Posts Tagged Linksys
Wireless Issues when making a VoIP call using a Linksys PAP2 and an Apple Airport Extreme Router
Posted by eric in Hardware, Internet, Networking on December 15, 2007
Hey Everyone!
Thought I’d post this little technical issue to my blog in hopes that someone else in the world has had the same issue I’m having right now and perhaps share their solution 
I have a Linksys PAP2 VoIP adapter (Firmware version 1.00.22) plugged into an Ethernet port on my Airport Extreme (Gig-E). I also have another Airport Extreme setup as a repeater in my home theater.
When I use my VoIP phone, my wireless clients internet connectivity slow to a crawl. While doing a ping to my gateway (10.0.1.1) I can see my response times become pretty erratic ranging form 50ms to 1600ms, with about 15% of the requests timeout.
I setup the PAP2 VoIP device with a static IP (10.0.1.5) and set it as the default host. My theory at the time was that since it was being NAT’d, the inbound UDP traffic was being transmitted across and flooding my wireless network.
This doesn’t seem to have fixed the problem. I experience this wireless slowdown on both my PC (Dell Precision laptop) and my Mac (PowerBook, MacBook) wireless clients.
Both my AirPort Extreme base stations are running the latest version of the firmware (7.2.1, I believe) and this issue does not happen to wired clients on my primary base station (where the PAP2 is plugged in).
Has anyone else experienced this problem or have any idea what could be happening? I’m hoping I’ll be able to locate a solution somewhere, but so far I haven’t found any resources online that would help.
Thanks!
How to install a Linksys WMP54G in Windows Vista
Posted by eric in Hardware, Windows Vista on June 18, 2007
Recently I moved my computer upstairs to make room in the downstairs office. I decided to just install a spare Linksys WMP54G PCI Wireless card that I had laying around in my “bin o’ hardware”. This was a fairly new card, as the hardware revision of it was v4.0 and the latest listed on Linksys.com was v4.1. I was running Windows Vista Ultimate so I figured Vista would have no problem auto-detecting and installing the card.
I downloaded and installed the only drivers Linksys had listed on their site for this card. It seemed to work, but not well. I couldn’t detect the SSID of my wireless network and even when I tried to manually configure it, the card would still refuse to connect. I did some research and it seems that only the WMP54G v4.1 has a Vista Certified driver from Linksys and it would not work with the v4.0 hardware. On the Linksys Vista Support page, I noticed this text at the bottom:
*If your Linksys product does not appear on any of these three lists, there is no plan to support the product with Windows Vista.
Thanks for the proverbial “dick in the ass” Linksys! Your ability to bend your customers over and give it to them hard never, ever ceases to amaze me.
After some frustrated Googling I found a couple blog entries that described the best way to install the drivers for this card: Let Windows search for an appropriate driver automatically and download it from Windows Update.
The only way I was able to do this was to put my computer back on the LAN by running a very, very long Ethernet cable to the closest access point. Once my machine was online wired, I went into the device manager and selected “Uninstall Device” and also checked the “Delete Drivers for this Device“, which would force Windows Vista to search for new drivers and allow it to search Windows Update.
It seems that even though Linksys refuses to release a Windows Driver for the v4.0 hardware of the WMP54G Wireless PCI Card, at least Microsoft realized that PERHAPS they should provide the drivers for a fairly common Wireless Card that many of their users may still be using.
Big Thanks to Microsoft! A Big “Get Bent” to Linksys!
Cheers!
Trouble with your WRT54G after flashing to a new firmware?
Posted by eric in Hardware, Networking on May 13, 2007
Are you having strange issues with your Linksys WRT54G/WRT54GL/WRT54GS router after flashing it with a newer firmware? You may need to manually clear the nvram to remove previous settings/files from the old firmware.
I recently flashed my Linksys WRT54G v2 from DD-WRT v23 SP2 to DD-WRT v23 SP3 Beta (05/02). Before flashing to the newer version of the firmware, I was sure to ‘Reset to Factory Defaults’ as well as hold the rear button on the router for 30 seconds, as these were supposed to clear any previous settings and files.
A couple days after flashing the firmware, my wireless connectivity started acting ‘funny’. It would simply drop the wireless connectivity, appearing off line to the client nodes. This issue persisted even after I reverted back to the previous version of DD-WRT that I was running before the upgrade.
After some research I was able to identify my issue. It seems that using the GUI ‘Reset to Factory Default’ as well as the back button on the router is not enough to clear all the settings. What I had to do was actually telnet into the router (which DD-WRT enabled me to do) and manually erase the NVRAM using the following command:
erase nvram; reboot
After that command is executed, your router will reboot and be set back to default settings as the nvram has been completely cleared.
Below is a screen shot of this:
This solved my issue and it might solve yours as well!
Cheers!
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