Wireless

[timed]

Hi, I bought a WHR-HP-G300N a few days ago and it seems great, except that about once every 24 hrs it will drop wireless connections (ethernet ones still work) and not let me connect back (also stops broadcasting) until I reboot it. This isn't with just one wireless device, no device picks it up.

Usually when it's working, the wireless light flashes at random intervals. However, when it stops working it flashes at a fixed rate, about once every second. Not sure what that means.

This happened with the old DD-WRT firmware that came with it, and happens with the latest one I upgraded it to.

Could this just be bad hardware, should I just exchange it?

I found some reviews on newegg with the same problem:

Good router but wireless is **bleep**

Pros: Comes with DD-WRT natively installed on it thus avoid me flashing it.

Cons: Wireless will stay online for approximately 24-36hrs before it completely disable. Tried different security WEP,WPA,etc.. and no success. The actually router itself will be online if your hooked via cable but wireless dies.

Other Thoughts: Love the DD-WRT and buffalo as I've had previous models. I was pumped about this having DD-WRT natively installed on it as I've used DD-WRT for over 5 years now. But this WHR-HP-G300N appears to be terrible setup. Online research of the problem sounds like this is very common for this model.

Flaky - poor support - AVOID

Pros: When it works, it seems to have good performance

Cons: Unfortunately, it frequently does NOT work. Several times/day the wireless just vanishes -- all connections dropped, no SSID broadcast. Requires a router reboot to fix. According to the Buffalo support forums, I'm only 1 of a lot of customers to have this problem. It seems random, many people don't have it at all, but if one's router shows it there appears to be no fix. Both me and others who have the glitch have tried both DD-WRT and the Buffalo firmware, all kinds of settings, etc., and nothing changes, the wireless still shuts itself off frequently (hardware defect?).
Buffalo tech support will just claim it must be interference from your microwave oven, or that since a reboot restores service it's not actually broken.

Other Thoughts: It ships with DD-WRT installed, but in case you were wondering the alternative Buffalo firmware is TERRIBLE. Very few options, incredibly non-intuitive layout, garbled translations from Japanese/Chinese, etc. Worst setup I've seen, even including my very first router that you could only configure via Telnet text sessions.

unstable

Pros: Fast, seems to handle traffic well...when it's up.

Cons: I find myself loosing internet connection to everything about every other day starting out, to now about once a day. Have to pwrcycle the router each time and it works really well till the next day. before it drops completely it goes really really slow, ping times of 2000ms or more.

Other Thoughts: i wish it would be more reliable. the signal is good, speeds are great, but not worth it. I'm sure there's a router out there that can handle doing both.

So I'm not the only one...

And I found another thread about it:

http://forums.buffalotech.com/t5/Wireless/WHR-G300N-wlan-connection-breaking-problem/td-p/8782

and more:

http://forums.buffalotech.com/t5/Wireless/WHR-HP-G300N-Wireless-crashes-i-e-radio-shuts-itself-off-s...

http://forums.buffalotech.com/t5/Wireless/WZR-HP-G300NH-dropping-wireless-connections/td-p/56618

http://forums.buffalotech.com/t5/Wireless/WZR-HP-G300NH-wi-fi-connections-suddenly-stopping-or-freez...

http://forums.buffalotech.com/t5/Wireless/WZR-HP-G300NH-wireless-chokes-under-heavy-load-at-times/td...

[timed]

I found this post:

http://forums.buffalotech.com/t5/Wireless/WZR-HP-G300NH-wireless-disconnects-at-least-once-a-day/m-p...

which links to:

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Buffalo_WZR-HP-G300NH

these seem like possible fixes:

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Buffalo_WZR-HP-G300NH#Fix_for_WiFi_Dropouts

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Buffalo_WZR-HP-G300NH#Alternate_WiFi_Dropout_Fix

I'll try these out and see if they work.

update: actually it seems these aren't really much of a fix. All these fixes do is monitor the router to see if the wifi breaks, and when it does, it restarts it. So I will still get disconnections, but it'll just automatically connect again instead of me having to restart the router.

[mcg]

If you're running 167xx, try this.  In Administration/Commands tab, save following line as "Save Startup":

while sleep 3; do 80211n_wlanconfig ath0 set_txpowercap 00:xx:xx:xx:xx:AC 22;done

Substitute your router's wireless MAC address (from Status/Wireless tab) for the 00:xx:...:AC above, and substitue your desired TX power dBm for the 22.

My wireless still disappears every few days but much less frequently.  I still have a 60 second ping to an always-on client in the Keep Alive section to force reboot when it disappears.

[timed]

This is the same thing that shows on my logs when it happens:

http://svn.dd-wrt.com:8000/ticket/1571

apparently it's caused by "missed beacons usually caused by high inteferences in ht40 mode", but like the original poster says, the wireless NEVER returns.

This happened with the firmwares: Buffalo dd-wrt 14998, Buffalo dd-wrt 17135 and dd-wrt 14896.

I'm not sure if the "buffalo user friendly" firmware has this issue, as my router came with the Buffalo dd-wrt 14998 firmware. And I'm not able to try the "buffalo user friendly" firmware because for some reason all Buffalo firmware is encrypted, so the only way to go back is to TFTP flash:

http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=72276&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=47

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Tftp_flash#Linux_2

which I'm having trouble with since the TFTP transfer on linux and windows keeps timing out because I think I keep missing the short window I have to initiate it.

---

mcg wrote:

My wireless still disappears every few days but much less frequently. 

---

eh, I'd rather have a more reliable connection. So I'm just going to return this router and get a different one.

[cheong987]

You are not the only one.

I am facing the same problem as well.

flash to latest buffalo pro firmware and perform all the hard reset and reconfigure again.

It seems the wireless router ssid will stop broadcast the signal while I still can login to the web interface from LAN.

[timed]

It hasn't happened for 2 weeks now, but I haven't torrented in 2 weeks. Seems the problem is when there is heavy traffic only.

[tcrichton]

Did anyone get any further with this issue? I bought two of them to provide wifi to my house.

So unreliable I can't even watch the news without it dissapearing.

Please, does anyone have a solution which prevents the problem rather than cures it?

Thanks for any advice you have!

Tristan.

[tcrichton]

Just tried the latest Alpha of Buffalo's DD-WRT and it has been running for 24 hours without a problem (used to drop every 3-4hours).

It maybe too early to tell but it looks like it has been fixed in the 17798 version of Buffalo's DD-WRT firmware... woohoo!

Tristan.

[tcrichton]

Well that's now 5 days without a problem, Wireless seems to be solid now (touch wood)!

Thanks Buffalo for working on this new firmware!

Tristan.

[lenlynch]

I had intermittent issues with this for many months, tried many configuration changes based on others experience.

Recently the frequency of the issue started happening more often, almost daily.

Updated to the latest version of the Pro firmware and without a reoccurance in 7 days.

Thank you for updating the firmware Buffalo!

I can't wait for CODEL support to be added to the dd-wrt chain.  Please keep up with this and deliver soon.

http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/codel/

It's in OpenWRT, btw...