Author Topic: Buffalo WHR-HP-G300N DD-WRT Packet Loss Solved!  (Read 8916 times)

deweyhewson

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Buffalo WHR-HP-G300N DD-WRT Packet Loss Solved!
« on: February 04, 2011, 07:14:15 PM »

This was a source of an incredible amount of frustration for me most of yesterday and last night, so I want to share my findings for anyone else who may have the issue (and a few web searches tell me a lot). I purchased two of these routers to use with Hawkin HAO14SDP antennas for a point-to-point network between me and a neighbor.

After setting up the router it worked fine for most of the day, but then suddenly, after adjusting some wireless settings, it started to drop packets like crazy and my internet speed slowed to a literal crawl (I'm on a 20mb/10mb plan, and it was transferring at 3.5kb/s, no exaggeration). Wheras normally my pings to the gateway of my ISP average between 6ms and 10ms, it would now jump between anywhere from 40ms to 2000ms, often dropping multiple pings in between. Clearly this made the router all but useless for me.

I tried flashing to the latest official Buffalo DD-WRT firmware (Build 14998), and that did not solve it. I tried flashing to the "user friendly" Buffalo firmware, and that DID solve it, but, frankly, that firmware is confusing and a mess, and not an effective solution for me. Unfortunately, when flashing back to DD-WRT the flash failed mid flash and bricked my router (no amount of attempts with TFTP worked to fix this).

I replaced the router with the second WHR-HP-G300N I had bought, and again saw that it was having the exact same issues, ruling out a problem with the hardware. After much experimentation, I found that the latest beta build of DD-WRT for the device (build 15962) solved the problem. Trying different versions of DD-WRT showed that somewhere between the last official Buffalo DD-WRT build and the latest beta the issue had been resolved, although I'm not sure exactly when. Brainslayer may be able to shed light on this.

So, in summary, here is what is proven by me:

* The issue only shows up when using a Static IP for Internet. The issue does not show up when using Automatic (DHCP) mode.
* The issue is resolved in the latest beta build of DD-WRT (15962 at the time of this post).
* The issue does not show up when using the official "user friendly" firmware by Buffalo for the device.


I hope this information is useful for any other owners, or potential owners, of the device out there who have been experiencing the problem, or for any developers who may have solved the issue unwittingly and are interested to see this.

As a final note, I apologize for not taking screen captures of my pinging results in between trying different solutions, but my level of frustration was higher than my interest in documentation last night. :smileyhappy:


akrahn

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Re: Buffalo WHR-HP-G300N DD-WRT Packet Loss Solved!
« Reply #1 on: February 07, 2011, 05:39:07 PM »

Thank you so much for this post. Can you include instructions on flashing to the beta build? I have been waiting for buffalo to release a new version for months, however they dont seem to care about customer woes...

 

 

 


deweyhewson

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Re: Buffalo WHR-HP-G300N DD-WRT Packet Loss Solved!
« Reply #2 on: February 08, 2011, 11:15:57 PM »

Download the latest beta build here: ftp://dd-wrt.com/others/eko/BrainSlayer-V24-preSP2/12-24-10-r15962/buffalo_whr_hp_g300n/

 

Flash to the buffalo-to-ddwrt webflash firmware file first, like you would with any official firmware. Then, after that has been flashed, flash to the normal firmware file at that link. Make sure to "reset to default settings" with each flash.

 

A word of caution: once you flash to standard DD-WRT like this, you will be unable to restore to official firmware files without a very long, complex, and unguaranteed process. I am currently running this build on two routers just fine, and don't plan on going back to the official any time soon, but still, it is something to keep in mind.