Windrops - were fine, moved location and now Ping Timeouts

[willyw]

Hello,

We have three Windrops, on an XP machine.
They have been running for some time (months) now, without this new problem.

The owner of the server moved it. Same isp.
He did connect it to a different router.
Other than the router, and location, all is the same as it was.

Now, bots quit regularly, with "Ping Timeout" for quit message.
Then the come back, and the process repeats.

With no activity in various channels, it actually seems to happen more often, and that is at every 5 minutes.

If this is worth anything:
In partyline, with +r and +v flags, I see:
<botnet> [17:56] [@] PING :irc.us.xxxx.net
<botnet> [17:56] [m->] PONG :irc.us.xxxx.net
which I believe to be normal.
That's the server pinging the bot, and the bot replying, I think.

But, just before each time the bots quit, I can see:
<botnick> [17:50] [m->] PING :1268697000
<botnick> [17:50] Disconnected from irc.xxxx.net
and I think that is the bot pinging the server.

One of the bots, I see:
<botnick> [17:55] [m->] PING :1268697300
<botnick> [17:55] net: eof!(read) socket 10
<botnick> [17:55] Disconnected from irc.xxxx.net

If that other line in there is significant. ... Is it?


We're looking for ideas for things to check, as we are baffled.

The same person set up the new router, as did the old one - he owns the server. And the server's software has not changed. He unplugged it, moved it across town, and plugged it back in.


Thanks


p.s. In various observations, we discovered that mIRC run on the server, and connected to the same server, had the same thing happen to it.... it got disconnected after a while.


Edit: corrected mistake. Had said it was a Win7 machine.

[nml375]

Smells like the new router either has a very limited buffer for connection-tracking, or a very low timeout for the tracked connections.

What kind of router is in use (make/model)?

[cengbrecht]

The current router I am not sure of, but soon, hopefully tomorrow we are replacing the current Linksys router with a new WRT54G2 V1 Router with DD-WRT firmware, to facilitate a VPN Connection

Edit: Update, we are going to test the new router tomorrow, and the old router model is a BEFSX something

[willyw]

Smells like the new router either has a very limited buffer for connection-tracking, or a very low timeout for the tracked connections.

What kind of router is in use (make/model)?

nml375:

For clarification: cengbrecht is the owner of the server, and I pointed him towards this thread.

Thanks

[nml375]

Though Linksys (atleast used to) make some neat hardware, their firmwares tend to.. not always meet the bar... Checking your router's logs, do you see any notices about the VPN Tunnel going up and down all the time?

DD-Wrt or OpenWRT is usually a better choice.

[cengbrecht]

Unfortunately I wont be able to check that till later tonight, like in 5.45 hrs.

First I only have access to the router if my friend logs into it, otherwise I have no idea how to check the tunnel as its not implemented yet, that is a more distant future.

[nml375]

Oh, if you're not using VPN yet, then that part, atleast, is not related to the disconnects. Even so, I've had my issues with various Linksys firmwares, and recommend DD-Wrt and OpenWRT, as long as the hardware supports it.

Anyway, I assume you use the NAT (Native Address Translation) feature (think linksys calls it firewall mode, as opposite router mode). Basically, your router needs to keep track of all outbound connections, and add dynamic port forwardings (so that the remote server can talk back to you). These dynamic forwardings, or rules, come with a timestamp. Traffic on the connection renews the timestamp, and the timestamp is used to save resources in case your eggdrop (or other software) failed to close the connection properly for some reason. If the timeout expires, the connection is no longer considered valid, and your eggdrop will be notified the next time it tries to send some data (in this case a PING command, as it havn't noticed any traffic from the irc server for a while).

Unfortunately, linksys' firmware does not let us tweak the values used to keep the connections alive. A rough workaround is to keep constant activity on the connection, such as having a script on your eggdrop sending a PING-command every minute or so. Be adviced that not all Irc-Admins like this though...

[cengbrecht]

Great news, the new WRT54G2 Wireless router with the DDWRT firmware fixed the problem!

Gone for an hour non stop, so the old router, a MEFSX41 I think, was the problem, apparently its not that old its just problematic... ? I dunno, but were good to go it would seem!

Thanks for your help!

[nml375]

Good to hear you got it working!
As I said, Linksys' hardware is usually quite ok, however some of their firmwares have given me quite a headache.