The router firmware obviously had trouble tracking which entries in its Network Address Translation (NAT) table could be discarded and the table would overflow, making connections to the outside world hit and miss, as NAT entries are essential for replies to requests sent to servers out there to get back into the LAN.

When I investigated I noticed that the internal log of the NEC WarpStar was full of error messages like these:Ĥ 18:09:29 NAT TX-ERROR List Create Error : UDP 192.168.1.102 : 31320 > 201.29.227.157 : 7701 (IP-PORT=1)Ĥ 18:09:29 NAT TX-ERROR List Create Error : UDP 192.168.1.102 : 31320 > 99.227.142.5 : 9205 (IP-PORT=1)Ī router reset (briefly pulling the power cord) would cure it for a few hours to two days at most, but then the problem always came back. When I clicked on links in the browser, either it was very slow or it returned an error or timed out on me. Ī few weeks ago I started having random problems connecting to the internet. Months ago a friend had recommended OpenWRT, another open source solution for low cost broadband routers, but following the old “don’t try to fix it if it ain’t broken” mantra, I had stuck with my standard NEC Aterm WR6650S WarpStar router (firmware revision 8.72). I’m very impressed with its rich feature set and ease of installation. Today I installed the open source router firmware DD-WRT on a newly purchased Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 broadband router.

Update for dd wrt v24 mini wrt54g