setup rta1320 + wrt54gl (hyperWRT) + utorrent

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jff1625

50 posts

Geek

#14173 19-Jun-2007 20:10

Hi,
How should i best set up my network hardware for best performance with web-surfing and bittorrent p2p?
I have:
Modem - Dynalink rta1320, Firmware: 3.29a
Wifi Router - Linksys wrt54gl, Firmware Version: v4.71.1, Hyperwrt 2.1b1 + Thibor15c

I currently have set up the modem at 192.168.1.1, and everything as standard according to its quick-setup thingie.

The router won't connect to the modem over PPPoE, as the Linksys website suggests it should, but it will connect when set to "Automatic Configuration - DHCP" so I've left it at that. Routers ip is 192.168.2.1.

The router assigns my computers ip as 192.168.2.126.

It seems to me that both the modem and the router are each doing their own DHCP, which seems to me like it shouldn't work. Whats going on there?

I currently get about 2200kbps over wireless vs about 4100kbps over ethernet. Are there some settings I can tweak to get better performance?

I had port forwarding set up correctly before when I was using woosh, but now I'm using ADSL and my modem has its own firewall, in addition to the routers firewall. How can I forward utorrent's port thru both firewalls? Should I disable one of the firewalls? If so which one?

Can anyone help me?

thanks,
Jeff

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50 posts

Geek

#75266 20-Jun-2007 00:13

The RTA 1320 need to be in half bridge mode (PPP forward). You can set it during the WAN wizard. With the WRT54GL in DHCP your WAN IP should now show up under its status page.

I would also suggest you install Tomato Firmware. The stock firmware of the WRT series isn't good for P2P.

xlinknz

1130 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#75310 20-Jun-2007 12:07

Jeff

FYI I use utorrent a lot too and have no issues, as you know I use a rta1320 too in conjunction with a wifi router

1. I get approx 2.6Mbit down from my dsl
2. Xnet don't use PPPoE [from memory you can only get that in some cases from TeltraClear] what you will be getting is PPPoA
3. My rta1320 gets its xnet 58.x public address from xnet, my wifi routers wan interface gets its address via dhcp from the rta1320 [i have a crossover cable between my rta1320 and my wifi router]
4. I use to use dhcp on my wifi router too but changed to static to improve security

No issue both doing dhcp on both although you could change both to static and use no dhcp at all [except what you get from xnet] in my scenario the only device that the rta1320 could issue a dhcp address to is my wifi router

I'll check my firewall setups tonight

ps: I can get up to 26Mbit wifi between my notebook and desktop [this is the max standard 802.11g]

jff1625

50 posts

Geek

#75352 20-Jun-2007 16:47

Hypernova: The RTA 1320 need to be in half bridge mode (PPP forward). You can set it during the WAN wizard. With the WRT54GL in DHCP your WAN IP should now show up under its status page.

I would also suggest you install Tomato Firmware. The stock firmware of the WRT series isn't good for P2P.

ok i tried to set this up, but when i choose bridging mode it tries to select LLC/SNAP encapsulation, and my ISP (Xnet) has told me to use VCMUX. So I select VCMUX and follow thru the wizard giving the same values as the auto-setup gives (which matches what Xnet say) and the modem refuses to connect, saying a PPP session could not be started.

A quick look at the rta's user manual suggests that bridging mode requires a PPPoE connection, whereas I've got a PPPoA. Does that make sense?

@xlink, what are your firewall setting?

cheers,
Jeff

tallPete

99 posts

Master Geek

#75354 20-Jun-2007 16:53

Having used both Thibor15c and Tomato in my WRT54GL, I too recommend the move to Tomato.

Hypernova

50 posts

Geek

#75355 20-Jun-2007 16:57

jff1625:
Hypernova: The RTA 1320 need to be in half bridge mode (PPP forward). You can set it during the WAN wizard. With the WRT54GL in DHCP your WAN IP should now show up under its status page.

I would also suggest you install Tomato Firmware. The stock firmware of the WRT series isn't good for P2P.

ok i tried to set this up, but when i choose bridging mode it tries to select LLC/SNAP encapsulation, and my ISP (Xnet) has told me to use VCMUX. So I select VCMUX and follow thru the wizard giving the same values as the auto-setup gives (which matches what Xnet say) and the modem refuses to connect, saying a PPP session could not be started.

A quick look at the rta's user manual suggests that bridging mode requires a PPPoE connection, whereas I've got a PPPoA. Does that make sense?

@xlink, what are your firewall setting?

cheers,
Jeff

It should not do that, encapsulation has NOTHING to do with whether the modem is in half bridge or not. I know because I have a RTA1320 and it works for me. Reset the settings to default and try again.

xlinknz

1130 posts

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#75356 20-Jun-2007 17:01

jff1625:

@xlink, what are your firewall setting?

cheers,
Jeff

Jeff

1. Did you get the email I sent with screen shoots ?
2. I'll check my rta1320 FW config when I get home
3. Do you get access if you plug your PC directly into the lan port of the rta1320 i.e. remove the linksys as an issue

My rta1320 works perfectly good to xnet. I'll also have a look when I get home as I recall seeing an article on getting a rta1320 working with a linksys wrt54gl

jff1625

50 posts

Geek

#75380 20-Jun-2007 18:46

xlinknz:
jff1625:

@xlink, what are your firewall setting?

cheers,
Jeff

Jeff

1. Did you get the email I sent with screen shoots ?
2. I'll check my rta1320 FW config when I get home
3. Do you get access if you plug your PC directly into the lan port of the rta1320 i.e. remove the linksys as an issue

My rta1320 works perfectly good to xnet. I'll also have a look when I get home as I recall seeing an article on getting a rta1320 working with a linksys wrt54gl

yes i can connect just fine with or without the wrt, but only with the wrt in Auto-Configuration / DHCP mode, which is different to what linksys say to do.

the main problem tho, is that utorrent is not connectable. I tried opening up utorrents port on both the wrt and the rta, but no dice.

yes i got the email, thanks.

Jeff

edit:
I just figured out that if i put the router in the modems DMZ then utorrent is connectable, but if i forward utorrents tcp and/or udp port to either the computer or to the router i get unreachable status.

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xlinknz

1130 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#75383 20-Jun-2007 19:03

Jeff

I checked my rta1320 and I don't have ip filtering enabled, oddly I tried ip filtering and could still get out despite the addresses I allowed not being visible to the rta1320 [I specified the 10.x address I use on the LAN side of my wifi router] oh well I'll have to do more testing on that !

On my wifi router's firewall I allow my LAN address out [only] on any port and that works, note I also run zonealarm and when I start utorrent it prompts for outbound access for 0.0.0.0 port 27399 after that all was ok

Here is the article I mentioned on wrt54gl/rta1320 and bittorrent [I haven't read it but maybe it gives some insight] http://www.gadgetophile.com/index.php?tag=bittorrent

jff1625

50 posts

Geek

#75396 20-Jun-2007 20:15

Wicked.

I followed the instructions in that article:

http://www.gadgetophile.com/index.php?tag=bittorrent

and now I've got the modem set up in half bridge mode. Router's ip is the one assigned to me by xnet. utorrent is reachable. Everything rocks like it should. Now I will shut utorrent down for a few hours because its peak usage hours!

xlink, you earned your credit.

hyper and pete, thanks for the 'tomato' suggestion. if i have any stability issues with thibor i'll make the switch.

j

Hypernova

50 posts

Geek

#75408 20-Jun-2007 21:02

jff1625: Wicked.

I followed the instructions in that article:

http://www.gadgetophile.com/index.php?tag=bittorrent

and now I've got the modem set up in half bridge mode. Router's ip is the one assigned to me by xnet. utorrent is reachable. Everything rocks like it should. Now I will shut utorrent down for a few hours because its peak usage hours!

xlink, you earned your credit.

hyper and pete, thanks for the 'tomato' suggestion. if i have any stability issues with thibor i'll make the switch.

j

They are about the same in stability. The biggest strength of tomato is that it has a traffic counter (by period, week and day + 24hr graph) and easy QoS set up.

Ben

317 posts

Ultimate Geek

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Vend

#75425 20-Jun-2007 22:02

Haha guys, I was just about to point you to my post (http://www.gadgetophile.com/adsl-routing-solution-in-detail/) but I see you've found it yourselves.

And yes, third vote for Tomato. I was running DD-WRT, but Tomato is cleaner and more functional in my opinion.

Adjusting the NAT table size and timeouts made a huge different to my bittorrent performance.

xlinknz

1130 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#75469 21-Jun-2007 09:16

Ben

Is the advantage of not doing NAT on the dedicated modem eg rta1320 only to get better performance ?

And what do you mean better performance - quicker downloads ? as that isn't really an issue for me

Ben

317 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

Vend

#75572 21-Jun-2007 20:40

It's not such a big deal now that I've moved far away from an excnahge and only sync at 2200kbps, but before that, I could regularly get 500kBps-1Mbps downloads on bittorrent with this setup.

The key as I said is the NAT table tweaks in the custom router firmware. By default the Linksys firmware (and most other routers) is set to keep something like 200 entries with a 10 minute timeout. This is fine if you're browsing the web, but bittorrent wants to keep several hundred connections open, and also wants to drop and add connections to different peers every couple of minutes. It downloads a chunk from one server, then drops the connection and connects to a different server.

So, tweaking the NAT table to store 4000 entries and drop them after a couple of minutes results in more opportunity to grab faster and better connected peers. This in turn results in better overall bittorrent performance. And in the worst case with bad firmware, the router may crash when the NAT table fills up (hello Netgear!)

xlinknz

1130 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#75574 21-Jun-2007 20:52

Ben

These are my stats from my rta1320

Current ADSL line status is displayed as the below.

Line Mode	G.DMT	Line State	Show Time
Latency Type	Interleave	Line Up Time	00:10:00:54
Line Coding	Trellis On	Line Up Count	1

Statistics	Downstream	Upstream
Line Rate	7616 Kbps	160 Kbps
Attainable Line Rate	9024 Kbps	860 Kbps
Noise Margin	15.1 dB	24.0 dB
Line Attenuation	26.0 dB	14.0 dB
Output Power	19.7 dBm	4.6 dBm

I have both my rta1320 doing NAT and my Wifi router. I'll try the half bridge mode and see if my performance improves

Hypernova

50 posts

Geek

#75575 21-Jun-2007 20:56

You have reached the max for ADSL dude. Ain't getting better then that. Mine in comparision is 46 Attenuation ending up with a crappy 3m line that CRC errors a tonne.

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