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Level 1

5 points

AEBS 802.11n, Crashing while using bittorrent

Hi, I have recently purchased an AEBS 802.11n (gigabyte ed. and using the 7.2.1 firmware) and am experiencing some problems using bittorrent.

First off, I use azureus for my torrents, and with my former linksys router I had no issues. However since purchasing the AEBS I have tried multiple torrents now, and seemingly randomly during the transfer I loose wired/wireless connectivity to my router and am unable to restore it. When looking at the actual base station though the status light is still green, but going through my mbp the device will not appear when I scan for base stations. The only way to fix this problem is to unplug/replug the router.

This happened with the first AEBS and thinking it may be an error with the actual router, I returned it. However, after unpacking the new one, configuring it... I am having the exact same issue. I haven't experienced the router crashing any other times outside of using bittorrent, so I am unable to pinpoint whether this is something random or not. However it is almost a sure bet that letting azureus run for a few minutes will crash it. Furthermore upon restarting the router, all of its logs seem to clear so I can't even begin to troubleshoot this.

I can't see how a $60 linksys router is able to outperform this very nice offering from apple, and I really would like to see this problem fixed. I hope this doesn't come down to tweaking some rare setting in the bittorrent client as I have many people that use my network weekly and it will be an increasable pain to take them through some unique setup which should not be required.

If anyone has any ideas let me know, I am fairly competition with computers and networking issues and willing to do whatever is needed to fix this. Thanks in advance.

SR Macbook Pro (2.4 GHz), Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Posted on Sep 12, 2007 10:50 PM

114 replies

JPO

Level 1

135 points

Nov 4, 2007 8:44 AM in response to iMinds

iMinds,

Jerad's post is confusing because there are several different issues going on, and they are getting confused. First, there is an issue with the IPv6 implementation in the AEBS 7.2.1 firmware which affects all users trying to use bittorrent clients (and possibly VPN). This is what is causing the AEBS to lock-up (where the status light stays green). Follow the above directions in my previous posts to disable the IPv6 'tunnel' mode.

Second, there is a seperate problem with Leopard Airport Extreme software and bittorrent- this affects only Leopard upgraders who are trying to use Azureus. If you are using this combination and you are getting kernel panics or your Mac's connection is freezing while using Azureus, then it seems for the moment that the only options are to 1) turn off your Mac's Airport wireless connection while running Azureus and connect directly to your network over the ethernet adapter, or 2)use another client (like transmission) until the issue is resolved either by Apple or the Azureus dev team.

There should be no need to uninstall Azureus, just don't use it over wireless on Leopard.. there are some other threads going on this topic.

iMinds

Level 1

10 points

Nov 4, 2007 12:57 PM in response to JPO

JPO

this is what i was expecting Jerad to write in his post but it seems he missed the point. To all other users, I will suggest you change your IPv6 to "link-locally". It does make azureus run stable and no crashes.

Nov 6, 2007 8:43 AM in response to iMinds

I'm having the same problem with dropped connection -- also while using Azureus.

wcg

Level 1

0 points

Nov 7, 2007 2:20 PM in response to Rajesh Sharma

This is the approach I took. BitTorrent works for the most part but seems to tax most routers until they need some sort of reboot. The only router that ever worked flawlessly with BitTorrent was an old wired LinkSys router.

I disabled all security and use mac address filtering since I was having problems with my IBM Thinkpad and the whole WEP/WPA "transitional network" settings. Note that my D-Link DSM-320, Wii, and Compaq laptop worked fine.

Long story short - works well now with security disabled.

JPO

Level 1

135 points

Nov 7, 2007 3:20 PM in response to wcg

wcg wrote:

I disabled all security and use mac address filtering since I was having problems with my IBM Thinkpad and the whole WEP/WPA "transitional network" settings.

Long story short - works well now with security disabled.

This is not a solution that I would recommend. MAC address filtering is no substitute for security.. your MAC address can easily be spoofed. If you have old hardware that only supports WEP, consider using a second wireless router as a bridge to act as an access point for your 802.11b/g and WEP-only devices.. then you can use the WPA2 Personal and 5Ghz wide-channel 802.11n settings on your AEBS, which will dramatically improve your wireless performance (with these settings and IPv6 set to 'link-local only' I have no problems using Azureus).

JPO

Level 1

135 points

Nov 7, 2007 3:33 PM in response to Jerame Davis

Regarding your second issue.. I think you are just running into a performance limitation of the AEBS. The 100Mbs version is considerably slower across ALL connections to start with (for example, see the benchmarks here http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30188/96/ ), and the Airdisk is dependent on the underpowered processor in the AEBS.. loading it up with lots of bittorrent traffic and demanding I/O from the Airdisk simultaneously is demanding more than the AEBS can handle. Granted, that stinks, but this is probably why Apple seems to have discontinued support for the Airdisk feature in Leopard. Airdisk will never be a replacement for a dedicated ethernet attached NAS.

That said, you should try further limiting the number of simultaneous connections that your bittorrent client makes during transfers.. that should help out the Airdisk a bit.

lucmolt

Level 1

0 points

Nov 13, 2007 3:58 AM in response to jusfonzin

I experienced the same freeze problem on my AEBS 802.11n network using Azureus.
My personal solution is (really my escamotage..): I switched to Trasmission on my PowerMac G4 1Ghz, using MacOs 10.4.10, connected to airport base station via ethernet; I selected the IPv6 "local link only" mode and switched off the IPv6 on all my computers; I'm still using AEBS 802.11n firmware 7.2.1. Everything is working perfect now.
My setup is: D-Link DSL 320T modem - AEBS 802.11n - PM G4 1 Ghz, Os 10.4.10 (ethernet)
- imac alluminium 20" 2,4 Ghz, Os 10.5(airport)
- macbook 2,0Ghz, Os 10.5(airport)

kadettje

Level 1

0 points

Nov 18, 2007 8:26 AM in response to fryzelp

I have been experiencing the same issues with azureus. I did some research and many people recommended switching to transmission:
http://transmission.m0k.org/

This torrent client works great, fast downloads and supports encrypted connections.

Jan 26, 2008 10:51 AM in response to Jerame Davis

THANK YOU! I thought I was going mad. In oct my ancient asante died, and I have spent the last 2 months trying out different replacement routers, ALL of which have had this problem to some degree. (all of the newer ones - the old trendnet not so bad) I went through two airports, with the activity light either turning off completely or staying on solid, not routing, not pinging, but switching still working. Had to unplug to reboot. This problem also occurred with a brand new linksys, a netgear, and a dlink. Glad I read this far down in the thread, as earlier on there's much discussion of downgrading firmware to fix it.

My take is that around october is when IPv6 was really getting moving, and that evidently most of the new routers either have bad firmware for handling it, or there's something else unstable about it. The 7.1.1 firmware appears to have a problem with it, but not so bad as 7.2's firmware. So downgrading firmware helps, but local-only'ing IPv6 I hope fixes it. Use of bittorrent is probably attracting IPv6 connections from all over the place, which is probably why BT makes things degrade more quickly. Since BT peers will continue to try to connect to you for at least 30 minutes after you leave a swarm, it's not surprising that simply launching BT and then closing it could lead to a crash 20 minutes later.

AEBS 802.11n, Crashing while using bittorrent