Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router • Hacker News Board

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#111

Post by jwr » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 9:19 AM UTC

Just as a data point on the Tomato firmware. I've been running it for about 2 years now, on two different hardware devices. It hangs every once in a while, the intervals range from several days to several weeks. I determined the culprit is QoS: if I disable all QoS, the device will run fine for months. Enabling it shortens the uptime to days or weeks at most.

Since I know this happens reproducibly on two different devices, I am certain it is the software. And unfortunately without QoS the Tomato firmware loses much of its appeal.

Unfortunately this is one of those "unreportable" bugs: there is no way to properly report it, much less have it debugged by original developers.

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#112

Post by buro9 » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 9:42 AM UTC

ZoFreX wrote: post #107

I'm done with routers. Totally fed up of them running out of RAM, taking too long to open new connections, not being able to open more connections if someone is using 200 to torrent, fed up of them forgetting static IP assignments, port forwards, upnp never working... I got fed up of all that and decided to do something about it. Routers have 8, 16mb of RAM? My worst computer that's lying around has 256mb. Slap anoth…

Your power and space and cost will all have been greater though.

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#113

Post by zalew » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 9:48 AM UTC

ZoFreX wrote: post #107

I'm done with routers. Totally fed up of them running out of RAM, taking too long to open new connections, not being able to open more connections if someone is using 200 to torrent, fed up of them forgetting static IP assignments, port forwards, upnp never working... I got fed up of all that and decided to do something about it. Routers have 8, 16mb of RAM? My worst computer that's lying around has 256mb. Slap anoth…

and how much power does it consume and how much noise it produces?

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#114

Post by speleding » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 10:30 AM UTC

jwr wrote: post #111

Just as a data point on the Tomato firmware. I've been running it for about 2 years now, on two different hardware devices. It hangs every once in a while, the intervals range from several days to several weeks. I determined the culprit is QoS: if I disable all QoS, the device will run fine for months. Enabling it shortens the uptime to days or weeks at most. Since I know this happens reproducibly on two different de…

QoS in your router is only interesting if bandwidth is constrained in your last mile, otherwise it just adds complexity. I would think that QoS in home routers is only a transitional technology for the next few years while not everyone has a large enough pipe yet.

Can you imagine your electricity or water outlet at home being constrained like bandwidth is? Those issues were solved a century ago, they'll get fixed for bandwidth too within our lifetime.

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#115

Post by jiggy2011 » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 10:48 AM UTC

orbitingpluto wrote: post #63

Running Linux? Avoid any ASUS routers unless you're flashing a new firmware. Awful experience. My last one was the N15. It wouldn't even give out a DHCP lease to two different computers and four different NICs. And, as for: "Ever sat in an internet shop, a hotel room or lobby, a local hotspot, and wondered why you can't access your email? Unknown to you, the guy in the next room or at the next table is hogging the in…

They are probably not trying to "take control of a limited resource". Most people don't think of bandwidth in that way.

I sometimes use the shared wifi on trains and overhear people who are confused as to why they can view webpages but 1080p video doesn't seem to stream very well.

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#116

Post by Terretta » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 10:59 AM UTC

mahrain wrote: post #105

I don't mean to shill, but after trying all kinds of Netgear, Linksys and ADSL Modem/router combi's, I really love my Apple Airport Extreme. I haven't had to reset it once in two years, and it's every bit as fast and reliable as a wired connection. They are sold as tag-on purchases but really are a hidden gem.

Especially if setting up a multi point WiFi network.

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#117

Post by nodata » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 11:21 AM UTC

orbitingpluto wrote: post #63

Running Linux? Avoid any ASUS routers unless you're flashing a new firmware. Awful experience. My last one was the N15. It wouldn't even give out a DHCP lease to two different computers and four different NICs. And, as for: "Ever sat in an internet shop, a hotel room or lobby, a local hotspot, and wondered why you can't access your email? Unknown to you, the guy in the next room or at the next table is hogging the in…

> Do I feel guilty about basically DoS? Really, no. If someone tries to take control of a limited resource... shit is going to happen.

Does that include a friendly chat with them?

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#118

Post by deelowe » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 11:34 AM UTC

jwr wrote: post #111

Just as a data point on the Tomato firmware. I've been running it for about 2 years now, on two different hardware devices. It hangs every once in a while, the intervals range from several days to several weeks. I determined the culprit is QoS: if I disable all QoS, the device will run fine for months. Enabling it shortens the uptime to days or weeks at most. Since I know this happens reproducibly on two different de…

I've been running tomato for probably 4 years and never had it hang (on 3 wrt54g routers I'll be replacing soon)

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#119

Post by rb12345 » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 11:48 AM UTC

krakensden wrote: post #101

sheraz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah -- I came across their site the other day. Would love to see some quantitative / qualitative numbers from that project.

They've done a bunch of work on reducing buffers and setting up AQM by default, and I've heard mumblings about improvements but can't find numbers. Closest thing I could find was this github repo: https://github.com/dtaht/deBloat/tree/master/test with lots of tests but no comparisons (stock OpenWRT vs ceroWRT would be interesting, for instance).

It's been a while since this was done, but as well as the AQM and Byte Queue Limit support, a lot of work was done on minimising unaligned access traps (http://www.bufferbloat.net/issues/360). The Linux networking stack assumes that IP packets are word-aligned, but Ethernet headers are usually 14 bytes. The specific Atheros chipset used in the WNDR3700/WNDR3800 does not pad Ethernet packets and does not support misaligned DMA, and so a lot of misaligned access traps were triggered. Fixing that resulted in a 15% increase in speed for IPv4, and a doubling in speed for IPv6 (https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2012-April...). As far as I can see, those patches did not get accepted into upstream OpenWRT, since these changes really should be made more generic and possibly pushed upstream. The patches would also hurt performance slightly in the case of properly-aligned packets.

Re: Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

#120

Post by jiggy2011 » Tue, Jun 19, 2012, 12:41 PM UTC

orbitingpluto wrote: post #80

awakeasleep wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain any more about how this works? I'm assuming you find someone with a high random port open, but I have no idea where to go from there. How would you go about flooding that connection? Are you relying on a card in passive mode to gather data and replay it? What do you use to replay?

nmap is smart enough to determine what service is being offered on a given port and what OS is running. The above combined with the offending computer usually being a Mac and it's named something like "Bob Smith's Computer" is enough to common-sense narrow it down within a minute or two without having to use passive mode. (Also with the repeat offender I kept his MAC handy.) Then just initiate as many TCP connections…

Won't the program listening on the socket just drop the connection if it's getting stuff that doesn't make sense or correspond to a session that it is aware of?

Or is the idea just to spam multiple connections?