router problem or self-DOSing with bittorrent?

[Senso]

I've been having connection problems for a while now but I always assumed it was my ISP. I'm on DSL, behind a D-Link DI-704P router. Normally, I can see that my modem is connected (green lights) but I can't go outside my LAN. Usually rebooting the modem and router fixed the problem for a few hours.

Today I noticed the light on my router telling a computer is connected to it kept fading to black. Rebooting the router would work for about 2 minutes, enough time to ping google.com a few times to see that it works. Then the router light would go out, just like if I had unplugged the cat5 cable. I tried another cable, same problem.

Doing /etc/init.d/net.eth0 restart would simply timeout at "* Bringing eth0 up via DHCP... ".

dmesg shows:

[bk0]

I've had similar problems with the Motorola NAT/router that Vonage supplies for VoIP service. Lots of simultaneous TCP connections would cause the box to simply stop passing traffic, after a reboot it would work again for a little while. I can't prove anything but I suspect I was overflowing the connection-tracking tables with BitTorrent traffic like you. It was a bit different though because it would pass UDP/ICMP packets fine, just TCP connections couldn't be established. I don't remember seeing tx errors but I didn't check either.

Unless the manufacturer supplies a firmware update that fixes it there's no real solution other than ditching the piece of crap router. I'm working on setting up a dedicated NAT box as a replacement.

[Senso]