Xbox 360 kills our internet connection!

[MJ]

Tonight is the worst it has been.

First I tried to download a free theme and nothing happened, then it says the download failed, internet connection corrected itself, tried again and it worked.

Twice I've tried to download the Lost Planet update, get the same download failed problem and then have to reboot the router to get the internet connection back.

My NAT is open with automatic settings and I can't get better than moderate with a static IP no matter what I try.

[andrewfee]

I believe your router is now compatible with DD-WRT (micro edition only for v5) so I would upgrade to that as soon as possible. The newer revisions of the WRT54G variants are pretty poor (other than the GL) but this should hopefully sort things out:

http://www.dd-wrt.com/

I've got a WRT54G v1.1 and have been running this for what must be over 6 months and I have had no problems whatsoever. (then again I've had no problems before it either)

[sj33]

I had this exact same problem, with a WRT54GS. Unfortunately it was one of the newer revisions that were incompatible with the custom firmwares/bioses.

Ditched it, and things have been better. Live still disconnects how and again, but it's much rarer. I can actually play a game now.

[MJ]

I've looked into that DD-WRT firmware before, but never went for it. I'm still considering it though. Was it easy to install and is it easy to regress if needs be?

I never get any problems when gaming, only for downloads and updates.

I e-mailed Linksys and asked them to send me the firmware that shipped with my router, v1.50.5, and they said they would, but I still haven't had it and can't find it anywhere on the net.

Nothing else breaks the internet through this router, just the 360.

[andrewfee]

My only suggestion is that you should maybe turn off UPnP if you've got it enabled? I know it causes a lot of issues on some routers (and it's considered to be a bit of a security risk) so you could always try that if you don't want to use dd-wrt.

It was a piece of cake to upgrade my WRT54G v1.1 but I don't know if the process is any different for the v5 GS models.

[MJ]

If I turn off UPnP I can't get better than a moderate NAT.

I'll read up on that firmware a bit more.

[fahrenheit]

UPnP is practically an essential feature inorder to have an unrestricted NAT. Its the non-UPnP routers that have the most difficulties with Live.

[MJ]

It did it again last night. Online gaming, not a problem, go to download a few weeks old Marketplace video and it stays at 1%, then I select continue for it to tell me it cannot sign into Live and then none of our wired or wireless devices could go online until I rebooted the router.

Because my router's still under warranty I'm reluctant to flash it with the DD-WRT firmware, but Linksys still haven't sent me my old firmware.

[andrewfee]

UPnP is practically an essential feature inorder to have an unrestricted NAT. Its the non-UPnP routers that have the most difficulties with Live.

I disagree. Many devices / apps that use UPnP don't seem to handle it properly, either crashing routers, leaving connections open (sometimes causing them to open up even more ports each time you relaunch them) or causing errors. It's also a big security risk too as once a malicious app is on your system it could use UPnP to open up a port for itself.

I know quite a few people that had issues with their routers crashing, and disabling UPnP and setting up port forwarding sorted it.

If port forwarding isn't working you're either doing it wrong or your router is faulty.

Because my router's still under warranty I'm reluctant to flash it with the DD-WRT firmware, but Linksys still haven't sent me my old firmware.

If you're not willing to try DD-WRT, but you're still under warranty, I'd get them to send out a replacement - having your router crash all the time is unacceptable.


My only other suggestion would be to try doing a full reset of the router back to the factory defaults and to start over. The first thing I would do, before you set up anything else, is to give the 360 a static IP and try to set up port forwarding to it again.

[MJ]

My only other suggestion would be to try doing a full reset of the router back to the factory defaults and to start over. The first thing I would do, before you set up anything else, is to give the 360 a static IP and try to set up port forwarding to it again.

Unfortunately I've tried that and can never get better than a moderate NAT.

When you flashed DD-WRT did you have to use the prep and killer files or did you flash it directly from the router's standard Linksys firmware update page in the admin console?

[andrewfee]

Well I've got a WRT54G v1.1 so I just did a factory reset and flashed it from the router config with the micro (I think that was it - whatever the smallest one is) and then the standard one and it worked fine.

The process for a WRT54GS v5 might be different though.

[MJ]

My model router only has 2 MB of flash memory so I can only use the micro.

After you flashed it from the Linksys admin pages, did it reboot with the new DD-WRT firmware and admin pages?

Can you revert back by simply flashing with Linksys firmware from DD-WRT admin pages?

Sorry for so many questions!

[MJ]

Now every time I initiate a Marketplace download or try to install an update it brings the router's internet connection down, but gaming never breaks it.

If only I could find/get the old firmware file.

[MJ]

Since finally getting firmware 1.50.5 and putting it back on I've been able to download things from the Marketplace without it breaking the internet connection. I haven't tried Live with versions 1.50.7 or 1.50.8, but 1.50.9 and 1.51.0 suffered the break. The strange thing about when it broke the connection was all the router's activity lights would still be flashing like normal.

Hopefully it will remain stable.