Smoothwall Issue

csmager · 30 Jan 2006 at 18:39

I have a Mini-ITX box (500Mhz VIA, 2 VIA 100Mbps LAN ports) connected to the network and connected to an X-Modem CE.

Occasionally the internet dies. Smoothwall still says it's connected on the web interface. Delving into 'advanced' yields something similar to this:

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:40:63

A:93:FE
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:8065 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:8542 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:4247364 (4.0 Mb) TX bytes:2934805 (2.7 Mb)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0xe800

usually you'd see a second line with:

inet addr:195.x.x.x Bcast:255.255.255.255 Mask:255.255.255.0

But that seems to vanish. Rebooting the box doesn't usually help, I have to turn the modem off and on again, and then reboot the box.

Would this lead you to the conclusion that the modem is at fault here? Any ideas what might be the problem?

I suppose I could just buy one of the new X-Modem M3's and see if that helped... but it could be a waste of money if that's not the issue.

csmager · 30 Jan 2006 at 19:20

I decided to do a brief test... when it dropped out again, i unplugged the modem's ethernet cable and put it in my laptop. It just sat there saying 'Acquiring Network Address'. Nothing else happened for the time I left it (2 mins or so).

Restarting the modem gave it an IP immediately (local) and then renewed again when the connection was up.

Seems like the modem's problem then. Still not sure why though.

csmager · 30 Jan 2006 at 19:33

Yep, I suppose that could be it could it?

The modem itself isn't doing any NAT or anything that I'd've thought would be affected by multiple connections. And just checking the torrent client, there's nothing downloading/uploading at the moment. Not sure if any of my housemates are doing anything, but I suspect not.

Sometimes it can go for a few days without crashing on me, whereas this evening it's done it 2 or 3 times already. I'm fairly sure it never did this the whole of last year...

csmager · 30 Jan 2006 at 19:50

The modem was bought by me, and it's a couple of years old now.

I was reading through some posts on the support forums, and one person complains of their modem locking up occasionally due to p2p. They also note that their D-Link DSL-300T doesn't do that, so I may see if I can get my hands on one of them.

csmager · 31 Jan 2006 at 00:38

It is 195 - that's our public IP. I'm fairly sure it's set up correctly.

There isn't an option to restart networking, and the networking script in /etc/rc.d/init.d/rc.networking doesn't appear to have a restart option... but re-running it might help. I'm looking into a quicker way of doing this at the moment... but my linux experience is slightly limited.