Hello everyone!
It has been several years since I changed my loved WRT160NL with a newer one because at that time I started having problems with slow wireless throughputs. I don't know how and why, but it happened overnight. I woke up one day and the router was not working properly any more. I suspect that Linksys have some certificates that expire after certain time of use and then the wireless connection works poorly. I believe this happened at exactly 10 years of having the router. My friend and I bought them together and both started having the same issue at the same time! Even after several years I connect the router and it does the same problem connecting at some 1-2mbps on wi-fi, although it used to have a "lightning fast" connection of some 50+mbps at the times it was working fine. Since then I did flash it back to the original firmware, DDWRT and Gargoyle, but every firmware had the same problem. It insists on connecting the devices at 1mbps download even though the devices are up close as 2 meters. The antenna is not a problem 100% because it has the same throughput no matter if it is 1m away from the router or if I am at the other side of the house behind 2 walls and 10m distance, it still has 1-2mbps transfer. Has someone had similar problem with the Linksys routers or exactly with the same type of router? I suspect the certificates of the wi-fi being expired (a friend told me) and thus causing it to connection to be so poor. Is there a chance of this being true?
Edit: Yup... it connects instantly at 78mbps and then drops to B standard at 1mbps. If I try to disable the B standard, the router disappears as a device. So it definitely works only B standard. What is disabling the other G and N standards?
But it is worth starting here:
That router is VERY old and cannot run a modern version of OpenWrt (latest is 19.07.10 which is EOL, unsupported, and has many known security vulnerabilities).
There is no value in trying to do anything with this device anymore -- it has served its purpose and should now be e-cycled. You will be much better off with newer device that has modern standards and the resources to run the latest OpenWrt.
This is not a thing. I'm not sure how you got the impression that there were any cetificates in the first place (there aren't), but in situations where an expired cert is an explanation, it results in the inability to connect at all, not just at a slower speed. But no, this is not what is happening here.
This suggests very strongly that it is not related to OpenWrt. It is possible that your hardware is dying in general. But regardless of the root cause, it's not worth the time and energy to debug this one based on my first statement.
Not true, the router runs the latest firmware!
It has support for latest firmwares of DDWRT and Gargoyle also!
The router is great and had super speeds even for present times!
It runs the latest firmware at the moment (screenshot sent) and I am working with it while typing. It works fine, the only problem is that it won't connect to G or N, just B works! It happened overnight to both of us without touching anything!
I am pretty sure it has something to do with something expiring set by Linksys!
My friend had the same problem at the same time, there is no chance we got the same problem at once!
Your device runs the latest version of OpenWrt that is available for this very old hardware. However, it is not the latest firmware. The current version of OpenWrt is 23.05.2 which was released just last month (November 2023). 19.07.10 was released in April 2022 (with the overall 19.07 series being initially released in January 2020). Since 19.07, there have been 3 major releases: 21.02, 22.03, and 23.05. So this 19.07 is very far out of date.
Feel free to run one of those options, if you like. Remember, your device has only 32MB of RAM which is not sufficient for anything modern (at least with OpenWrt, but maybe the other firmware options are more minimalist).
I'd be pretty surprised about that. That device has a single core 400MHz processor, 5x 100Mbps ports, and appears to be a "draft-n" version (predates the official 802.11n standard ratification). It was released in May 2009, so it is approaching 15 years old. It probably cannot actually route anything over maybe 50Mbps.
Like I said, 19.07 has been superceeded by 3 major revisions.
Seems like quite a big problem! If you didn't do anything to your config and the g/n capabilities just died, it sounds like a hardware failure to me. If you reset to defaults and/or you tried other firmware options and still had the same problem, that also makes it pretty clear that there is nothing that can be done with OpenWrt to resolve your issue.
Nope. This is not a thing. Especially if you're running any 3rd party/open source firmware, there's no linksys code running that could cuase an expiry.
It could be an operating system upgrade on your devices (computers/phones/tablets, etc.). Or, it could be that the hardware is almost 15 years old which is ancient in the world of computer technology.
You are right about the latest firmware. I apologize!
But... man, the router was working like a charm with speeds of 50+mbps that are still fair for use! I have an even older (54mpbs technology) D-Link DWL2100AP access point (non-open-firmware) working at 108mbps (ExtremeG), together with a PCI wi-fi card DWL-G520 card. Getting speeds way over 54mbps and it makes me happy still using them! Reminds me of a great time when I was making records for distant connections of some 3-4km and speeds of almost 1MB/sec (Megabyte/sec)! The WRT160NL was a great router until one day overnight got stuck at B standard. I am 100% sure it's some Linksys policy of decommissioning the old routers even though they would work fine for years!
Likewise, I'm 100% sure it's not... at least not in software/firmware. It is certainly likely that the components selected were chosen in part based on cost, and the less expensive components do often have a shorter expected lifespan (especially for capacitors).
However, if you are so convinced of this fact, what, if anything, do you expect to be achieved here? As stated already, if you are running any non-Linksys firmware (such as OpenWrt), there is no Linksys firmware code running in the device. But that notwithstanding, there's nothing more that can be done if you've tried multiple different firmware options and none provide functional 802.11g or n operation. It is most certainly not anything we can help you with here in the OpenWrt forums.
I was playing around with the settings... set it to N-Only and while changing the mode I succeeded to gain 70mbps in one try at Speedtest.net... the next clicking it was not working any more. I guess I caught it "unprepared"... The router has the speed still and can work well, but someone is trying to destroy it on purpose! There is no power on the earth that can persuade me think otherwise! The router is sabotaged, maybe by software where we have no access in the hardware, but this is a sabotage 100% ! ! !
This comes up from time to time on the forums. I can assure you that sabatoge or some "expiring certificates" has nothing to do with your issue. But I am also quite sure you don't believe me on this fact.
I'll return to a few things I said earlier:
In fact, it is plausible that the issue with the wifi is related to your limited amount of RAM -- 32MB offered a very slim operating margin, even with 19.07 (the last version that officially had support for any 32MB devices). Wifi drviers take memory (g and n likely require more RAM than b), and it is possible that you're actually hitting an out-of-memory (OOM) situation.
If you roll back to an earlier version like 18.06 or 17.01 (highly discouraged except for experimental purposes), you could test if OOM could explain it. However, those versions are even older, have more security vulnerabilities, and are totally unsupported.
Ultimately, the hardware and firmware you are using is completely unsupported now (the hardware with only 32MB RAM and the firmware at 19.07).
To give you a parallel here -- in 2009 when your device was released, the iPhone 3G was current and the 3GS would come out towards the end of that year. Both of those devices would see official software support until they were dropped in 2013. Both of those devices used 3G cellular technology which has been physically turned down in 2022 (at least in North America, probably almost everywhere else, too).
With OpenWrt, you actually had official firmware support of your router through 2022, but I think it's time to let this one go after nearly 15 years of service.
No, it's just old hardware being old. This model is from 2009, was EOL, if I'm not mistaken, in 2012. Which means that your unit is at the very least, nearly 12 years old.
Electronics don't last forever. They slowly oxidise internally, degrade in other manners, especially when used and they soak in their own heat.
What's disabling the other standards is most likely internal hardware security which detects issues in the wireless modem/antenna when an N-based connection is established, and reduces it to a maintainable G-based connection.
Your best bet is really to listen to the advice given above and replace this ancient router with a more recent one. Around $30-40 you can already find very capable, and well supported models that can do AX speeds (around 1800Mbit), and most likely will be supported by OpenWrt for the next 4-5 years at least.
Wireless modem degradation is a real issue - just look at e.g. the Wii or Wii U fanbase, where more and more people pop up with WiFi issues that are only fixed by replacing the wireless adapter. Or the iPhone 3G class action lawsuit, when the WiFi/GPS chipset of those phones started giving out after 4 years of usage.
Funny enough that you also brought up the iPhone 3G, since that's one of the prime examples of wireless hardware with planned obsolescence (well, not proven in court, but the fact that the WiFi and GPS modules lifted off the board and could be easily resoldered without damage proves that it was inadequate manufacturing QC).
As for 3G tech, IIRC it's still maintained even in the US, but most certainly in Europe, as a fallback (especially rural areas or when 4G/5G systems become overcrowded). But we're tracking off topic, so I'll stop
@segaodma please, listen to @psherman - they didn't earn the OpenWrt Guru and Leader roles on the forum for nothing. There's absolutely no sabotage, just old hardware struggling to run new software, and/or possibly hardware fatigue.
Hah, even if there's no grand conspiracy like OP says, "unplanned" obsolescence certainly appears to be a thing with cheap components and cheaper manufacturing processes. Increasingly so as things such as shoddy soldering on tiny and tinier electronics simply can't be spotted with the naked eye.
Open source hardware can be part of the greater solution to these giant corpos, but how do you account for the manufacturing process? Wonder how libre-friendly companies like System76, Framework and PINE64 handles these things on their end.
There is a lot of nuance here, and it would quickly veer off-topic. But it is often less about "planned obselescence" and more about expected/required lifespan for any given product. The manufacturers will build requirements based on a number of key things, including:
Price point
Application space (home, small business, institutional/educational, enterprise (large businesses), government, miltary, aerospace, etc.)
Physical operating environment
Official support horizon (this doesn't mean the product stops functioning, just how long they will officially support it)
etc.
For home/small business products at low price points, things are built to a cost. Things that are cost reduced often do not last as long for a variety of technical reasons. The expected lifespan in a consumer's eyes is either "it should never die" or "I'll replace it in x years when my internet speed increases" or whatever the case may be. With rare exceptions, the manufacturers aren't building things specifically to stop working after a certain time/date, it purely comes down to the practicalities of the product design and cost at which a product is viable in the market.
If you want an AP to last for 20+ years, buy a mil-spec device that has been designed with this in mind. But it will cost you a lot -- premium components, more sophistocated design including thermals, power circutry, radiation hardening, etc..
You're also dealing with an evolution of technology here... we now have wifi 6e products on the market, but this one is (early) wifi 4. Linksys didn't build this product to die and force to upgrade.... they built the product with an assumption that it would be superceeded (by the march of technology, not evil forces) and that most consumers will replace it before it fails (or that they will be fine replacing it when that happens because the new products are indeed so much more capable). Overengineering the device to have a 20+ year lifespan would mean that it would have cost more to purchase (probably a lot more in relative terms), a value proposition that is not worth it to most users, especially when the cost of upgrading is so cheap. Making up numbers -- if the WRT160NLwas say $100 when it was new, you can buy a $50 device now that is way more powerful and capable. Would you have wanted to spend say $200 back then to buy a device that had a longer lifspan but would never give you a performance boost?
I assure you that there is no malice on the part of the manufacturer here.... just practical realities of bringing products to market at prices that the market will support, and then physics beyond that for when products eventually fail.
Beyond everything that has been said already, you're also dealing with a changing environment.
In 2009[0], interference from your neighbours (wifi, bluetooth, wireless headphones, cameras, etc. pp.) was probably lower than it is now, because they've gotten new toys on the air in the mean time, reducing the free airtime allotted you.
--
[0] (non-wifi-2.4-GHz) cameras were just starting, mesh systems or repeaters not on the menu, IoT and smarthome non-existent, combined with top wan speeds in the 50 MBit/s range.
I have at least a dozen 2.6Ghz only devices with 4MB flash and 32MB ram and have older OpenWRT versions and current dd-wrt versions on them no problem. Your router, incidentally, is an 8MB flash/32MB ram device with an AR9130.
Unfortunately these forums are infested with hardware snobs who think that a modern 2.4Ghz radio running on channel 1 with a 20Mhz wide setup is somehow lightyears faster than a 15 year old 2.4Ghz radio running on channel 1 with a 20Mhz wide setup. They probably replace the Ethernet cables they use every 5 years because "lifespan"
Did you THROUGHLY read the section on ANI in the documentation on this device:
Since many of your symptoms sound suspiciously like the issue documented there.
Many times in cases like yours the problem is tracable to failures in the "wall wart" power adapter. These can drop voltage to borderline conditions or introduce interference that can interfere with the CPU. Another possibility is improper flashing between firmwares that destroyed the ART partition data. The only approved method of moving between firmware is returning to factory flash in between different firmwares. Another issue can be a neighbor running a 40Mhz wide radio on 2.4Ghz or tuning to an off-band, that was hinted at by 1 poster.
Get yourself a real cell phone based on Android and run WiFiAnalyzer on it then walk around your house and take a look-see at what is going on. I'm guessing since both you and your neighbor were affected some A-hole moved into the neighborhood who is running a 40Mhz wide radio on some off-channel like channel 2 or 3 and is just stomping all over your signal.
While it is certainly true that there are people who are enthusastic about newer hardware, the current conversation is not purely about wifi performance (although that, ironically, is the OPs actual issue)...
The border gateway for your network should be secure. To ensure that this is the case, it is necessary to use firmware that is kept up-to-date with resepect to CVEs and bugs that are discovered. Running firmware that is EOL means that patches will never be available, making your router (and thus your entire network) potentially vulnerable to attack.
With hardware as old as the device discussed in this thread, it is only suitable for relatively slow internet connection speeds. Obviously, the speeds from ISPs will very considerably based on the norms/competition within your country/region or even in some cases neighborhoods and of course the technology of the ISP's distribution network. In the case of the WRT160NL, the ethernet ports are 100Mbps and the processor is slow. Maybe I underestimated when I said ~50Mbps routing -- it seems that the OP was able to get ~75Mbps. If that's sufficient for their needs and/or on par with the ISP service contract, that's great. My connection speed has been >200Mbps for the last decade, so a device that old would be a major bottleneck for me, even in 2013 or so (FWIW, I now have 10Gbps fiber service that is cheaper than the 800Mbps service I had just a few months ago)
The OP is talking about problems on a device that is nearly 15 years old. The time and energy investment to resolve the issue just isn't worth it, even when it could be as simple as a failing power adapter. You can get a whole new router (complete with a power adapter) so cheaply that it doesn't make a lot of sense to buy just the power adapter in this case. I just had a dishwasher fail -- it was approximately the same age as this router... I could have repaired it for a bit less than half the cost of buying a new one, but it would have been unwise given that these things have a lifespan of 10-15 years or so and it is likely other parts would fail in short order. Technology has improved so much that it's just not worth spending time or money fixing the old one (in the case of my dishwasher, it cleans so much better and is nearly silent).
And, I can say all of this while also telling you that I am running OpenWrt on quite a bit of old hardware (also as far back as 2009!)... the difference is that this hardware can run the latest version of OpenWrt.
Which is the reason I suggested that he use dd-wrt which IS still supporting this hardware. dd-wrt supports a LOT of hardware that OpenWRT does not. It is a complimentary project that diverged long ago from OpenWRT not a competitive project - at least, not yet, really. I wish there was more recognition of this instead of the Ob-Sniping that seems usual in these forums.
Recent changes at Broadcom may one day in the future make it competitive. In past years the primary developer of DD-WRT signed a NDA with Broadcom that allowed him to bring binary blob drivers for old Broadcom chipsets forward into newer kernels. He was also able to make use of the "hardware NAT" binary blob driver Broadcom wrote and for that reason the Broadcom Northstar chipsets can achieve Gigabit speeds for address translation/routing through hardware (like the Netgear r7000) that OpenWRT cannot match on equivalent Qualcomm hardware. It appears, however, with the newest Broadcom chipsets that Broadcom is no longer willing to do that and the DD-WRT developer has expended much effort to no avail to port DD-WRT to the Broadcom chips that support Wifi6, and so is refocusing effort on the Atheros and other gear, the same that OpenWRT has been doing. We will have to see how this plays out.
However, the obvious answer to all of this is to run a real firewall on a PC as your primary "router" and to use a Unix distro with a vastly improved TCP/IP stack. The most obvious candidates are OpenSense and pfsense which are both based on FreeBSD. The BSD TCPIP stack has vastly outperformed the Linux stack in raw processing speed in every test that has been done over the years. The main reason the majority of people don't pay attention to this is because most people are not doing gigabit routing or translation or they are using PC gear for Linux that is tremendously overpowered, so the inefficiencies in the Linux stack don't matter. Then you put the wifi gear behind the firewall.
This is an entire discussion in of itself and I will readily acknowledge many people would prefer to have only a single device as a combo border router and wifi AP but when you do that you ARE going to have to accept a LOT of inefficiencies which are going to mean you likely will NOT realize all your Internet speed that you are paying for.
Lastly with the increasing penetration of IPv6 the days of depending on a border "firewall" are drawing to a close. In the Enterprise space we no longer depend on this model. Instead - EVERY HOST - is secured with the expectation that the bad guys are going to easily bypass even the most advanced firewall. Once more that is a big discussion, but it serves to point out that home users depending on a "secured border gateway" are essentially operating on an antique networking paradigm - the "chocolate covered cherry" model, hard exterior, soft yummy interior. Get past the exterior and "all your base are belong to us", you is pwned, man.
Once more the reality is that the last mile of Internet delivery has essentially surpassed the ability of the wifi radio standards. This is why efforts like Clear ended up failed and bankrupt and why Satellite Internet is always going to be a niche product. There is simply not enough frequency spectrum to accommodate everyone and their dog running 10 Gigabit internet which is where we are going to be in another generation.
Wifi's primary advantage has been for MOBILE delivery of Internet. And the reality is that because so many people are using wifi that tremendous effort has been expended on making services like Television/movie streaming/etc. compressed and squashed down to the bandwidths available in Wifi. The dirty secret is that 2.6Ghz 20Mhz wide, clear data streams on uninterfered wifi are perfectly serviceable to stream Disney Plus on HD which is what the masses want. It's also perfectly serviceable for gaming. The reality is online gaming is rapidly moving to a paradigm where the rendering itself is being done in the cloud and the only thing the endpoint does is display a streamed frame from a cloud server, so once more data bandwidths at the last mile for gaming are no longer significant.
To fully participate in the next generation of Internet, people in the home are going to have to embrace Ethernet cabling with wifi6 APs scattered through the house, or, more pragmatically, a long Ethernet cable from their laptop to a jack in the wall. This is actually happening in high end home construction, and it is gradually making it's way into remodels. Corporate IT understood this years ago and they haven't given up their wiring plants in the Enterprise in fact cable jockies are busier than ever. More and more even going into small retail businesses that have setup operations in converted residential houses I see wiremold everywhere since nobody is willing to crawl around in a 80 year old attic and fish cable down lathe and plaster walls full of asbestos. So it's coming.
You have a rude surprise coming if you think that appliance makers of todays dishwashers designed them with a 10-15 year lifespan, LOL. The fact is your old dishwasher, if it used a mechanical timer, might have been worth repairing, depending on the failure, and you might have gotten another 10-15 years of life out of it if you had repaired it. I myself have personally repaired appliances I own and some are worth repairing some are not. It's a mistake to believe that they weren't using cost-reduced designs in the 1950's in appliances, they were. You cannot generalize on appliances and apply this to routers.
The OPs problem with OpenWRT is that nobody developing in OpenWRT decided to put the time into porting the older driver that worked with the AR9130 into the current distribution. Very likely because the majority of devices that used that SoC never had more than 4MB flash. That's why support for the 160L was dropped. It was NOT because that gear was merely "old" It was because a deliberate choice was made to use a newer driver. With some effort and learning (which I'm under no illusion the OP is going to do) the OP could probably spin up a build environment and use the older driver and get version 23 running. He would have to drop a lot of memory-sucking bits (like VPN) out of it but it could be used for basic routing and wifi with no problem.
I say that OpenWRT is infested with hardware snobs because this business of dropping older hardware drivers that are open source which support older SoC's, is endemic in the project. The OP isn't the only person who has complained about this attitude. The hardware snobs like to toss around "the hardware is old" to justify the decision as if that's any excuse - which it isn't.
The CORRECT response to the OP would be to DETAIL why the 160L support was dropped (it's SoC only works with the older driver) and explain that if he wanted to he could spin up a development environment and do the port himself to the current version. Other people have done that for devices like the Netgear WNR2000v3 which have even less flash than the 160L and I happen to have 2 of those devices myself in my testing library that work perfectly with OpenWRT version 22 (and not with DD-WRT even though they are "supported") This is a far better response than the snobby and confusing "your device is old, go scour Goodwill for a newer one" responses that seem to be so common on these forums in recent years.
If we want to grow OpenWRT developers we need to encourage this not encourage people to generate e-waste and find a different device.
And I have a Netgear WGR614v8 which beats out yours by a year in my testing library, LOL. DD-WRT, though, not OpenWRT. Also running the latest version of DD-WRT.
PS You aren't a dentist in Sidney AU by any chance?
I think that this thread has now run its course as there's really nothing more to do for the OP's wifi issues.
Fundamentally, the OP can choose to use any firmware that is supported on that device, but it probably won't improve the performance given that we are likely talking about the one or more of the following:
limitations of the hardware (old, slow CPU, early generation 802.11n radios)
possible failing components (consumer electronics don't last forever)
environmental conditions (crowded spectrum)
How can we make this conclusion -- well, the OP stated that they tried using 3 different firmware options (including the Linksys stock firmware) and it didn't improve performance. At this point, there is nothing that any of us can do to fix that situation. Likewise, we can also conclude that OpenWrt the is neither problem or the solution here.
I'm closing this thread now because there is nothing else to be gained and the topic has veered quite a bit off topic (I'll admit, I'm part of that... lol).
