The Pro's & Cons of Non Telkom modems

[jake]

Just thought I'd share my experiences...

after reading what I could find on this forum & the net. There is ZERO information on the telkom ADSL router pots as far as I was concerned it was a PPPOE bridge. I decided on a Netgear 834G (the one with ADSL/4pswitch/firewall/wireless ap) on installation, forgoing the telkom unit. Telkom was pleasant & said just supply the 2 filters, duxbury said yup every thing is ICASA aproved.

The telkom installer refused to use the filter (involved crimping a RJ44 connector)

I must say the netgear works extremely well, every every single feature works as well as advertised including the dynamic dns.

One morning after checking email, make coffee - No link light. Telkom support said it's the modem, & alarmingly he said someone else in the area also had the same problem. So I borrowed an ADSL router pots & sure enough it works (if telkom came out they would have charged). On playing with this unit I realise in addition to straight PPPOE it also has a web config interface with full blown NAT & DHCP. No mention of SPI firewall but the NAT is 90% of a simple firewall anyway.

This unit also comes with a substantial looking surge arrestor, the netgear has NOTHING. Now duxbury supply surge arrestors with R300 analog modems, why 'O for godsake why not with a R1900 unit ????. The excuse that "we just sell the US boxes as-is" does not wash, the US wall sockets don't have earth so surge arrestors are impractical in the US.

had to drive all the way to JHB to get the netgear swapped out.

the moral of the story:

The telkom unit ain't so bad & you get no hassle, free on site repairs for a year - cool & no smug remarks from support.

[^]

 

[sybawoods]

Interesting post. I have the normal ethernet ADSL router pots since day 1, since ADSL was available, and it hasn't given me any problems at all. I have it connected to a cheap network hub (cost me about R150), and have 3 PC's networked to it. I recently switched from the free Sygate personal firewall, to Norton's Firewall that I forgot came free when I signed up for ADSL almost 2 yrs ago . My setup has been running trouble-free since November 2002 - touch wood!

 

[BTTB]

At the time I bought ADSL, their were rumours that Telkom's modems sucked. This was August 2003. So to be safe I bought a Zyxel 650R-31 ADSL Router. Not once have I had a problem so far. I even updated the firmware for good measure. It cost me R2200 at the time. Very expensive by todays standards. But its a good modem. It has all the PPoe stuff onboard. You log onto the modem by typing 192.168.1.1 in your browser, type in the admin and the password and all the options are available. I put in my details once and have had never looked back.
I remember before I did this, I contacted MWebs support line to configure ADSL when I was still new to the new technology. They got me to install all the Telkom drivers and rubbish off the CD. What a joke. It wasn't needed at all.

<b><hr noshade size="1"></b><font size="2"><font color="red"><b>You can take Telkom out of the Post Office but you can't take the Post Office out of Telkom.</b></font id="red"></font id="size2">

 

[podo]

I went for the D-Link DSL-300G, which isn't a router, but a straight ethernet to E-o-A bridge. I didn't mind that since I already owned a router which was used to connect to my previous internet connection, an analogue leased line to my ISP. The DSL-300G has performed without even the smallest problem since day one, no lockups, link failures, no forgetting its configuration, nothing.

It even was SNMP and telnet management, which I like very much, being an oldschool computing geek who enjoys the command line interface.

To anybody reading this thread in future though, I might offer one point of advice. It seems that Telkom, at first, launched the ADSL pilot program with the full G.DMT standard, only to downgrade to G.Lite later. G.Lite offers only 2MBps downstream as opposed to 6MBps downstream with G.DMT. The other major difference is that it operates over slightly longer distances, and the DSLAMs are slightly cheaper.

The downside to G.Lite is that it isn't very widely used, except in South Africa, and those parts of India that are lucky enough to have broadband. For that reason, most modem/bridge/router manufacturers do not bother to waste processing time by having the firmware autodetect the operation mode.

I was lucky in that this problem did not effect me. D-Link S.A. were savvy enough to write their own firmware, which is now shipped standard with all new models, which can autodetect, and has G.Lite as the factory default, just in case.

Those D-Link owners who purchased their modems before this firmware became the standard for the South African version of the modem, did have some trouble, where links would often drop after short periods, or not come up at all, or where links that used to work just died and refused to come back up.

Those problems were easily fixed by just manually setting the modem to use G.DMT, or by upgrading to the latest South African version firmware, which fixes the problem permanently.

This is just a hunch, but I'm guessing your Netgear was still trying to use G.DMT, even though Telkom might just have switched your DSLAM back to G.Lite, perhaps to extend the distance it can handle, or even swapped it out for a G.Lite only DSLAM, to save the nice G.DMT DSLAM for an area where Telkom management, who want their 6MBps, might need it installed.

Either way, the Netgear, which originates from a country where G.Lite is considered a taboo word, would not be checking for G.Lite and continue to try G.DMT. My hunch is that it would have started back up if you set it to use G.Lite instead. Of course, no Telkom support staff will tell you this, they will just tell you that you need your Telkom modem.

The Telkom modem, incidentally, is hard-coded to always use G.Lite, if Telkom ever switch back to G.DMT, you'll have to find some third party firmware, or be prepared to upgrade to the new "Telkom 'MegaFast' ADSL DMT POTS Modem", which will be the same thing as the current modem, but at twice the price, with one change made to the stock firmware.

Willie Viljoen
Web Developer

Adaptive Web Development

 

[TheVoice]

I've got a DG834 and am not actually sure whether the problems we seem to have fairly often are because of the modem or the line itself. Sometimes the connection will be perfect, will hardly disconnect during the entire day and speeds will ba perfect throughout. Other times it'll be slow, disconnect every few minutes, and just generally gets you psised off.

Maybe it's the Netgear modem, maybe not, but it's a little too late to switch now anyway!

 

[Andre]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by podo</i>
It seems that Telkom, at first, launched the ADSL pilot program with the full G.DMT standard, only to downgrade to G.Lite later. G.Lite offers only 2MBps downstream as opposed to 6MBps downstream with G.DMT.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Interesting. This would explain why I'm seeing a 2M downlink speed instead of the 6M I used to see at home. The modem is a (now discontinued) Netgear DG814.

It works fine in any case and there doesn't seem to be anywhere to set it to use G.Lite.

 

[jake]

aah podo,

I do not see anywhere where I could have hinted that the netgear does NOT achieve connection. It is in fact a very good unit.

My issue is the ADSL board was blown, possibly by a spike on the line & it was a huge hassle to debug & repair this issue. would have been much simpler had I bought a telkom unit.

there are lots of people trying to be clever like me - it has it's disadvantages

PS this netgear unit is an excellent choice for anyone wanting to setup a 1 box 1 wall wart, no PC WIFI hot spot.

with a Netgear DG834 the only defaults needing change are

encapsulation: PPPOE
Multiplexing method: LLC

 

[podo]

Andre,

Perhaps the firmware in your unit can compensate for it... who knows...

From what I've heard, most modems probably won't even see the difference, unless they try to do error correction by using higher frequency tones which are supported by G.DMT but not G.Lite. If the line is relatively clean, there should be no problem at all, even if your modem doesn't know about G.Lite

Willie Viljoen
Web Developer

Adaptive Web Development

 

[Andre]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by podo</i>
<br />Andre,

Perhaps the firmware in your unit can compensate for it... who knows...
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Just checked the spec sheet for the Netgear 814 and 834 and G.Lite is supported.