Fix: Can't connect to any sites with a 64.x.x.x IP address

Yesterday, my wife Melissa noticed a problem with our home Internet connection: certain websites, including my own jonschneider.com, would not load. The browser would get past the "looking up..." step (so DNS resolution was working fine), but the website would simply never respond to the HTTP request, and the browser would eventually give a "Network Timeout - The server at [site] is taking too long to respond" error.

Troubleshooting the issue this evening, I started to notice a pattern in the sites that were working, versus those that were not working:

Working Sites

Site	IP Address
charter.com	24.217.29.127
godaddy.com	208.109.132.201
umich.edu	141.211.13.226
yahoo.com	206.190.60.37
blog.jonschneider.com	209.85.133.191

Non-Working Sites

Site	IP Address
jonschneider.com	64.202.163.124
www.savingsangel.com	64.20.60.82
gametap.com	64.236.22.82
idp.godaddy.com	64.202.188.237
www.google.com	64.233.169.103

Did you spot the pattern? (If not, take a closer look at the IP addresses.) Once I started looking at the IP addresses of the working sites versus the non-working sites, it quickly became obvious: Attempts to connect to sites with 64.x.x.x IP addresses were not working, whereas all other sites that I tried worked just fine. I had never heard of an issue like this before. I initially didn't really have a good idea where along the pipeline of [Client PC] - [Router] - [Cable Modem] - [ISP] - [Internet] - [Web Server] the problem was likely to be.

It wasn't just http requests that were failing; I couldn't successfully ping, tracert, or connect via ftp to any of the "non-working" sites, either. I was able to successfully connect to some of the sites from work; plus, given that if a site like the google.com homepage had any significant downtime at all it was likely to immediately be big news, and there had been no such news, I was able to rule out the web server as the problem. I was able to reproduce the problem on a couple of different client machines and different web browsers from home, so that (most likely) ruled out the client PC as the issue. My suspicion at this point was some kind of problem at the ISP level; I figured that since I was able to browse some websites with no problem at all, my router and cable modem must be ok.

This turned out to be a bad assumption. I had tried "rebooting" the cable modem (by disconnecting the power, waiting a couple of minutes, and then reconnecting) early in the troubleshooting process, but that step had had no effect. Throughout the process, I had assumed my router was ok. However, when I used the router's browser-based administration application to try and perform a release/renew on its Internet IP address, and the application simply stopped responding after the new request, I immediately (and to my chagrin, for the first time) suspected some kind of problem with the router. I cycled the power on the router (unplug, wait briefly, plug back in), and that turned out to be the solution! Immediately, all of the 64.x.x.x sites were working fine once again.

I'm still not sure why cycling the power on the router was the solution to the issue, except that to guess that apparently, after weeks (or maybe even months) of uptime, the router had managed to get itself into a bad state, and cycling the power was enough to refresh whatever internal memory the router has back into a good state. Hopefully, this post will be a time saver for anyone else out there who manages to run across this issue -- at least, so long as this blog doesn't get changed to have a 64.x.x.x IP address! :-) I have had various problems with this router -- a Linksys BEFW11S4 Wireless-B that's now over a couple of years old -- before (1, 2, 3). I think it may be time to start keeping my eyes open for a sale, and jump on a deal to replace this router when the right deal presents itself.

At Wit's End with Wii Wireless

A couple of weeks ago, I snagged a Nintendo Wii on a Sunday morning from a Target in my area that had gotten a shipment during the week and had released them for sale as their new ad flyer featuring the Wii came out that Sunday.

As I've previously posted, I have a Linksys BEFW11S4 wireless router, hardware revision version 4.

When I initially set up the Wii for wireless connectivity with the router, it worked like a charm. I was able to connect, and the various online functionality -- the store, news, weather, web browsing, and the "Everybody Votes" application -- all worked just fine.

However, the next day, the Wii reported that it was unable to connect to the Internet. I reset the router (by disconnecting it from wall power for a couple of seconds and then plugging it back in), and the Wii was once again able to connect successfully.

I knew to try resetting the router because I recognized the behavior as the same as what my TiVo has been exhibiting -- the TiVo will work normally for about a week, but then report that TV program data is low because it hasn't been able to successfully connect to the server, and I'll need to reset the router to get it to connect successfully again.

This problem hadn't been terribly annoying when just the TiVo was affected, since it wasn't too bad to just briefly pull the plug on the router once a week or so (since the TiVo is able to get TV program data for about a week in advance each time it connects). With the Wii, though, it will usually only go about half a day or so before it will lose the wireless connection and be unable to reconnect; this means that pretty much any time I want to use any of the online functionality of the Wii, I need to run upstairs to my office and pull the plug on the router first. And even then, the Wii takes longer than it should to display the news, since it didn't have a chance to download it in the background earlier while the system was idle via the "WiiConnect24" feature, and instead needs to download it on-the-fly. Annoying!

My desktop PCs, which are connected to the router via wired connections, aren't affected by this issue. Further, although I use my PDA's wireless connection functionality at home only infrequently, I've also never observed it be affected by the issue; the PDA seems to be able to connect with no trouble, even at times when the Wii won't connect.

The problem does seem to be with the router as opposed to with the Wii, since the TiVo is affected by the same problem.

It's a frustrating problem to troubleshoot, since each time I change a setting on my router to try and address the problem, I need to wait at least half a day before the Wii's connection will fail again (and thus establish that the attempted fix didn't work).

I've tried the following steps so far to fix the problem, one at a time; none have been successful so far:

• Assigned the Wii a fixed IP address (and DHCP server IPs) rather than having it pick up an IP via DHCP.
• Changed the broadcast channel of the router. (Tried channels 1, 2, 6, and 11).
• Disabled the WEP security on the router. (Turned it back on afterwards after this didn't help.)
• Disabled restriction of clients permitted to connect based on the client MAC address. (Re-enabled this after it didn't help.)
• Reverted the firmware from 1.52.02 (the latest version) back to 1.50.14, after reading online about people having (unrelated) problems with the 1.52.02 firmware.
• Changed the router's "Internet Connection Type" setting from "Connect on Demand" to "Keep Alive", thinking that maybe if my router's DHCP IP address lease from my ISP had expired, then the wireless connection from the Wii wasn't for whatever reason triggering the router to request a new IP, and that this setting change might trigger the router to always make sure that it had a current IP.

Unfortunately, none of these attempted solutions have had any impact on the problematic behavior. (After I applied the firmware version downgrade, I thought that might have done the trick since the Wii behaved itself for a little over a day after that, but the problem subsequently returned, just as before.)

I also haven't been able to find anything about this specific problem by searching around online. I've seen lots of posts about problems where people can't get the wireless connection to work at all, or where specific areas of functionality (like the online store) won't work, but no posts about this type of problem where the connection just seems to expire or time out after several hours.

At this point I feel like my best option to address the problem is to just pick up a new router, but I hesitate to throw $50 at the problem to fix it, since it really is just an annoyance.

If anyone knows of a fix for this issue, or even just has a suggestion for something else to try that might fix the problem, by all means please let me know! I'll update this post if I ever do come up with a solution for this issue.

Update 5/4/2007: Everything is working once again now! The Wii and the Tivo are now able to connect to the Internet over the wireless connection on a daily basis with no problem. So what did I change?

Nothing!... except that I left the BEFW11S4 router powered off for about 9 days straight while my family and I were away from home on vacation! When I returned and powered the router back up, everything started working fine. Prior to that, I had always had the router plugged in around the clock (except when I'd unplug it for a few seconds at a time to get the Wii and Tivo connectivity temporarily working again).

So if you're having this problem and have tried everything else, you could try unplugging your router for a while, perhaps overnight, or longer if you can get away with it. I'm not sure why this solution worked in my case -- maybe some hardware component in the router had overheated and needed some time unplugged to cool down? -- but I'm happy that things are working once again!

Giving up on DHCP with Linksys wireless router

I've been continuing to have trouble with the wireless functionality of my home Linksys router, a model BEFW11S4. As I posted previously, I've never quite had the wireless connectivity with my PDA (a Dell Axim X30 PocketPC) working the way I wanted. Sometimes I activate the wireless connection on the PDA and it works perfectly; other times I try to connect, and although the PDA can see the router (with the correct SSID and excellent signal strength), it will never get a valid IP address. (I have the PDA set to get an IP via DHCP; apparently the router is just never assigning the PDA an IP address.)

I did end up upgrading the router firmware to the latest version (1.52.02). This seems to have resolved the problem with the router's DHCP server where it was never reusing IP addresses (and thus eventually running out), but now the router is just kind of acting kind of flaky; sometimes the PDA will get an IP address and be able to connect to the Internet immediately, sometimes the PDA will get an IP after a long delay (several minutes); and sometimes the PDA will just never get an IP. Since the PDA does occasionally connect successfully, that tells me that the issue is probably not with my security configuration.

Further, occasionally if the PDA is connected but then briefly loses contact with the router, it will lose its IP and its connection. This happens even after I've just been using the wireless connection for a short time (so the PDA's lease on the IP address should not yet have expired).

At least once, when the PDA has been unable to connect, if I cycle the power on the router (unplug it and then plug it back in), the PDA is then immediately able to connect with no problem.

My DVR was also unable to connect to the wireless network for a while yesterday -- I also resolved this by cycling the power on the router. This seems to indicate that the problem is with the router, not with the configuration or hardware of my PDA.

I finally decided to throw in the towel and forget about using DHCP with my PDA, and instead just assigned it a static IP address. This seems to be working fine; I haven't had any connectivity issues with the PDA since assigning the static address. Also, I didn't have to enter DNS server information on the PDA to be able to connect to the Internet successfully; just entering the static IP and the gateway (router) IP was sufficient. This is good, since it should keep the hassle of switching between a static IP (when I'm using the PDA at home) and a dynamic IP (when I'm anywhere else) to a minimum.

I poked around for a solution on Usenet briefly (searching for "BEFW11S4 DHCP" on Google Groups), and although I saw some posts about people having trouble with this model router and DHCP, I didn't see any good solutions. One person reported exchanging their BEFW11S4 for another copy of the same model, and they didn't have any problems after that, so maybe the DHCP functionality on these models is hit-or-miss.

In any event, I'm glad I have a decent workaround for the issue for now. Next time I go shopping for a wireless router, though, I'll probably look at brands other than Linksys.

Update 5/15/2006: Unfortunately, my workaround of using a static IP address on the PDA isn't as convenient as I thought. Initially, as noted above, I thought there was no need to enter DNS server information on the PDA; it had appeared that the PDA was picking this information up from the router. However, the PDA is reporting "Site Not Available" errors for any site I hadn't visited recently; appearently, DNS mappings for recently-visited sites were cached on the PDA, so things appeared to be working ok at first as I tested visiting sites that I had visited recently.

A further annoyance is information I manually enter when setting the PDA to use a static IP (the IP address, subnet mask, gateway IP address, and now primary and secondary DNS server IP addresses) gets cleared whenever I set the PDA to use a dynamic IP (when I'm online with the PDA away from home), so I have to re-enter all of that information whenever I return home. (This is the fault of the PDA software, not the router, but it does compound the problem with the router's DHCP service being so flaky.)

I may have to keep tinkering with the router to see if I can get the DHCP service to where it "just works".

Issue: Linksys Wireless-B router quits after reaching max DHCP IP address?

A few months ago, I replaced my old non-wireless Linksys router with a new Linksys Wireless-B router. At the time, I wanted the router so that I could get online with my PocketPC around the house. I also subsequently got a TiVo as a Christmas gift (thanks Dad!) which uses the online network to talk to the TiVo server out on the Internet to download new schedule information.

Earlier this week, my PocketPC stopped working on the wireless network. It could see the router with no problem with "Excellent" signal strength, but it was apparently unable to get an IP address; it reported a 169.x.x.x address instead of a real 192.168.x.x address.

Unfortunately, the PocketPC provides very poor error reporting when it has a problem getting on the network -- no error message any more detailed than "unable to connect" appears.

I tried assigning the PocketPC network card a static IP address instead of having it dynamically pick up an IP from the router. With the static IP, I was able to get online successfully, which seemed to indicate that the issue was with the DHCP server. I didn't want to leave the static IP in place, though, since it would mean that my PocketPC would be unlikely to connect successfully on wireless networks other than my own.

After looking at many other settings in the router's browser-based configuration application, I took a look at the Wireless Client MAC List under Wireless | Wireless Network Access. My PocketPC did not appear on the table, but the TiVo appeared, with an IP of 192.168.1.152. This tickled my memory; I remembered seeing on the main page of the config app that the router's DHCP was set to assign up to 50 dynamic IPs, in the range 103 through 152 (with 100 through 102 being reserved as static IPs for my desktop machines).

I returned to the main page in the config app, and extended the count of available DHCP IPs from 50 to 100, in the range 103 through 202. Immediately after saving this new setting, my PocketPC was able to successfully get a valid IP! It got 192.168.1.154 (skipping 153 for whatever reason).

So as far as I can tell, the problem is that the router assigned dynamic IP addresses (as the leases on existing addresses expired) in sequence starting with 103 and eventually reaching 152. Instead of wrapping back around to 103 as I would expect, it apparently just decided to quit assigning new dynamic IPs at that point!

Is this a bug in the router software? The status page reports that the firmware version is "1.50.14, May 27 2004". I may need to look into whether an update is available so I don't run into this issue again once the router issues another 50 IPs and reaches the new cap of 192.168.1.202!

In the meantime, though, between troubleshooting this issue and typing up this post, it's past my bedtime, so any further investigation will have to wait until another time!