I have a linksys wrt54g v2 router behind my UVerse RG. I am trying to set up the linksys to run vpnc to my company's network. vpnc keeps dying every 10 mins. My friend suggested a shell script to keep pinging a machine in the company and then restart vpnc automatically if it fails. That seems very hackish not to mention I will have a glitch in the connection every 10 mins. 

Any ideas yet? TIA.

[naren8642]

Well, what do you know. Maybe this is the answer!

http://svn.dd-wrt.com:8000/dd-wrt/ticket/973

[_luc_]

How is your WRT54 configured for the WAN interface?  If it is on DHCP (default), it gets a 192.168.1.xxx address from the 2wire gateway, and NOT the public address you mention in your post....  Any details on how to get the public address to the WRT router behind the 2 wire 3600HGV RG would be greatly appreciated!

[_luc_]

found the answer - thank you!

http://forums.att.com/t5/High-Speed-Internet-Access/Using-my-own-router-is-this-possible/m-p/2558691...

[CompRepairGurus]

Came up with a fix for this awhile back. Here's a link to the article we wrote on our repair blog detailing the fix. If it helped, leave a comment. 

http://www.comprepairgurus.com/att-u-verse2wire-gateway-and-dd-wrt-router-in-dmz-mode/

This fix should be valid on all DD-WRT configured devices configured with an external IP via DMZ. Our devices to date being WRT54G V3/V5/V6/V7, WRT54GS V7, WRT54GL, TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND, and most recently an ASUS RT-N16. Works everytime.

[caitifty]

I had the same problem with a WRT54 running gargoyle (dd-wrt with a slighly simpler gui) and found this on a dd-wrt forum board which completely solved the problem for me:

from another machine connected to the wrt54, if mac or linux, open a terminal and type:

ssh root@[wrt's ip address]

on windows download putty and enter username root and hostname [wrt's ip address]

in either case the password for the root user is the admin password you use for web-based administration.  Once you're connected, do:

iptables -I INPUT -p udp --sport 67 --dport 68 -j ACCEPT

exit