RT31P2 Firmware memory Leak?

Posts: 4 · Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2005 8:04 am Post subject: RT31P2 Firmware memory Leak?

I have had Vonage for about 2 months now. For the most part the service has been great. I plug my router in and everything is great for about 1 week, then, things start to go wrong. after about 2 weeks of "up time" for the router, I get a many different "symptoms" that I have seen in different posts.

There is a noticeable call delay, up to 2 seconds after you pick up the phone on answer before either party can hear each other.
The sound quality gets worse and worse
There is an echo while talking
The internet connection slows down
The administrator website on the linksys router stops rendering correctly and/or certain pages won't render at all.

I have seen all these symptoms in other posts, but not all together.

I have tried to click the "Save Changes" on the router admin page to force the router to do a soft restart, and that makes no difference.

Then I am forced to unplug the router, wait a couple minutes, and plug it back in. It reboots fine, and then the phone service is back, and everything is excellent again.
perfect sound quality, no call delay, no echo, the internet is back to full speed. As I said before, this lasts about a week before the whole cycle starts again.

The house is wired with Cat5 so there are no wireless internet issues. My previous router was a dlink. I did not have any internet connection issues before the new Vonage linksys router, as I have had my cable modem and home network running for well over a year now.

I realize that restarting a router is a fact of life once in a while, but with every other router I have owned, this was only necessary maybe once a month, or so. It will get annoying if i have to unplug my router every week to maintain phone quality.

It sounds like a memory leak in my firmware?

Posts: 66 · Full Forum Member Joined: Feb 07, 2005 Posts: 66

I beleive a lot of people have noticed the firewall on that unit is not as goos as the Bigger units. Such as the WRT54GS. There are a bunch of folks putting that router behind the WRT so it can perform the Firewall better.

Posts: 482 · Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2005 1:22 am Post subject:

Actually it's not the firewall, it's the QoS in the WRT (esp. w/3rd-party firmware) that makes the difference.

Posts: 4 · Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2005 7:50 am Post subject:

Thanks for the responses. I was hoping to not have to buy another router. As a rule, I don't like Linksys routers, as I have owned several and had nothing but problems with all of them. I have had better luck with DLINK, I had a DI-624 before Vonage. I gave it to my brother when I got the new linksys Vonage router though...

I had tried emailing customer care about this in hopes that I could get the new firmware version, see if that made a difference. I put all this same info in my email to CC, and 3 minutes later I got an automated response with lots troubleshooting hints for wireless networks (which I told them I didn't have in the email). That was several days ago, and no other communication from CC. I know I am beating a dead horse here as this seems to be a common theme in many other posts.

There was a post from ssantana, which gave instructions to PM to get the new firmware version. I did that 2 weeks ago, and have not heard from anyone from Vonage. I am still running the old firmware version.

The one change I did make to the settings after I got the router from Vonage was the QOS. It came set to 256. This killed my download times. I had read about this in other posts. I changed it to "Auto". This seemed to fix my download issues and the voice quality was good. Maybe this is part of the problem? I was hoping to avoid the trial and error approach to this setting as I have to power cycle the router to get the setting to take effect.

Don't know if newer firmware will help of not, but I also don't know how to get it...

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 24, 2005 Posts: 3

I noticed similar problems. I managed to get through to Linksys "live on line" technical support. (You type in questions and wait for typed in answers). The technician kept asking questions about how many extensions I have plugged into the phone line (Answer = 4 to 5, through my house wiring). When I asked if there was a problem with a too high ring equivalent current, they stopped answering.
Since then I've disconnected the oldest phone and only have wall powered phones like cordless models. It may be slightly better now. I "only need to reboot every other week..

Posts: 4 · Posted: Fri Apr 01, 2005 5:55 pm Post subject:

Well, it appears that the firmware gods are smiling on me finally. I had to restart my router, again, and, golly-gee, a new firmware version. I am up to version 1.28.00. QOS for Voice was defaulted to 256 again. And, again, my download speed was terrible. I noticed that the "Auto" setting for voice QOS is now gone. I set the Voice QOS to 30, based on other posts that I have read. I'll keep you posted.

Posts: 84 · Posted: Fri Apr 01, 2005 6:55 pm Post subject:

I too noticed I was automatically updated to 1.28.00. My QOS was at 512, not 256 as you said yours was reverted back to.

Posts: 16 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Mar 09, 2005 Posts: 16

I recently got the 1.28.00 firmware upgrade and my QoS is now set to 512! Seems awfully high to me and it seems my 4.5mb download speed has taken quite a hit as well. Any ideas/suggestions? Is that too high?

Posts: 4 · Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2005 5:33 am Post subject:

Well, I thought that maybe, since QOS enabled home routers are kinda a new thing, that maybe turning off QOS might help. Another person from another thread had tried that. I did notice voice quality problems while downloading large files. Currently, I have mine set to 90k, sound quality is good, but, download speed takes a hit. I think I will go back to 30k, I had tried that before, sound quality was good, and download speeds were good as well. I wish I could get some better info about this setting in direct relation to Vonage, but...

As far as the firmware upgrade... I don't know what the fixes were in this version. As other people have said in other threads, I haven't noticed much difference. I am still having to do a hard restart of the router once a week to maintain sound quality and to maintain effectiveness of my home network. The only difference I have noticed with the new firmware, is that my download speeds seem to be fine, only the voice quality starts to go down the toilet, after a week.

Posts: 25 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Apr 27, 2005 Posts: 25

mcdowelljc wrote:

I beleive a lot of people have noticed the firewall on that unit is not as goos as the Bigger units. Such as the WRT54GS. There are a bunch of folks putting that router behind the WRT so it can perform the Firewall better.

Why not reverse it and put the P2 ahead of the WRT and put the WRT in the DMZ of the P2. This way you rely on the WRT (or any router for that matter) for firewall, LAN, mac filtering, DHCP, etc. and still get QoS.