I know that there is a problem with my 3com Office Connect Wireless ADSL
Modem/Router keeping too many connections at any given time, but it is
really starting to get on my nerves to the point where simple browsing
crashes my machine.

If I have a dozen or so tabs open in Firefox, and just at that moment my
email downloads, then I get BSOD, mem dump and it is caused by
bcmwl5.sys. This is my Belkin 802.11g PCI card and the same thing
happened with my previous Asus 802.11b adapter. The other problem, is
just that the connection drops. I try to repair the connection but the
computer freezes. I am resigned to doing a hard reboot every time the
connection is dropped.

Now you can imagine, this completely rules out eMule etc, but also I can
rarely use download managers that open up multiple connections to
different servers.

Does anyone have a clue about this problem?

SKiNFreak wrote:
Not sure what is going on there. If the connection drops, the 3Com may
freeze on the wireless side. My 3Com ADSL router at work does that for
some reason. It can be made to work again by either disabling the
wireless and re-enabling it in the 3Com menu settings of the router (via
the web interface - although you need to be connected through CAT5 as
the wireless section has goine down), or as you say, be rebooting the
machine.

The main problem we had was with a laptop running the 3Com PCMCIA card.
I ended up replacing it with a USB wireless adapter. As it has a
better antenna, it doesn't drop out, and now the box is stable.

Have you tried downloading new firmware for the box? It may help.
Alternatively, if it is not more than 12 months old, return it under
warranty. If it is quite new, take it back to the retailer and say it
is not fit for the purpose for which it was described.

That said, the problems with crashing should not be happening. Have you
tried your PCMCIA cards in a different laptop?

Rob

I think it is well known that this is a problem for 3com and related
chipsets. Got this via a google search:

"It is like most of the mentioned products based an ARM core. ( Conexant
84200 )
3Com clearly states on their supportsite, that the problem is directly
related to the amount of open ( not yet either dropped or connected )
TCP connection attempts, created by most P2P applications. ( not emule
specific ) The router is simply not able to keep track of all of them,
and stalls."

"Just for fun i checked the core type on a few of the reported
troublesome products, and they were alle ARM 7 or ARM 9 designs.
Most ARM products ship with 8 MB RAM and at 75-200 MHz CPU core.
Wether it is the amount of Memory or the CPU speed or the firmware is
not really important.
Apparently the buffer for keeping track of connections runs over, and
the internet speed slowly drops till the router has to be reebooted."

Does this make any sense?

Using a normal PC with PCI 802.11g card. Haven't got a laptop to try...
I have heard is bandied about that the router is too good at security
and this is part of the problem. How can something be too good fail? Eh?

Thanks for the input...

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 11:27:20 +0000, SKiNFreak <noway@nospam.com>
wrote:

OK, but that is NOT down to the router. That is down to something on
your PC, and the router is self contained.

It may be that what is on your PC is not correctly handling something
the router does, but it is not directly the router.

Presumably, since you say you try to repair the connection, you are
talking here about the wireless connection between your PC and the
router?

I have had that happen occasionally, but usually when I'm using my
laptop several rooms away from the router, where the signal strength
is not good to start with.

I do also sometimes get the connection to the internet freezing. The
light stays on, but no traffic comes through. Most times when that
happens, reconnecting (using the router web interface) works, but just
very occasionally, I have to pull the power lead out and put it back
in.

It sounds to me like you have a problem with your PCI card, or the
drivers/firmware for it. While the 3Com routers do occasionally drop
connections, it certainly (IME) does not happen often enough to cause
significant problems - and I often have Avant, Opera and Mozilla
browsers, plus Agent and Eudora email clients all open at once, and
will use Flashget whenever I'm downloading anything large. Each of
those browsers will have between 6 and about 15 windows open at once.

It doesn't drop my connection even as often as once a week, except
when I am using it during the day as well as the evening.
--
Alex Heney, Global Villager
Can you repeat the part after "Listen very carefully"?

To reply by email, my address is alexATheneyDOTplusDOTcom

SKiNFreak pretended :
I have had similar problems with a completely different router, which I
have resolved. It seems to mainly affect XP, when P2P is in use....

Browsing became slow and even impossible, lots of problems with
grabbing email and so on, plus an increase in crashing of the OS. I was
advised it might be due to the limit MS imposed on the number of open
connections it would allow.

The following worked for me...
http://www.lvllord.de/

...has one of the hacks. The download page is:-

http://www.lvllord.de/?lang=en&url=downloads

Look for 'EvID4226Patch212-en.zip', extract it, run the exe which opens
a DOS
box. Simply agree to allow it to change the 10 open connections into
50, then
accept the safety warning which appears from XP that a system file has
been
changed.

A separate but associated issue was some conflict with a preinstalled
(by the laptops manufacturer) driver for for a WiFi card, a card which
I did not have.

Plugging my Belkin 11Mb WiFi in or out would often cause the laptop to
crash, also plugging in a newly purchased 54Mb Wifi card crashed the
laptop both as it booted up and when it was running. Removing the
drivers for the non existant card fixed both problems.

--


--

Regards,
Harry (M1BYT) (L)
http://www.ukradioamateur.org

Ahhh....but is has happened with both my Belkin PCI card AND my ASUS
802.11b WIFI card. Two problematic cards?


traffic.


Maybe I have a duff router? I do seem to have a lot of trouble (which is
odd considering I bought it on the strength of a great review). If I
stay away from p2p, then the problems lessen, but it doesn't rule them
out completely.

And when I enable security (WEP) it gets worse... I thought it maybe my
house, bit this is a timber framed house that is only a few years old. I
get medium signals throughout the house (-50dBm / -74dBm noise) but
these can improve if I fiddle with the antennae.

On Sat, 01 Jan 2005 23:47:26 +0000, SKiNFreak <noway@nospam.com>
wrote:

Yes. Or more likely a problem with your operating system.

Ouch.


I use WPA rather than WEP, since my laptop (which has WiFi built in)
also supports it. My desktop machines are both connected wired.
--
Alex Heney, Global Villager
How do you make Windows faster ? Throw it harder

To reply by email, my address is alexATheneyDOTplusDOTcom

I know this may be dumb, but how do I use WPA in XP? Do I need to
download a radius server driver?

Thanks for the tip but I already did that patch. Happy new year!

"SKiNFreak" <noway@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:PkIBd.59$fd6.11058@news-1.opaltelecom.net
What version of Windows XP are you running?

If SP2 in the Control Panel, there is an icon for "Wireless set-up wizard"

If SP1 you may want to install
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;826942 if you don't
want to upgrade to SP2.

Regards
Sunil

Sunil Sood wrote:

Sunil Sood wrote:

"SKiNFreak" <noway@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:mOYBd.62$fd6.11344@news-1.opaltelecom.net
Most people would use WPA PSK - Radius server is something companies may use
(if they actually have a Radius server!)

Regards
Sunil

"SKiNFreak" <noway@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:6MYBd.61$fd6.11330@news-1.opaltelecom.net
Just follow the wizard - its pretty straightforward..

Regards
Sunil

On Sun, 02 Jan 2005 20:27:06 +0000, SKiNFreak <noway@nospam.com>
wrote:

PSK.

To use Radius server requires that you set one up. Which is rather
overkill for a small home network :-)

With PSK, you tell the router what key to use, and tell each PC that
will be accessing it the same key, and that is basically all there is
to it.


--
Alex Heney, Global Villager
....put knot yore trust inn spel chequers.

To reply by email, my address is alexATheneyDOTplusDOTcom

And there was me over complicating things....thanks chaps. WPA PSK setup
successfully!

SKiNFreak wrote:
It seems the problem was down to the crappy Boradcom driver that Belkin
have on their website....

IT WORKS!!