Why does my Eircom Netopia router outperform my (rebooting) Cisco 1800 series router?

plenderj

Strange one this, which hopefully someone can figure out for me

I had some Eircom home broadband package with a Netopia router at home which has worked just fine for a long time. If I have a lot of torrents running, internet access goes slow, as expected. Turn them off, and everything is fine. Again, as expected. The router in particular has a 4-port 10/100 switch built-in. I have 2 PCs and an XBox360 connected to the switch.


I inherited a Cisco 1800, which has an ADSLoPOTS RJ11 connection on the back of it, in addition to an 8-port 10/100 switch. I figured that the Cisco 1800 (perhaps naively?) must be a much higher performing router than the Netopia.

I tried to get the Cisco to connect over ADSL directly, but I couldn't get it to connect. (If anyone has a sample config for this, please let me know ). So I am now using the Netopia as a bridge, and the Cisco as an IP router. The Cisco's config is below.


Strange thing is, the Netopia seems to outperform the Cisco (but perhaps I have some silly/glaring bad&obvious errors in my config). If there are active torrents, and I am watching a video on the XBox (streaming over the network from one of the PCs via MCE), the Cisco router will reboot about every half hour. If I turn off the torrents, I can continue watching the video. The router doesn't seem to get hot, or at least the exterior casing isn't getting hot, the room itself is quite cool, and its fans are operating by the sound of it.
Internet access doesn't seem as slick or to work as well as it did when everything was just connected to the Netopia.

Does anyone have any suggestions on why the router might be rebooting? I was thinking perhaps the large number of TCP connections that are created using torrents was causing the router to max out on CPU or RAM, so I added (what I think?) are relatively small NAT translation timeouts. Anyway, any suggestions are welcome.
Ultimately I figured if I have a Cisco1800 sitting in my closest, I may aswell use the thing...

Cisco1800 config (passwords etc. removed);
(IP address of Netopia is 10.0.1.254)

cisco1800#show running-config
Building configuration...

Current configuration : 5635 bytes
!
version 12.4
service timestamps debug datetime msec
service timestamps log datetime msec
service password-encryption
!
hostname cisco1800
!
boot-start-marker
boot-end-marker
!
logging buffered 51200 warnings
!
no aaa new-model
clock timezone PCTime 0
clock summer-time PCTime date Mar 30 2003 1:00 Oct 26 2003 2:00
!
ip cef
no ip dhcp use vrf connected
ip dhcp excluded-address 10.0.0.1 10.0.5.0
!
ip dhcp pool sdm-pool1
   import all
   network 10.0.0.0 255.255.0.0
   dns-server 159.134.237.6 159.134.248.17
   default-router 10.0.1.254
!
!
ip name-server 159.134.237.6
ip name-server 159.134.248.17
!
multilink bundle-name authenticated
!
!
!
archive
 log config
  hidekeys
!
!
!
!
!
interface FastEthernet0
 description $ETH-WAN$
 no ip address
 ip virtual-reassembly
 duplex auto
 speed auto
 pppoe enable group global
 pppoe-client dial-pool-number 1
!
interface BRI0
 no ip address
 encapsulation hdlc
 shutdown
!
interface FastEthernet1
!
interface FastEthernet2
!
interface FastEthernet3
!
interface FastEthernet4
!
interface FastEthernet5
!
interface FastEthernet6
!
interface FastEthernet7
!
interface FastEthernet8
!
interface ATM0
 no ip address
 no atm ilmi-keepalive
 dsl operating-mode auto
!
interface Vlan1
 description $ES_LAN$
 ip address 10.0.1.254 255.255.0.0
 ip nat inside
 ip virtual-reassembly
 ip tcp adjust-mss 1412
!
interface Dialer4
 ip address negotiated
 ip mtu 1452
 ip nat outside
 ip virtual-reassembly
 encapsulation ppp
 dialer pool 1
 dialer-group 1
 no cdp enable
 ppp authentication chap pap callin
 ppp chap hostname eircom@eircom.net
 ppp chap password 7 104C1B160413100A02007B
 ppp pap sent-username eircom@eircom.net password 7 070D33434F0D1B0419165A
!
ip forward-protocol nd
ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 Dialer4
!
!
ip http server
ip http access-class 23
ip http authentication local
no ip http secure-server
ip http timeout-policy idle 60 life 86400 requests 10000
ip nat translation timeout 60
ip nat translation tcp-timeout 1500
ip nat translation udp-timeout 1500
ip nat translation max-entries 6500
ip nat inside source list 1 interface Dialer4 overload
!
access-list 1 remark INSIDE_IF=Vlan1
access-list 1 remark SDM_ACL Category=2
access-list 1 permit 10.0.0.0 0.0.255.255
dialer-list 1 protocol ip permit
no cdp run
!
!
end

cisco1800#

Additional Info:
The Cisco router was working fine before I inherited it. A project ended and it was no longer needed, so I gave it a new home
It's Eircom Broadband Home Advanced that I have.

plenderj

The reassuring thing is that with so many views of this thread, nobody has pointed out anything really obviously wrong in the config

jor el

If your Netopia is working fine, then why replace it with something that doesn't work?

plenderj

Did you post that reply from a C64?

Just because the original router seems to work, if I have a considerably more expensive (and what should be higher performing) router to hand why not use it instead?

jor el

plenderj wrote: »

Did you post that reply from a C64?

No. That's my home PC.

plenderj wrote: »

why not use it instead?

Eh, because it doesn't work? If the Netopia does what you want/need, then surly there's no need to change it.

Nody

It has been a while since I was configuring Cisco routers (or owned any) but the only thing coming to my mind would be to create it as two/three virtual lans (basically putting your Torrent PC(s) seperatly) and see if that helps.

Also keep in mind most routers and NICs can't handle that many open connections at the same time so reducing the number of parallel torrents and channels can also give noticable speed boosts to a torrent (i.e. running 50k channels is usually not as productive as running 5k or even 500).

As for the reason for the reboot - no clue!

plenderj

jor el wrote: »

Eh, because it doesn't work?

How do you know?