Microsoft MN 700 Wireless Router

cairtaker

Does anyone know of updates for this router to increase the juice? What about other tweaks for the MN 700?

Thank you

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Chivalry1

I tell you what... I have a MS wireless and its a piece of crap. I will never again buy anymore wireless devices. I think that they realized this and go out of the wireless/network market. I still cant get my wireless gcard to work.

JDMurray

Chivalry1 wrote:

I tell you what... I have a MS wireless and its a piece of crap.

"MS" as in "Microsoft?" What wireless hardware did MS ever make beside a wireless keyboard and mouse?

The MN-700 is just rebranded by Microsoft. You need to find out who the OEM is.

Here's a good thread on hacking the MN-700: http://wl500g.info/archive/index.php/t-1616.html

cairtaker

Hot dog thanks

jcourtenay

lol, never heard of a microsoft wireless anything before.

cairtaker

Why do i have to constantly reset my wrt54gs? sometimes 3 or 4 times a day? Yank power and reinsert? This happens on one of my other wireless routers here? is it a power issue or what? It seems to stop connecting with the net and then i pull out and reinsert the power and I'm back in business?

JDMurray

cairtaker wrote:

Why do i have to constantly reset my wrt54gs? sometimes 3 or 4 times a day? Yank power and reinsert? This happens on one of my other wireless routers here? is it a power issue or what? It seems to stop connecting with the net and then i pull out and reinsert the power and I'm back in business?

Ah, I was just having a conversation at dinner with a friend who has the same problem. His WRT54G worked just fine for the first six months and then it starts to intermittently drop his Internet connection. Cycling the power is one way to re-establish the connection, but the "smoking gun" indicating that his ISP might be to blame is that a DHCP release/renew cycle also restores his connection. It's probably just an occasional failure of his ISP's DCHP server to renew the address lease.

If your connect drops 3-4 times a day then it's not a DHCP leasing problem. I'd install a sniffer on the WRT54G's outside port so I can see what the router is receiving when it looses its connection. It might be a specific malformed packet, or even an attack that works against your version of Linksys firmware. Try updating your firmware, or even changing it to the OpenWRT or Sveasoft firmware for the WRT54G.

Besides these possibilities, the router's "wall wart" power adapter may be going bad. Those things are plugged in for years without a chance to cool down, and they do go bad. I'd suggest swapping out your current power adapter with another that has the same voltage and equal or better amperage rating and see if the problem goes away. Maybe just power-down the router and let it cool off for a few hours, but I'd still try a different power adapter anyway.

wastedtime

I am not saying this is it but had a similar problem with a 3com wireless router. Then 1 day it just wouldn't work was getting FCS errors on the switch it was connected to...and then I smelt burnt electrolytic capacitor.

JDMurray

wastedtime wrote:

...and then I smelt burnt electrolytic capacitor.

I love the smell of fried electrolytic caps! (Except when the smell is coming from my computer's power supply, that is...)

They can make a really loud POP! too (especially when you throw them into a fire).

cairtaker

Man I love this forum, where else is a guy to go and feel right at home..

cairtaker

JD, I think you may be more on track than you realize, cause it does it here with the mn 700 or the wrt54gs. I'll try the sniffer. Do you have recommendations on the sniffer? What's a good free one?

JDMurray

By a "sniffer" I mean a router appliance that can log raw traffic (that is, packet traffic not yet filtered by the router's firewall) coming in from the Internet. If something on the Internet is killing the router's connection, the last few entries in the log should show the cause. If the router firmware doesn't store an internal log, it will support a syslogd service for forwarding log messages to an external logging program, like the Kiwi Syslog Daemon.

If that doesn't turn up anything, the next thing I'd try is connecting a Linux computer with two NICs and running Ethereal (a real sniffer) between my DSL modem and router, and just forward packet traffic directly between the two NICs. That would certainly log all raw Internet traffic, but the sniffer computer itself might get hacked from the Internet before the router problem occurred.

Chivalry1

JDMurray, they made wireless routers and wireless cards. I bought a MS wireless card about 3 years ago when they were giving up on the wireless network market. Check out the links...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00006IJO4/104-2716611-2257569?v=glance&n=172282

http://cgi.ebay.com/Microsoft-MN-520-802-11b-Wireless-PCMCIA-card_W0QQitemZ5876540921QQcategoryZ45000QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

JDMurray

It looks like SMC might the OEM of the Microsoft CardBus WNIC. I can't make out the OUI of the MAC address in the eBay photo, but package looks similar to the old SMC PCMCIA adapters. I doubt the Microsoft card has an external antenna jack, tho.