Guess what? It’s another rant! (I seem to be very good at these, for some reason).
Okay, so I’m a Sasktel subscriber here in Regina – That means I use their ADSL2e service for internet and TV, as they have a nifty IPTV network. The IPTV part I love, as it works a dream with my MythTV DVR, but the Router they provide (And that you HAVE to use – because of the way it handles DHCP assignments for the set-top boxes, and talking to the DSLAM, you have no other option), a 2-Wire unit customised (slightly) for them, is very poor. It doesn’t support UPNP for port allocation, not that it’s THAT much of an issue – If you have more than around 100 ports forwarded, it slows access to a crawl. The internal DHCP server and DNS forwarder also slow down within hours of rebooting, and stop working after a few days of uptime. If you change your network settings (or, indeed, the handed-out settings) to use the upstream DNS servers, things work fine, unless (of course) you need to connect a “new” machine to the network. Then, as the DHCP server is timing out every time, you can’t.
I have a second router (What I was using before I signed up for Sasktel) that I am more than pleased with – It’s a Belkin router that’s been hacked to run DD-WRT. That makes for a great router (With working UPNP and QoS), and it’s fast enough, and has enough RAM that there are rarely issues with internal servers dying. It can even make “Hotspot” systems with a little setting up, though I have no need of that functionality. But, because of the way things work, I can’t use it, so it’s next to useless, and after a few days running, so is this Sasktel unit.
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