My ZyXEL wireless router (a P-600-HW-T1) is on the fritz. Up until now, it would drop my DSL connection maybe once or twice a month. Unfortunately, I've now found a completely reliable way to make it drop the connection: attempt to connect to a Team Fortress 2 game

Actually, thinking about it, it could be due to the fact that I'm trying to connect to TF2 while the wife's using the wireless (WPA-2, full-blown RADIUS auth against a W2K3 server) from downstairs. Even so, it shouldn't barf.

I bought a ZyXEL because it was cheap and because my old non-wireless ZyXEL router (which came with the DSL contract) was rock solid.

I think it's running the latest available firmware, which is worth a rant in itself.

Frankly, although I've only had it for a few months, it's not worth the time and cost involved in sending it back, so I figure I'll just replace it with something that works.

So, any suggestions? It must be a UK-compatible ADSL modem. I want wireless (one of my laptops does 802.11a/b/g/draft-N, the other does 802.11b/g, everything else in the house is wired). I'd prefer something stronger than WEP.

Oh, and it'd be nice if it was easy to configure port-forwarding. I think I've got this one set up correctly to forward SSH traffic, but it's not working, and the manual/help text aren't much use.

Draytek. This model is a good option.
Seriously, Draytek has the best routers I've ever had the chance to install. They're not cheap, but they support just about any standard and are incredibly configurable. (even though the standard settings usually 'just work'). Also, on the Draytek.com site, you've got the chance to play with a live web demo of every available router's firmware. (eg. here)

Edit: Port Forwarding is dead easy with Draytek routers. Have a look via the supplied link above and you'll see for yourself.

I assume that they're available in the UK, but I'd go with one you can install a replacement firmware on. I've had reasonably good luck with Tomato, but, regardless, the fact that they run Linux and have CLI access means that you can do virtually anything you want with them.

Just buy a WiFi AP and plug it into your old non-wireless router. You'll have a much better selection.

On the recommendation of Cris I bought a Thomson Speedtouch 546 to replace my Netgear DG854G and can't recommend it enough. At its worst my Netgear was dropping carrier several times a day and usually needing a restart every week. The Thomson runs for months on end and I also gained a whole meg in downstream speed. The Netgear has been relegated to AP duties until I get a around to playing with 802.11n.

What about the Zyxel P-660HW? We install the P-66x Zyxels for most of our customers and they tend to be pretty bullet-proof. At a guess, we've installed about 40 Zyxels over the past 18 months and I don't recall a single failure.

The firewall and NAT configuration are pretty intuitive. Here's a link to a German website that hosts some menu emulators (links across the top of the page).

Not sure exactly what wireless security protocols they include, certainly WPA and WPA-2.

I'd be surprised if anything that has been released in the last few years doesn't support at least some variant of WPA.

Probably not what you're looking for but I'm using a Cisco 1841 with an ADSL interface card and a 802.11a/b/g interface card. It works great and I've had absolutely no problems with it at all.

Ah you see 8 years in the ADSL delivery game have taught me a few things

The Thomson routers are bomb proof, I have 2 and the things just refuse to drop sync. You can get them cheap if you look around, they don't seem to have the wireless version at the moment but keep an eye out here.

Edit - Tell a lie, they have the 580 for £14.99 !!! got to be worth a shot!

Cheers

Cris.

I don't want to use a separate DSL modem; does that support models with one built-in? The Linksys WRT boxes (e.g.) don't seem to have that built-in.

Definitely the best choice for iffy-DSL connections. That's what we use over here, too. The 516 is similar, but without the built-in 4-port switch. And there are wireless versions of both models, as well (forgot the numbers).

cheers

Ah. Around here, I don't even know if an end-user can get an actual DSL modem. Basically, the modem is CPE and the user has no insight into it. So, to answer your question: I have no idea.

Well, i do have a speedtouch (716) that does occasionally loose sync. But that's probably because the speed is just up to the limits of the copper, 12mbps at 3km.

www.fritzbox.com is supposed to be pretty good to, if you've got a use for the voip stuff.

Turned up this morning. Easy to configure. We'll see how solid it is. But, hey, for under £20, delivered, I can't complain, even if it's useless. I spent more than that in the pub yesterday lunchtime...

Dragging up an old thread...

Last week, our home DSL died for no apparent reason. After much waiting on hold with AT&T, they concluded that our DSL modem (a cheapo Motorola box they sent us ten months ago) had gone belly up. They then proceeded to be bureaucratically unable to send me a new one.

I ended up getting a Netgear DGN2000. For $120, it's got 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n with two external antennae, a four port 10/100 switch, all the usual Firewall/NAT support, and a built-in ADSL modem. So far as I could tell, nobody makes a box like this with a GigE switch, but I can always gang a GigE switch onto this, to speed up any ports where I might want the speed.

I like the idea of the integrated DSL modem for one big reason: I get useful log data from the low-level DSL handshaking process. That, along with all the high-level stuff, now shows up nicely in my syslog. Beforehand, my old router was speaking PPPoE to the DSL modem and all I'd be able to see was "connection dropped" with no information as to why. Hopefully, this time I'll be able to learn more if/when things get wonky.

(Does anybody else but me find it odd that most wireless routers out there now support 802.11n with theoretical speeds well north of 100Mb/s, yet GigE hasn't become a standard feature to actually let you get data in and out that fast?)

Oh cool it does SNMP too, thats neat. Its one feature I wish my Netgear DG834G had.

Digging this old thread up again...

Last night, two of the ports on my Netgear went belly-up (packet drop rates from 30-50%), while the rest of the thing is working fine. (Much poking around before I could reach this diagnosis...)

Netgear claims a one year warranty, so in theory I could send this thing off to be fixed. Any idea if I've got a hope in hell of getting Netgear to properly service the thing? I've still got the original box. Receipt is long gone, but I bought it at Fry's and I've got the credit card statement.

Should I take it back to Fry's, mail it off to Netgear (and do what in the meanwhile?), or just punt and buy something new?

Not that strange, really. Because the people who do LOTS of internal file transfers are a very tiny percentage of the folks who purchase this type of thing.

So long as the wired/wireless ports are faster than the DSL connection, just about nobody ever gets any speed benefit from it over plain wireless-B.

Back to your current topic.. if you end up replacing the Netgear device, then go with a Speedtouch modem/router/ap, and put some surge suppression on it this time!

On both the phone line and on the power source.

Cheers

Once I convinced them that I'd properly diagnosed the problem (quoting a packet loss rate went pretty far in this direction), they offered me three choices. I could ship them my router and wait for them to ship one back. Or, I could pay $16 and they'd ship me one right away and I'd toss the old one in the box and send it back. Or, I could pay $26 for them to do the same thing via overnight FedEx.

I opted for the $16 package and I'm making do with only two working ports for now. Luckily, 802.11n truly does have better range than my previous 802.11g box, so I can live with my secondary AP being off for a week.

Surge suppression: I've always kept the gear in my closet on a dedicated UPS, which proved particularly valuable when Hurricane Ike came through. Through the night, with the power down and us huddled in a hallway downstairs, I was checking the storm's progress from my iPhone. The UPS finally gave out mid-morning, but the storm was gone and life went on.

Regardless, the UPS does little to keep cheaply engineered consumer gear from wearing itself out. Somehow, I doubt these people hold themselves up to the engineering of something like the empeg.

Good stuff. We haven't lost anything here to surges since putting nearly everything onto UPSs ten years ago.

In your case, I was just noting the apparent high frequency of modem failures, and the fact that they connect to outside wires, and then put one and one together..

I lost two PC PSUs in the last couple of months, despite their being plugged into a UPS. I suspect bad batteries might have caused it. Plausible?

Dubious. Even weak batteries probably have enough juice for an actively correcting UPS to protect things on mains.

I find that heat (bad ventilation), and fan bearings, are the only things that killed the PSUs I've seen.

But like I said, I've very little experience with things failing like that in recent times. The odd hard drive here and there -- all of them Deathstars or Seagates, and some USB gizmos, but not PSUs.

Mind you, I do use higher cost (and hopefully higher quality?) *quiet* PSUs in all of the boxes here. The last PSUs to fail for me were a pair of OEM no-name noisy little suckers.

Cheers

APC SmartUPS, so they should have been OK. Quite an old unit; the current (replacement) batteries are about 4 years old. Almost time for a new set? I have a newer (but smaller) SmartUPS, which I'm using right now.



We have a real problem with dust. I don't know if it's unusual, but I do get quite large dust bunnies (not quite the same size as in the link, but occasionally close) around the back of the computers.

As Mark says, dubious. The thing about transients that might kill a PSU is that they're high energy and hard to generate - not something that a UPS inverter might be able to manage. The SmartUPS is an online UPS (as I remember) hence the load is always running from the inverter.

The most you'd see from weak batteries would be brownouts at high load, most likely.

Hugo

Just ordered a Speedtouch TG585n, based on the various Speedtouch recommendations here. It had better be good, or else !



It'll be replacing my Netgear DG834 modem/router and my Linksys WAP54G access point.

To be perfectly honest I've been very happy with my Netgear and I would happily have bought Netgear again. The only reason I am buying a new box is that the Linksys AP can't seem to cope with the fact that I have 7 wifi devices. It all worked fine until recently, but after adding another 5 wifi devices it has started randomly denying connection to them. To get back connected you have to disable/enable wifi on the client device. All very annoying.

I wouldn't rush to buy Linksys again, the Ethernet to wifi bridge works with very few things that I have plugged into it and now the AP has proved it isn't up to the job.

Try using DD-WRT firmware on the AP, it'll probably make it more stable, I've always had issues with the stock firmwares.

From memory, the version of the WAP54G that I have isn't supported by those third party kernels.

Edit:

Looks like it is now:

"WARNING - DD-WRT was not originally intended to be loaded on a WAP unit. It was found that it will run but it is a tricky unit to load and have function correctly. Below are a compilation of methods/instructions to assist you with creating a DD-WRT loaded WAP unit."

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Installation#Linksys_WAP54G

I have no desire to start messing around with that for just an access point.

Well, after reading that, I'd understand you not wanting to risk bricking your AP. But I have had better luck with pretty much any other firmware than the stock Linksys firmware in their routers. So much so that I only buy routers that can easily be upgraded with better third party firmware.

Hmmm, not going too well so far.

The TG585n arrived has been plugged in. Connected to the ADSL line fine.

However now comes the joy of configuring it all (I have quite a bit to do as I have my own IP block, reserved DHCP addresses and lots of firewall rules to setup).

The first problem is that I see no way through the web interface of turning NAT off. The screen shots I have seen on the web show a much more detailed web interface than I am seeing on my router.

A quick check shows me that I am running firmware 7.4.3.2, whereas the latest appears to be 8.2.3.x

So I thought I'd just do a quick upgrade. But no, none of the Thompson official sites seem to have any new firmware (or even a copy of the upgrade tool).

I can see some non-official sites with firmwares available to download, but I hadn't really expected to get into hacking into my nice new router on day 1

Am I being dumb ? Does this router do non-NAT with my current firmware ? Are there official places to download newer firmware ?

The firmware probably needs to be provided by your ISP. Check with them.