Just finishing up a router review and I'm interested to know what you guys think of the standard ISP supplied network kit you've been supplied with by your ISP. What features does it not have you wish it did? How reliable is the supplied router? How often does it need a hard reset for example? What did you think of the configuration menus - too simplistic? under-spec'd? or good? What would you include on a modem router that isn't on one now? Personally, I've had nothing but trouble from my ISP supplied modem router (Be). It often locks up or resets itself, has a crap, simplistic menu with many of the more useful features (like DMZ!) hacked out. In short, rubbish for a high end user. What are your experiences?
Maybe you're not quite high-end enough. One can telnet settings into the Be/O2 routers using the SuperUser identity. The "simplistic menu" is to stop n00bs getting into trouble.
No one wants to fart about having to find a way around the hardware - hardly an effective work around. In regards to the simple menus, it's obviously a safety measure, but that's not answering the question I asked.
Sky's Netgear DG934G router is very good, although I wish it used WPA2. And I wish there was the option of using your own router - I can't see why I *have* to use the Sky one, there's nothing that ties it into the line or 'custom' about it (apart from the hiding away of the dsl password). I know I could get it using url injection, but I don't fancy taking the risk and maybe being blocked by Sky as the service seems to be alright (touch wood).
Only thing I can tell you is this: Stay away from Cisco and Linksys devices at all cost if you are not located in the Usa, Canada, Southamerica, New Zealand or Australia as those are the only Countries where the Enduser is allowed to get Warranty Support, in EMEA and Africa it has to go back the whole sales chain as only the Distributor can use the Warranty and the only way around it is purchasing a Service Contract. On top of that, Software updates on the Cisco Website are locked and also require that you have a Service Contract in order to access them. Back to topic, I have a cable modem from the days when Virgin was still NTL, since you can't really do anything with a modem other than plug it in and hope it works (since the config is done in the router, which I bought myself).
Can't moan about our BT Home Hub (Black one) the signal quality is great and I've only had to reset it once in 8 months.
I have a modem supplied by my ISP, an unbranded one. It doesn't have ANY features at all, not even a WebUI.
The BT Homehub we have at home is crap. The signal strength is poor, and the DDoS detector thinks it's being attacked whenever you ping a master server for gaming. The menus are poorly laid out, there's a distinct lack of customisability, and everything needs a password to access. At uni I've got a DG834GT and it's brilliant - great synch speed, the standard software is full of decent customisability options etc. Flash it with the DGTeam firmware and it's even better - you can adjust SNR's and allsorts. Be*'s supplied router for uni is a Speedtouch 782i (iirc), and that's even worse than the Homehub - it overheats with >4 clients, it has basically no options, and convoluted options menus for what it does have. Very poor router this one. Had to constantly reset it in the month I was stuck with it.
The Sky ones being Netgear are pretty shoddy, in that the older ones (maybe also with the newer ones but I don't know for sure), totally bung up and goto a crawl of a speed when the router has more than 100 incoming or outgoing connections - they require a restart to fix this. Student houses etc will regularly go over this, which is what happened to my house a few years ago and we were resetting it many times a day - very poor! Bought a Buffalo in replacement which as actually been pretty good for the money. Still, Draytek routers will always win my vote.
The ones Sky provide are DG834G/GT's, which are decent enough once you flash the firmware back to standard - it's a problem with the Sky custom firmware which causes the issue you mention julianmartin. I regularily connect to >300 peers through mine.
