PPPoE connected, clients have no internet access

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nasevz
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Nov 10, 2009 3:06 am

PPPoE connected, clients have no internet access

Post by nasevz »

I tried Gargoyle with both stable 1.0.14 and experimental 1.1.12 on WRT54GL and I had similar problems with both versions. I configured Gargoyle from wired connection and in the beginning everything was OK. I tried to fine-tune quotas and wireless mac filter from remote wireless location but after applying settings, wait screen stayed forever. I logged in again and saw that settings were applied, but clients had no access to Internet. Router had WAN connection and could ping it's peer successfully, but the clients could ping only router's WAN address, not it's pppoe peer. I rebooted the router but wait screen again stayed forever. After a while I logged in again, but there was no pppoe connection. After several reboots, I got pppoe connection but no Internet access to clients. I tried to reconfigure from wired client, but wait screens after every apply stayed forever and I couldn't make it work. I loaded stable firmware to the router and in the beginning it worked also, but after after several configuration changes I was in the same situation. I can't tell if the problem appears only when configuration is changed from wireless client or when there are 7-8 quota rules taking more memory or processor time or something totally different.

Eric
Site Admin
Posts: 1443
Joined: Sat Jun 14, 2008 1:14 pm

Re: PPPoE connected, clients have no internet access

Post by Eric »

Hmm.. I'm not sure what's going on, but I can make a few comments /suggestions. Debugging PPPoE issues is also especially tricky for me, since I don't have a DSL connection to play with.

1) My first comment when PPPoE issues arise is usually to make sure modem is in bridge mode and you're connecting via PPPoE in the router... but it sounds like you're doing that properly, since it works initially. I'm just mentioning it first to make sure of this.

2) You say that when you connect from a wireless client the wait screen is displayed forever. This is probably because your client machine isn't reconnecting after the wireless goes down and comes back up (all network interfaces get restarted after you change network settings in connection/basic). I've seen this happen, and it's client-dependent -- not really anything to do with the router.

3) My best guess about what's going on (though I'm far from certain) is that you're running out of memory. It isn't the number of quota rules exactly, but you say you have 7-8 of them, which suggests you may have 7-8 clients connecting at the same time. PPPoE requires a utility to be running on top of everything else, which requires extra memory. My suspicion is the combination of the PPPoE daemon and the memory getting eaten up by all those clients is making the PPPoE daemon die due to lack of RAM, and killing your internet connection. The WRT54GL has only 16MB of RAM, which is just BARELY enough to run Gargoyle. It sounds like you may be pushing it past this limit. If this is the case a router like the ASUS WL500GP would be the answer, since it has 32MB of memory, which should be plenty. However I'm hesitant to tell you to go out and buy another router when I'm not 100% certain that this is the cause of your problem. However, if you need to get this working, and you have the money, this is the first thing I'd try.

BikeMike
Posts: 108
Joined: Sat Jun 13, 2009 8:02 am
Location: Adelaide, South Australia

Re: PPPoE connected, clients have no internet access

Post by BikeMike »

Just adding my experience to this as I have the same setup (WRT54GL, 6 clients with their own quotas and time restrictions, PPoE DSL connection, v1.1.2). I don't have this issue, although I do find that when the connection drops I need to restart it by saving connection settings (there's another forum topic about this).

When you say "forever" how long do you wait? I find it can be at least a few minutes to apply changes.

nasevz
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Nov 10, 2009 3:06 am

Re: PPPoE connected, clients have no internet access

Post by nasevz »

Gargoyle has actually only one wireless client which is another wireless router at remote location. All computers are connected by wire either on gargoyle's or other router's switch ports. PPPoE connection is usually established after restart, but looks like there is no NAT rule in iptables since only gargoyle can ping the gateway.
When I say forever, I am waiting 5-6 minutes and no response. I think that the router is up and running because I can connect from another browser session but I am not sure if all services are started.
Can you give me a link to the topic about restarting by saving connection settings?

BikeMike
Posts: 108
Joined: Sat Jun 13, 2009 8:02 am
Location: Adelaide, South Australia

Re: PPPoE connected, clients have no internet access

Post by BikeMike »


NL2009
Posts: 54
Joined: Mon May 18, 2009 1:03 pm

Re: PPPoE connected, clients have no internet access

Post by NL2009 »

I have run into a similar problem on 1.0.14. If I enable the Wireless MAC Filter, both my *wired* and wireless connections to the router slow down and need multiple refreshes to load a page. All internet access then becomes very erratic.

Everything returns to normal as soon as I disable the Wireless MAC Filter. This is completely repeatable.

I have a WRT54GL modem which I modified to have 32MB of RAM so I am never using more than about 60% of available RAM. My WRT54GL is connected via PPPoE to a Netgear ADSL modem which is configured to run in the "modem" mode.
Regards, Nigel

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