Feisty router not working

[eoin]

Hello!

I've recently switched from opensuse to feisty and am generally very impressed.

One problem is that I cannot connect to the internet via my broadband router (Canyon CN-BR1). Although I can ping and SSH. The router worked fine under opensuse and mandriva.

Initally I thought that the router doesnt support IPv6 so I have disabled it (via /etc/modprobe/aliases and /etc/modprobe/blacklist) as well in network.dns.disableIPv6 in firefox. Still no joy, though

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Eoin

[dwjs1974]

If you arent picking up an ip address this would stop you accessing the internet
..
type

Code: Select all

ifconfig

into a console and make sure your ip address is on the same range as the router... the other thing is makesure the gateway address is the router... not sure if this applies in linux as I have never had a problem always seems to pickup the ip.

[eoin]

Dave, thanks for the reply.

The thing is I do get an IP address and can both ping and ssh.

However, when I go to browse the internet I always get a 'The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading' in firefox.

As I mentioned above I thought this was due to IPv6 being enabled by default in Ubuntu. Although I've disabled it (also in ff) I still cant browse the web.

[spottedcat]

IPv6 is enabled by default in Opensuse as well. I've not come across this problem in Feisty but, intrigued, I did a search on Ubuntu Forums with "The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading" and came up with this thread among others. Obviously, ignore the suggestion to disable IPv6 but there are some other ideas there. I like the about:config trick - I should think that's worth trying. That idea comes from this bug report and this other bug report has another interesting idea - namely to install firestarter to reset the IPtables rules.

I hope there's something of use among that lot. If you decide to download and install firestarter (it's in the Ubuntu repos atm) you'd better hurry. It's been hard-masked prior to being removed entirely from the Gentoo portage tree because - according to a thread I found on Gentoo forums - the firestarter project is dead upstream. If this is true, it's bad news. Point of information in case you don't know - Ubuntu comes without a GUI frontend to IPtables and firestarter is/was about the most user-friendly of the lot. Perhaps Ubuntu will keep it in the repos or perhaps they'll take the uncompromising Gentoo line. I don't know.

[eoin]

Thanks spottedcat!

I followed the advice on all threads but still no joy.

The problem is definitely in the router (Canyon CN-BR1). Plugged directly into the ADSL modem internet works fine. Plugged into the router it looks like I can only send but not receive - although it does resolve DNS addresses.

The strange thing is that the router works fine on opensuse/ mandriva...

With wget it always times out on 'HTTP request sent, awaiting response... '

[towy71]

sounds to me that you have some sort of conflict between the modem and the router, have you disabled one of the dhcp servers?

[eoin]

towy71 thanks for your suggestion...

no i havent dhcp is enabled...

anyway for the moment i've give up on the router. i used a spare network card to share the internet connection. not an ideal solution, i know, but at least i've now got internet on both computers now.

thanks again everyone for your time and ideas,
eoin

[wtfster]

Hi, I'm so pleased somebody has the same problem as me! I've not got the same router as you eoin, but I have exactly the same "symptoms", i.e. being able to ping any host in the world, but not actually browse the website.
I have the same setup as eoin: PC -> router -> modem, and get the same "HTTP request sent, awaiting response..." message.
Actually, this 'problem' only happens when I use kernels greater than 2.6.17 (i.e. most new distros)
Hopefully it's an easy problem to fix..
Thanks,
wtfster

[ollie]

It sounds like a Network Address Translation issue between the PC, modem, router and Firefox.

Have you tried removing the router from the equation? Does this allow the PC to access the Internet?

Have you tried another browser - Opera, etc?

[wtfster]

Everything works fine without the router, although I can't really remove it, as there are 4 other computers that need access to the internet.
The problem is, I can't see what has been added to the kernel in 2.6.18 to bugger everything up for the 2 computers that are running Linux (only if running kernels post 2.6.17).

[ollie]

Have you set the gateway on your router to the IP address of the modem?

Now check that the gateway on your PC is set to the IP address of the router.

[eoin]

hey wtfster,

just wondering if you managed to find a solution?

[wtfster]

Sorry about not replying sooner: I took a month vacation and then had too much work to do when I got back, so no time to tinker around.

The only solution that I have found is to use distros that ship with kernels 2.6.17 and older.
I've also tried recompiling kernels without ipv6 support, using ipmasq to try different routing methods, all without luck.

[paulm]

Sorry about not replying sooner: I took a month vacation and then had too much work to do when I got back, so no time to tinker around.

The only solution that I have found is to use distros that ship with kernels 2.6.17 and older.
I've also tried recompiling kernels without ipv6 support, using ipmasq to try different routing methods, all without luck.

Sorry this reply is so late - been too busy to visit, then spent two weeks waiting for the phone line in my new place to be activated. Anyhow, I have had a problem somewhat similar to the one you describe using Zenwalk. Doesn't happen with my home setup (Zyxel 660HW router), but does happen on a site that I sometimes work at.

After a lot of hunting, I found this:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-kernel/2 ... 00646.html

and ended up adding the following to /etc/rc.local:

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sysctl net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling=0

That has fixed the problem for me...

paul.

[wtfster]

sysctl net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling=0

Thank you very much paulm, this fixed my problem!
Your method works, but I just put net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling=0 straight into my sysctl.conf file.

This has solved my problem that has lasted since 2.6.18 came out, so again, thank you very much!