Hello aemcomcco,
I like that you have posted positive feedback of version 2.00.21, but I can't find any reference to version 2.00.21 only 2.00.20 on Cisco's web site.
Nicky Smith, President
nicky.smith@carolinadigitalphone.com
1-800-444-5557 Ext 105
Hello everyone on this post since April 2009. This looks to be a very old and unsolved mystery. I haven't read all of the post to this thread, but can see a lot of very frustrated users all trying to get the WRP-400 working correctly and not locking up.
We are a VoIP service provider and have deployed a number of these router/wireless/ATA WRP400 and find the price-point for the features to be excellent. With that being said, we too are having a number of WRP-400 problems and can't figure this one out. We have our best router engineers working on this issue and can't find the root cause of the failure.
We have updated the firmware on all of them to the lastest 1.01.00 dated 27/Feb/2009 and have not attempted to use the firmware 2.00.20 because we have see so many people have even more serious issues with the 2.x firmware.
The WRP400s that lock up are random, but this issue may be high traffic based. What I suspect is when the router has a high volume of traffic on the WAN port, the processor, or the tables that maintain the IP tables gets wacked and it will loose it's WAN address, doesn't know that it need to reaquire a new IP address connection and simply gives the look-and-feel it is locked up. What is interesting is when this event happens the LAN is all working find and connection between LAN devices work fine, including connection via the WiFi. Just not access to the outside WAN.
I am hopeful that someone, in a senior position at Cisco (legacy Linksys) is reading this post and can offer some serious suggestions to how to fix this issue. It looks like Cisco may be trying to EOL (End of Life) this WRP-400 and I and hoping that is not the case because this product fits into a small to medium business well, if it will work as designed.
Nicky Smith, President
nicky.smith@carolinadigitalphone.com
1-800-444-5557 Ext 105
I don't think I'm going to waste my time looking at the Cisco SRP-521W as a replacement for the WRP-400. Maybe it time to accept that an "all-in-one device" is not the best solution, at leaset not from Cisco.
As a VoIP services provider I can't afford the customer frustration and downtime. I think I'm just going to go back to a good low-end Router/Firewall/WiFi device like the SonicWall TZ-100W and keep the ATA out of the router. There are plenty of good ATAs on the market that work well as SIP and/or IAX connections.
I welcome anyones comments on another $200-$400 price range Router/Firewall/WiFi device (Cisco or other) that has good control over QoS for VoIP traffic and bandwdith management. I would also like my ideal small office router to have SNMP.
Nicky Smith, President
http://www.carolinadigitalphone.com
(888) 400-5557 Ext 105
Hello Eric, Davis and others on the Cisco team,
I am delighted to hear the technical staff at Cisco is listening and recognize there are some serious firmware issues with the WRP-400. I will make my call this week and get these defective units replaced, if you feel replacing them will solve the problems. Frankly, I don't think the problem is the hardware is bad but I feel the firmware has unresolved issues.
My most recent discovery is that I think we have diagnosed that when using one or two (doesn't matter) of the ATA ports connected to our VoIP servers within the WRP-400, that something is causing the DHCP application within the router's firmware to loose the reassigned IPs from the DHCP application, giving the impression that the router is locked up, but in fact the router is not locked up because 1) the ATA can still accept and place calls and 2) the gateway WAN address is still pingable and looks to be alive. When not using the ATA part of the router we have never see the router "lock-up" or in my analysis the DHCP process stop running and the IP tables disappear. Thus, my possible conclusion is that the DHCP process has a memory leak, runaway process, or simply fails to run for some unknow reason possible caused by a error in the firmware, or an overflow of errors that the router doesn;t know how to handle.
I hope this is helpful for the Cisco engineers working on this issue, because if you are able to fix this problem, you have a great low-end office router offering.
Nicky Smith, President
nicky.smith@carolinadigitalphone.com
1-336-544-4000 Ext 105
