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Bittorrent Causing Router Lockup

For a while now, I’ve been having problems using Bittorrent. After starting a large download, sometime during the night my internet connection would drop. I knew it was not a problem with my local machine because my router administration page was reporting it was disconnected from the WAN and I was not able to have it reconnect. It was reporting that it was not able to obtain an IP address from the ISP’s DHCP server.

At first, I was suspicious that my ISP was possibly cutting me off and capping my transfer volume. However, I soon discovered that I could re-establish my connection by doing a hard reset on my router and DSL modem.

My basic setup includes a Speedstream 5100 DSL modem and a Linksys WRT54G v3 wireless access point/router. Previously, I was using a Netgear MA814 AP that had a specific problem with my DSL modem that required me to put the modem into bridged mode.

So, to make a long story short, one or all of the following things fixed my problem.

  1. Changed DSL modem from “Bridge mode” to “Bridge mode with IP Address pass Issuance.” This required a reset to factory defaults because once the modem goes into bridge mode, you cannot access the administration page.
  2. Updated the firmware of the DSL modem.
  3. Updated the firmware of my Linksys AP

So, I’m mainly posting this up here in case others are having a similar problem and find this via a search. Both of my devices are very common so it is very likely there are many others out there with the same combination. Good luck!

This entry was posted on Monday, November 27th, 2006 at 8:37 pm and is filed under Networking, Computers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Bittorrent Causing Router Lockup”

  1. Jeff Schiller Says:
    November 28th, 2006 at 3:05 pm

    Coincidentally, I was having a similar issue where my router would occasionally drop its internet connection, though not necessarily when a large amount of bits passed through it. It is a Linksys router, and I could recover it if I did a hard-reset (unplug the router and wait 20 seconds). I updated the firmware last week and I haven’t had the problem since.

  2. IronKurton Says:
    November 28th, 2006 at 7:55 pm

    The same thing has been happening to me as well, but I’m using an really old model (wired only, no wireless) linksys router and an old Toshiba cable modem — the exact model numbers escape me at the moment since I am not at home.

    Anyway, it looks like the cable modem is dying sporadically on my end, especially during active use (not necessarily high-bandwidth use, just active) because doing a hard reset on the modem itself seems to fix the problem.

    I hadn’t thought about a firmware update, I just thought Cox was being Cox. Thanks for the heads up.

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