Good idea, can't hurt. I'll try that when the next box arrives. I had the previous boxes on a shelf in a closet, by themselves with lots of air around them, ambient temperature probably 78-80F. In theory, that should do the job. My temptation with the new box is to open the case and drill lots of holes, but with all these "metamaterial" antennas (antennae?) inside the case these days, that's probably a bad idea.

If and when the new box fails, I'll pursue one of these Draytek modems and I'll move up one notch in the hardware quality / price point game and look at boxes like the Netgear ProSafe SRXN3205 (no DSL modem, but a lifetime warranty, costs $200 after rebate) or the Cisco WRVS4400N ($189, but only a 3 year warranty). One would hope these boxes are engineered slightly better than the cost-reduced cheapo routers.

For passive cooling, one should aim for a chimney effect, which generally means orienting the device vertically, with air holes top and bottom (only!).

As the hot air rises, it draws in more cooler air at the bottom, and accelerates the cooling effect. Too many holes in the wrong places defeats the chimney.

Cheers

Hmm... good point. Interestingly, the newer DGND3300 comes with feet that let you orient it vertically, while the older DGN2000 lacked those feet. Maybe they realized that cooling was important.

Speaking of DSL poblems..

Our line went down last night, and still hasn't come back up.

Not a modem problem, though, but rather something physically wrong somewhere in the outside cables.

So, as of an hour ago, I've set up my pair of el-cheapo wireless routers in WDS mode, to relay ethernet across the street to a neighbour's DSL modem.

My server then establishes its own independent PPPoE connection, static IP and all, through the same modem the neighbour is using (with his own, different, login credentials).

Luckily, the Thompson modem supports multiple simultaneous PPPoE connections.

I think it's kinda cool, actually.


Cheers

My DSL went down awhile ago and they needed to do a "lift and shift" at the exchange. The DSLAM port/card I was connected to originally was faulty so they moved me to another port and its been fine ever since.

Ahh that takes me back, a classic BT diagnostic solution, can't figure out what is wrong? Just make the old port faulty and give 'em a new one.

Glad I left all that crap behind? No!



Cheers

Cris.

The ADSL connection mysteriously died at exactly 9am. They did the diagnostics and scheduled a lift & shift which took forever for them to actually action. On the day of the lift & shift the ADSL connection mysteriously started working again at 9am and they closed the trouble ticket with the code that says it was a customer fault and nothing to do with BT.

I got the feeling that somebody did something at the exchange which broke it and they fixed it again when they turned up do to the lift & shift.

The marking everything as a customer fault is apparently quite normal for BT even if they did actually repair something their end.

With no prospect of even being able to report the line issue until business hours on Monday, and then another 2-3 days to dispatch a tech.. I got out the ladder today.

Pruned away a neighbour's evergreen from hanging on the telephone line, and then had a closer look at what was revealed underneath at the pole.

The main bundle, consisting of perhaps 30 pairs, was without the external rubber sheathing for the last 50cm or so before it entered the protective splice enclosure (or whatever one calls that plastic cylinder thing).

It still had the inner metal sheath on it, though, nicely oriented with the open channel facing the sky. A really great water funnel, that!

Given that we have, in the past, observed a direct corelation between rain intensity and line quality, I figured that this wasn't a good situation for the bundle. Yes, it has been raining here for the past couple of days, including today.

So I twisted the metal sheath around such that the open channel mostly faced down, for drainage, and then added a similar open covering of really wide electrical tape, fastened firmly in a couple of spots.

There was also a hole visible in the metal conduit that led from the splice enclosure to the local (pole) distribution box, so I taped that up as well.

Back in the house again, reset the modem, again, and..

Full connectivity, full speed, full noise margin.

Maybe I can find work as a telephone techie if/when this Linux gig ever runs out.

It's just what they close the job down as if they didn't have a clue what they did or didn't do to clear the fault. The clear codes for jobs are limited and specific so customer apps gets used a lot as it can be just about anything.

I would suspect other people on the same card as you reported similar problems and yours came back on when they changed the card out or something. Common faults like that often don't get linked.

There is also a lot of BS that comes from the SP side, even if that is BT themselves they only interface with the same part of BT everyone else done.

Cheers

Cris.

Heh. Nice detective work!

Meanwhile, back to the ADSL routers... anybody ever heard of these guys?

http://www.billion.com/product/3g/bipac7402nx-wireless-11n-3G-ADSL2-vpn-firewall-router.html

Gigabit, 802.11n, ADSL modem, all in one box. $220, but I can only find one vendor who sells it. Based on one review, it's not as fast at gigabit as other products. Still, it's intriguing to see another vendor playing in the space.

Yes. I have an ADSL2+ modem that I use in bridge mode (i.e. my Linux firewall does the PPPoE etc).

I'm within about 1km from the exchange and get line syncs around 18000/900kbps which is about as good as can be expected out of the 24000/1024 (ish) that is theoretical.

Has worked flawlessly for the 3 years I've had it. Don't think I've ever touched it since I set it up bridged mode when I got it.

I think mine's a BiPAC 74<something> so doesn't look like they've moved much on model naming.

Dragging up an old thread yet again...

Two years have passed since I burned through two Netgear DGN2000's and got them to send me the better DGND3300. It's worked without complaint... until recently when WiFi has been randomly failing, while the wired links have worked without issue. Rebooting seemed to fix it, but we'll see if that sticks or whether it degenerates further. I also upgraded to the newest firmware. Regardless, I fear the hardware is reaching its end of life.

Two years of 24/7 usage before hardware failure is certainly better than six months, but hardly glorious. Part of me wants to take a crack at upgrading to the newer DGND3700, which replaces the 10/100 switch with a GigE switch, although I don't do anything at home that would particularly benefit from GigE. Also, I fully expect it would fail again after the warranty was expired.

The obvious alternative would be to buy a separate DSL modem and a standard router/firewall/wireless box. I'd like to keep a single-box solution, since it's easier to configure.

Is there something I can get in a "professional" box that might have equivalent functionality to the Netgear, but be engineered to last (with the accompanying higher price and longer warranty)?

Just off the top of my head, but my ISP (Andrews & Arnold) is recommending the Billion 7800N. I've not tried one, but the guys at A&A are usually pretty conscientious.

The reason I've not tried one is that I'll be upgrading to FTTC in the next couple of weeks, which comes with a VDSL modem included, so all I'll need is a PPPoE router, and I expect I can do that with Tomato or OpenWRT.

I looked at that Billion router. It's comparable to the Netgear, except the Neatgear has simultaneous dual-band WiFi while the Billion is only 2.4GHz. That's not a deal-breaker, but it's a distinction.

What's sad is that many vendors designed and built these things with previous-generation WiFi (e.g., this D-Link) but haven't updated them. Maybe this class of product just doesn't sell much.

Further digging. One box that has comparable specs to the Netgear is the Fritzbox 7390. They don't have any U.S. resellers, so I'd have to import one from Europe. One cool feature is built-in support for DECT wireless telephone handsets, which I don't particularly need. It looks like I could get one for somewhere around $300, by the time you factor in exchange rate. (Assuming it would even work here.)

The other option seems to be the Draytek Vigor 2710n or Vigor 2830n. The latter has a GigE switch, but they don't seem to offer anything with that and simultaneous dual-band. Prices are $185 and $300, respectively, but at least I can buy them from U.S. resellers.

Draytek came up the last time this thread came around. Any of you continue to hold them in higher regard?

Even for routers, that thing just looks silly. It look's like a child's toy, right down to the packaging and company logo!

I know, it's silly to complain about something like that, but I can't help it...

I do. I've used those routers before and I like them a lot. They offer options you'll rarely see in consumer routers, like eg. a (couple of) VPN server(s), and they are insanely configurable. It's true they cost a bit more (like double) of what a regular consumer router would cost you, but I think they are worth it. That's just my opinion of course.

Also, their tech support is really good. Every email question I've ever mailed them got answered within the hour. That also counts for something if you ever had the pleasure of dealing with Netgear support eg.

I agree the only they they are lacking right now is dual band, but I can live with that personally. I know it's only a matter of time until they will release such a router. Because that's another thing I've noticed about Draytek: they are never cutting edge with their release as eg. Asus is. It usually takes them a year or even longer to release someting with the latest technology in it (for example: they released their gigabit LAN port router only in 2009, that was years after most other brands did), but on the other hand their releases are always stable products which receive frequent firmware upgrades and good support.

The fins are what put it over the top. Otherwise the shape isn't so bad.

The fins make the packets more aerodynamic, but that only helps if you are in front of the router. If off to one side the packets end up going in an arc.

So I couldn't get over the fact that the Netgear was half the price of anything else, so today I decommissioned our DGND3300 and installed the newer DGND3700.

Under relatively ideal circumstances, sitting ten feet, and one wall, from the router and copying a large file from my MacBook Air to a desktop MacPro, I observed 52.5 megabits/sec on 2.4GHz and 107 megabits/sec on 5GHz. Moving downstairs, but near the stairs, I observed 28.5 megabits/sec on 2.4GHz and 13.9 megabits/sec on 5GHz. From a slightly different vantage point downstairs, away from the stairwell, the performance collapsed. 5GHz was unreachable and I got only 1.97 megabits/sec at 2.4GHz.

I don't have performance numbers from my earlier DGND3300, but it definitely did better than this. Still, I'm going to keep the new router. Hopefully it will have better heat management than the earlier ones, and I like having a GigE backbone. All I need is a second AP.

My home theater rack has a wire running upstairs to the closet and a vanilla Ethernet switch in it for all the gear. My current plan is to convert that switch into an AP+switch combo to fill in the signal-strength gap. That had me doing a bunch of research today on APs that also have a four-port switch in them. (I'm out of plugs on my power strip, so I really want to have a single-box solution.) Here's the list.

http://www.amazon.com/Amped-Wireless-Wireless-300N-Access-AP300/dp/B0058X0TFA/
http://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Universal-Range-Extender-WN2000RPT/dp/B003VWZE7S/
http://www.amazon.com/AirLink-AP671W-300Mbps-802-11n-Wireless/dp/B003MB01HQ/
http://www.amazon.com/D-Link-Wi-Fi-Booster-Smart-DAP-1525/dp/B0053XG25G/

The Amped box is notable for supporting Power-over-Ethernet (PoE). The NetGear and AirLink are basically just cheap. The D-Link, a successor to the earlier DAP-1522, is new and very impressive. It's got a 6-way antenna and can do beam steering. Unfortunately, it's way too tall to fit in my rack, unless I want to cut some holes. Which is tempting. But not today. (Sadness: go read the Amazon reviews. See how difficult it is for people to understand the distinction between an AP and a "range extender"? This is why most vendors don't even bother to try to sell these things.)

Finally, I ended up buying one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-RT-N12-Wireless-N-Advance-Router/dp/B002SQ9ZX2/

It's a full-blown router, but it has a switch on the back to turn it into an AP, which isn't supported by any other routers I've seen. Furthermore, Asus seems to explicitly market their routers as being supported by 3rd-party firmware, like DD-WRT. The installation process seems to be a world of annoyance, as you can only do it from a Windows box, but it is supported. For $40, it's hard to go too far wrong. (Cleverness: by putting the AP/relay/router switch on the back, Asus gets to ship one box that can serve three different market needs. There may be some hope for us, yet.)

At 2.4GHz / 5GHz, a mere shift or rotation of just 1cm is enough to change the wireless characteristics by a fair margin. So don't be too hasty on that point -- try subtle adjustments of the router's positioning and/or antennas first.

Cheers

Installing DDWRT *never* requires a Windows box. Or did you mean something else? Note that most "advice" on stuff comes from Windows users, so it's easy to be misled.

And a standard feature of pretty much *any* router with Tomato, DDWRT, OpenWRT, etc.. is that it can act as a basic AP, router, or gateway device. That's nothing new -- I even have/had things with factory firmware with the same capabilities, including a little DLink gizmo here which has an external switch for it.

Cheers

The online docs that I've read describe a process that they say requires Windows. Hopefully that's not actually true. I didn't exactly scrutinize them closely.

Meanwhile, I came back home this afternoon after a morning out, and the wireless was working but all the wired ports were dead. Rebooting fixed the problem, but this is a bad omen. If this happens again, I'll have to return it.

Reports I've read on the ASUS units is that they're prone to overheating. But with millions sold, a few reports might have more weight than warranted.

I always orient my networking gear for optimum airflow, which usually means vertical alignment on a wall somewhere.

My Netgear WNR3500L gizmo runs lukewarm to the touch -- room temperature, about 18C. It's also one of the few routers I've encountered that is designed for vertical orientation.

Cheers

Status update:

The DGND3700 was a consistent failure with the hard ports going belly-up when we got home from work every day. Reboot fixed, but that ain't right. I boxed it back up and returned it, and went back to the DGND3300.

I was poking around the configuration of the DGND3300 and observed that when you've got it in simultaneous dual-band mode, then you get 802.11n at 5GHz and 802.11g at 2.4GHz. Since 5GHz is basically unusable anywhere in the house where we normally hang out, I went to the 2.4GHz-only mode, which gets me 802.11n at the 2.4GHz band.

Also, today my Asus RT-N12 arrived and, after a firmware upgrade, is now serving as an AP downstairs in the home theater rack. The difference is stunning. This thing has a really, really strong signal. I'll have to chime back in later on when I have a sense of whether it runs cool or hot.

I'm going to stick with this for a while, at least until I sort out what, if anything, was failing with the old DGND3300. If/when that gives up the ghost, then I'll pony up for the DrayTek.