# Getting a router to handle more connections?



## hat (Nov 8, 2009)

I have a NETGEAR WGR614 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122016) and it's an awesome router, except that it can't handle many connections. When I run utorrent, even when I throttle the upload speed to 20KB/s (the download speed never really goes over 100), internet performance lags. BF2 gets stuttery/jittery and even Internet Explorer can be slow. Is there any way I can get it to handle more connections??


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## TheLaughingMan (Nov 8, 2009)

hat said:


> I have a NETGEAR WGR614 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122016) and it's an awesome router, except that it can't handle many connections. When I run utorrent, even when I throttle the upload speed to 20KB/s (the download speed never really goes over 100), internet performance lags. BF2 gets stuttery/jittery and even Internet Explorer can be slow. Is there any way I can get it to handle more connections??



Simple start.  Have you setup port forwarding for the router to specific programs?  Have you tweaked utorrent to allow more connections and more connections per download?  Is the double firewall on or off?


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## Easy Rhino (Nov 8, 2009)

that could be an ISP issue. have you tried out any other routers? i know a lot of ISPs kill your download bandwidth when you are using even the smallest upload.


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## hat (Nov 8, 2009)

Nope, has nothing to do with the ISP. I've never had this problem before but I could try forwarding the BF2 port in the router. I have my utorrent port already forwarded properly.


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## Jstn7477 (Nov 8, 2009)

I have a NETGEAR WNR3500 that seems to be experiencing a similar issue. When I play TF2 for a while (and refresh the master server list that shows maybe 3-4,000 servers), I simply cannot connect to any servers until I pull the power plug. TF2 works fine when connected directly to my apartment's Ethernet connection. It's almost as if the router (maybe the NAT table) overflows and refuses any more connections until the router is power cycled.


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## Easy Rhino (Nov 8, 2009)

hat said:


> Nope, has nothing to do with the ISP. I've never had this problem before but I could try forwarding the BF2 port in the router. I have my utorrent port already forwarded properly.



has it always done this with this router or did it just start? how long have you been using this router?


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## Wile E (Nov 8, 2009)

Depending on the version you have, you can try to throw DD-WRT on it.

The other options would be to save your money and buy a better router. I have a D-Link DIR-655, and I can crush it with 3 different machines running multiple torrents giving well over 200 open connections, and I can still surf or play online without problems, aside from a little extra ping. It was worth every penny of it's $100 price tag, not to mention it's a Gb switch for the wired connections instead of 10/100.


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## hat (Nov 8, 2009)

I just got this router recently. Before I was using my pentium 3 computer as my router by rigging it up with Windows Internet Connection Sharing. Much more powerful on the hardware side, yet virtually non-existant on the feature side...


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## Wile E (Nov 8, 2009)

hat said:


> I just got this router recently. Before I was using my pentium 3 computer as my router by rigging it up with Windows Internet Connection Sharing. Much more powerful on the hardware side, yet virtually non-existant on the feature side...



What do you need out of the p3 machine? Does it have to run windows? There are linux distros specialized in acting as a router. You would only need a switch.


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## Easy Rhino (Nov 8, 2009)

bah, i would just return that router and get a different one. in my experience there is no need to hassle with a crappy router. there are tons of crappy routers out there and very few good ones. you may just swap for the same model and it could be great. who knows. but yea, why not install linux on your p3 and get it fired up.


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## Mussels (Nov 8, 2009)

you need to reduce the amount of connections in utorrent, or replace the router with one that can take it.


its usually related to how much ram is inside the routers - they fill up, overflow, and drop connection til they catch up again.


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## eidairaman1 (Nov 8, 2009)

i encounter the same problem when my housemate runs utorrent in the background, Trust me Utorrent is a bandwidth hog and should not be run when gaming is occurring unless if you have an internet connection with a bandwidth sustainment capability for both upload and download speeds


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## Wile E (Nov 8, 2009)

eidairaman1 said:


> i encounter the same problem when my housemate runs utorrent in the background, Trust me Utorrent is a bandwidth hog and should not be run when gaming is occurring unless if you have an internet connection with a bandwidth sustainment capability for both upload and download speeds



If you have a good router, having uTorrent run doesn't hurt your gaming.


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## Mussels (Nov 8, 2009)

its not utorrents BANDWIDTH, its the amount of connections.

a usual person uses 5-10 at any on time, utorrent (with DHT enabled) can use hundreds at any given moment - and routers arent made for it.


get the utorrent uses to cap it at 20 maximum connections, or replace the router.


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## Easy Rhino (Nov 8, 2009)

even the crappy verizon fios router i have to use runs a billion utorrent connections at once.


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## Mussels (Nov 8, 2009)

thats what i use, however i have a "known good" router for massive connections.


anything above say, 50 connections and things start to get erratic - i still get an average of 50ms ping to my game servers, but the jitter increases and things go a bit strange.

with 40 (or below) i can make VOIP calls perfectly clear with no issues while torrenting at 90% of my max down and upload speeds


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## timta2 (Nov 8, 2009)

I just replaced my WGR614 for the very same reasons a few weeks ago. It used to be okay before I started checking out torrents at which point its performance would drop and it would get hot and lockup often (especially when I lived in Florida). I bought a $22 (shipped) refurbished Netgear WNR2000 and it seems to be a major improvement. Don't forget that the WGR614 came out (V1.0 anyway) long before torrents started to be used.


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## hat (Nov 8, 2009)

Mine's version 9

What does DHT do?


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## newtekie1 (Nov 8, 2009)

Get a WRT54GL and put a decent firmware on it.  They are cheap, and amazing routers with 3rd party firmware(I use tomato).


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## Mussels (Nov 8, 2009)

hat said:


> Mine's version 9
> 
> What does DHT do?



distributed hash tables.


allows you to connect to peers even if the tracker is down, but it makes a lot of connections that arent limited by any settings in the program itself. its an on or off deal.


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## eidairaman1 (Nov 8, 2009)

Wile E said:


> If you have a good router, having uTorrent run doesn't hurt your gaming.



well he has like the first Gen Linksys Draft N router, and to me they are crap, like the WRT54GS v5 and higher


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## hat (Nov 8, 2009)

I had a WRT54GS before. I don't know what version it was, but I do know that it died on me. I wasn't even using the wireless either... I disabled it in the router featues. At that time I was all wired. However I am using wireless on my my mom's computer and on my laptop, and on my P3 as well but it's down right now.

Informative thread.


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## eidairaman1 (Nov 8, 2009)

Version 5 and higher were built cheaply, V4 and lower were very reliable, but after that mess i switched to a Netgear WPN 824 V2 which was very strong, just too bad it doesnt have wireless N otherwise id be using it over the friggin Linksys garbage


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## newtekie1 (Nov 8, 2009)

eidairaman1 said:


> Version 5 and higher were built cheaply, V4 and lower were very reliable, but after that mess i switched to a Netgear WPN 824 V2 which was very strong, just too bad it doesnt have wireless N otherwise id be using it over the friggin Linksys garbage



To add to this, Linksys still sells the v4 router, they just rebranded it to WRT54GL, which is why I suggested it.  My v2 WRT54G is still going strong, and it is well over 5 years old.


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## eidairaman1 (Nov 8, 2009)

well WRT54G and GL throughout are very Reliable, GS v5 and higher are crap.


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## hat (Nov 8, 2009)

I'm getting really crap speeds now and I'm not even using all 40 connections. On one of the torrents, I have 0 seeds connected out of 136. What gives?


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## eidairaman1 (Nov 8, 2009)

ill get you an app to check for how many hops and latency you are getting.


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## mrhuggles (Nov 8, 2009)

ive gotten mine to handle around 15000 tracked connections 

openWRT + 32mb ram, how much ram will controll how many connections can be tracked at once, also its nice if your router will fail to crash and instead start cutting off old connections when it fills up.


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## hat (Nov 8, 2009)

My router has 8mb ram.


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## Binge (Nov 8, 2009)

This isn't advice as much as I'm pitching a sweet router: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...ing router&um=1&ie=UTF-8&resnum=1&sa=N&tab=fw

The gaming part of it is gimmicky, but the router itself is SUPER solid.  As for your problem I wish I could help more hat.


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## Wile E (Nov 8, 2009)

Binge said:


> This isn't advice as much as I'm pitching a sweet router: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...ing router&um=1&ie=UTF-8&resnum=1&sa=N&tab=fw
> 
> The gaming part of it is gimmicky, but the router itself is SUPER solid.  As for your problem I wish I could help more hat.



Agreed, but for almost the same price, he can have all the same features, plus single band N wireless by buying the DIR-655.


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## hat (Nov 8, 2009)

I don't want to buy anything else, I want to have fun by hacking up what I already have


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## Binge (Nov 8, 2009)

More specifically this model: d-link dgl-4300

I know you can get N, but I still prefer this one over the N version and I found mine at $50 new on sale.


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## Wile E (Nov 8, 2009)

hat said:


> I don't want to buy anything else, I want to have fun by hacking up what I already have



Then it's time to see if you can get DD-WRT on it. Certain versions of your router are supported. http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_Devices


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## hat (Nov 9, 2009)

Nope, I checked. I have a v9, and it's "in the works" as they say.


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## Mussels (Nov 9, 2009)

mrhuggles said:


> ive gotten mine to handle around 15000 tracked connections
> 
> openWRT + 32mb ram, how much ram will controll how many connections can be tracked at once, also its nice if your router will fail to crash and instead start cutting off old connections when it fills up.



on windows 7, you're capped at 25 half open connections anyway. you'd never get that high - maybe 300, tops?




When it comes to torrents, speed always depends on how well its seeded. For a good test find the dattebayo website and grab one of their latest bleach episodes - its always ridonculously well seeded, so it always goes very fast.


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## hat (Nov 9, 2009)

Mussels said:


> When it comes to torrents, speed always depends on how well its seeded. For a good test find the dattebayo website and grab one of their latest bleach episodes - its always ridonculously well seeded, so it always goes very fast.



I was just thinking this...


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## TheLaughingMan (Nov 9, 2009)

Mussels said:


> on windows 7, you're capped at 25 half open connections anyway. you'd never get that high - maybe 300, tops?
> 
> When it comes to torrents, speed always depends on how well its seeded. For a good test find the dattebayo website and grab one of their latest bleach episodes - its always ridonculously well seeded, so it always goes very fast.



Very good point.  What are you downloading?

And the half-open connection thing was removed after XP.  Vista didn't even do the half-open connections and Windows 7 definitely did not bring that bull back into play.  I don't know exactly how many connections it can handle, but I am fairly certain it would be more than his router if it only has 8 MB of on-board.

Simple test.  Turn the ports back to default for uTorrent instead of 40/40/2.  Then see if speed improves.  Then bypass the router and go from your computer directly to the modem or wall port and see if speed improves.  use a well seeded torrent like Bleach, some recent TV episode of House, and do all of this within an hour.  I say give each test 20 minutes to run before switching schemes.

If you get better speed with the uTorrent connections higher (which default will be), that is obvious not helping by limiting it.  If the speed is improved again by bypassing your router, even better because it is the problem and you have found it.  If the first doesn't help, but the second does, the issue is still the router doesn't have enough to handle higher bandwidth throughput.

For the record.  I personally tried the 40/40/2 scheme listed before and it crippled my downloads.  I got up to 300% better speed when I went back to my original options; however, my router has 64 MB of on-board and usually has 40ish available after starting DD-WRT (which I only used to boost signal power).


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## Mussels (Nov 9, 2009)

TheLaughingMan said:


> Very good point.  What are you downloading?
> 
> And the half-open connection thing was removed after XP.  Vista didn't even do the half-open connections and Windows 7 definitely did not bring that bull back into play.  I don't know exactly how many connections it can handle, but I am fairly certain it would be more than his router if it only has 8 MB of on-board.
> 
> ...



half open was *not* removed after XP! it was merely raised.

it went from 10 connections in XP, to 15 in vista and 25 in 7 ultimate (IIRC)


oh and as for my settings crippling your speeds: my internet line is approx 8Mb down, 1Mb up (900KB/s down, 90KB/s up) - and its designed to NOT max out my line, so that gaming, VOIP and so on are never interfered with. its the 'safe' setting as opposed to the 'fast' setting


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## TheLaughingMan (Nov 9, 2009)

Mussels said:


> half open was *not* removed after XP! it was merely raised.
> 
> it went from 10 connections in XP, to 15 in vista and 25 in 7 ultimate (IIRC)
> 
> ...



I do apologize.  I did check and you are correct.  It was raised, but I had information previously stating the limit would be removed completely in Vista SP2 and Windows 7, but I guess this information was incorrect.  Time to mess with some .sys files again.

My internet speed is about the same.  I have 10 Mb down/1Mb up.  Me and my roommates don't limit the throughput, but I do not allow torrents to run during the day.  Torrenting and massive downloading of new games, patches, etc. is only allowed between 12 midnight and 9 a.m.

Thanks for the info. on the settings as I can now see it is to be used in a more open downloading environment.  I may try it again to see if downloading during the day will create any issues.

Here is the Info. I had from Half-open limit fix people:



> Does the limit of concurrent half-open connections present in Windows Server 2003/2008, Vista SP2 and Windows 7 beta start from build 7100?
> No. It is physically present in the tcpip.sys file but has no effect; thereby, there is no Event ID 4226 or Internet deceleration when a P2P program runs in this versions of Windows.


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## Wile E (Nov 9, 2009)

TheLaughingMan said:


> I do apologize.  I did check and you are correct.  It was raised, but I had information previously stating the limit would be removed completely in Vista SP2 and Windows 7, but I guess this information was incorrect.  Time to mess with some .sys files again.
> 
> My internet speed is about the same.  I have 10 Mb down/1Mb up.  Me and my roommates don't limit the throughput, but I do not allow torrents to run during the day.  Torrenting and massive downloading of new games, patches, etc. is only allowed between 12 midnight and 9 a.m.
> 
> ...


All you have to do is set a schedule in uTorrent and have it throttle during the day, then you can still dl, and not heavily effect everything else. There's no reason to completely ban it, as you can have the best of both worlds.


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## TheLaughingMan (Nov 9, 2009)

Wile E said:


> All you have to do is set a schedule in uTorrent and have it throttle during the day, then you can still dl, and not heavily effect everything else. There's no reason to completely ban it, as you can have the best of both worlds.



My answer to that question is 1 of my roommates is not to computer savvy.  I could set the throttle myself, but I am not that nice as he should learn about stuff before jumping head first into the deep in, but I digress.  It also doesn't help that our ISP over sold the network and we get a fair amount of congestion during the daytime peek hours.  Gaming and web surf are fine, but downloading even YouTube videos is heartbreaking and this is without torrents adding to the mix.


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## Wile E (Nov 9, 2009)

TheLaughingMan said:


> My answer to that question is 1 of my roommates is not to computer savvy.  I could set the throttle myself, but I am not that nice as he should learn about stuff before jumping head first into the deep in, but I digress.  It also doesn't help that our ISP over sold the network and we get a fair amount of congestion during the daytime peek hours.  Gaming and web surf are fine, but downloading even YouTube videos is heartbreaking and this is without torrents adding to the mix.


Ahhhhh. Yeah, no amount of scheduling will account for a crappy ISP. That sucks.


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## Jstn7477 (Nov 9, 2009)

Binge said:


> This isn't advice as much as I'm pitching a sweet router: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...ing router&um=1&ie=UTF-8&resnum=1&sa=N&tab=fw
> 
> The gaming part of it is gimmicky, but the router itself is SUPER solid.  As for your problem I wish I could help more hat.



My dad bought a DGL-4500, and holy s@#% was that firmware horrible. The router would just randomly need to be rebooted to get the internet working again, and you couldn't downgrade to the "better" working firmware once you upgraded to a new "series" of firmware. My parents are using the crappy Verizon/Actiontec router over that buggy $180 paperweight. Don't get me wrong, the router itself is amazing, but boy does that firmware need some serious reworking.


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## TheLaughingMan (Nov 9, 2009)

Anyone know a way I can test the number of Half-open connections on a computer?


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## Mussels (Nov 9, 2009)

TheLaughingMan said:


> Anyone know a way I can test the number of Half-open connections on a computer?



according to the links below, a program called TCP-Z is your saviour
(this program doesnt work so well in x64 OS's)


actually, it seems that laughing man may have been right... the limit may well have been removed in everything but XP.
Thats what i got for not checking this out every release of win 7, lol


http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/...in-windows-7-and-vista-sp2-no-patch-required/




> Instead, Microsoft adds a registry key that allows user or administrator to enable (turn on) or disable (turn off) the half-open TCP connections limit in Windows Vista with Service Pack 2 and in Windows Server 2008 with Service Pack 2. The registry key is EnableConnectionRateLimiting. The Knowledge Base
> article KB969710 confirms that the half-open TCP connections limit is disabled in Windows Server 2008 with Service Pack 2 (SP2) and in Windows Vista with Service Pack 2 (SP2).


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