Alastair's Place

I Hate Routers

I hate DSL routers. I don’t know why, but router manufacturers seem incapable of designing one that works properly. They’re usually let down by their software, and sometimes they’re also let down by their hardware too.

The most recent routers I’ve used are:

Alcatel SpeedTouch 780WL (Be branded)

This one seems to be generally OK, although the web interface is pretty awful. I think the problem there is that Alcatel can’t make up its mind whether it wants the router to be easy-to-configure or full of features, so the web interface is an uneasy half-way house. The worst problem with it is that it’s badly organised and hard to navigate; there are pages that look just like the settings screens, but where you can’t change anything, and it often takes me a couple of minutes to find the right part of the interface.

It seems to be fairly decent from the command line, though the docs for that are somewhat lacking.

WLAN works OK on this router, which is a refreshing change.
ZyXEL Prestige 662HW

The main problems with this router aren’t to do with the software, which is OK (not brilliant, but OK). It has a good range of features and a reasonable web interface, which is at least easy to navigate, unlike the Alcatel.

No, the main problems are hardware ones. Firstly, this router’s input seems to be too heavily attenuated, as a result of which it has trouble sustaining a DSL connection at high data rates. I’m quite close to the local exchange, so there’s no good excuse for this, especially as other vendors’ products don’t suffer from this problem.

Second, the WLAN is unreliable. When I bought this, I was hoping that I could replace an earlier ZyXEL Prestige (a 243, I think) and my Apple AirPort with just the one box. No such luck.
Netgear DG834N

I bought this to replace the ZyXEL when it became apparent that I was going to have regular connectivity problems with the latter. It was easy to set up, with a simple web interface and the DSL connection has been very reliable with this unit.

Unfortunately there are some serious deficiencies with the DG634N, which Netgear doesn’t seem to be in a great hurry to address:
- It has a very small feature set compared to other manufacturers’ routers. On the plus side, that makes it easy to configure for end users.
- It only supports 802.11n draft 1. Draft 2 has been “forthcoming” for some time now.
- Its UPnP support is badly broken.¹ As a result, it is impossible to use software that requires special support for NAT, unless the authors have taken account of the device’s eccentricities.
- There is no command line.²
Oh, and this is another router with unreliable WLAN. Maybe that’s because it’s trying to support 802.11n draft 1, but since I’m using 802.11g devices primarily, that doesn’t seem to be a good excuse. Nor does it matter how I configure the WLAN support.

All of this might be OK if, as with other Linux-based routers, the firmware could be replaced with something a bit better. There are a couple of custom firmware packages out there, but because the drivers for the Broadcom chipset that is used by this router aren’t Open Source, they are basically the same firmware with rebuilt applications and/or modified web interface.

Anyway, in a fit of irritation, I bought myself a new Airport Extreme and a Netgear DM111P DSL modem. The Airport in particular was spectacularly easy to set up, though I would have liked to have been able to choose a subnet of 10.32.x.x which is what I had been using previously (10.0.x.x is no good because if I do that then I can’t connect to the VPN between my home and my office).

As a result, I now have reliable WLAN (with a better signal than I got from my previous Airport), a reliable DSL connection, and reliable NAT traversal courtesy presumably of NAT-PMP. I can finally screen share between work and home! Yay!

OK, so the AirPort Extreme isn’t terribly configurable and doesn’t support UPnP. It does work however, which seems to be something of a unique selling point in the home router market.

¹ It uses the wrong namespace for responses ({urn:upnp-org:serviceId:WANIPConnection} rather than {urn:schemas-upnp-org:service:WANIPConnection}), and unhelpfully returns the wrong error code (402 Invalid Args rather than 713 SpecifiedArrayIndexInvalid) when you pass an out-of-range index to GetGenericPortMappingEntry(), which is irritating because the error is the only way to tell when you’ve finished enumerating mappings.

² Yes, I know about debug mode and that you can get a Linux prompt, with all that that implies. That’s not the same thing, and as a result of the lack of a command line interface, the features in the web interface are basically all you get (unlike some other manufacturers’ equipment).

Posted by alastair on March 11, 2008 at 11:56 AM Digg It | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

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My vote would go to Draytek, the products I've used of theirs has always been decent and bombproof, though they're not at all cheap. I've been looking at getting a 2820n to replace my old Vigor, though I think I'll hold out for the VoIP version, which is due in the next month or so. I've also heard good things about Billion products, but I don't think they've got any draft-n kit yet.

Posted by Stef on March 11, 2008 5:51 PM

Sadly I don’t expect Draytek or Billion’s products to be any better in practice; I’ve seen similar statements from people advocating just about every make of router. The web UI screenshots I’ve seen seem to back that up; the Draytek web UI is better than Alcatel’s, probably on a par with the one on my old Zyxel, but it’s far from perfect.

And I bet they still can’t cope with backspace via Terminal (this is a very common problem; it’s quite irritating having to press Control-H).

Plus you have to be a little careful; for instance, if you use Be, they’ve got their DSLAMs configured in an unusual way and not all router hardware is actually capable of talking to them. I don’t suppose they’re the only people with an unusual configuration, either.

As far as I can tell, nobody makes a really decent domestic router today. There’s probably too little money in it, to be frank. But it’s a shame because mostly it’s a software problem; you can tell how bad it is by the fact that there are people developing custom firmware for a number of router models (I honestly don’t think they do this “just for fun”).

Posted by alastair on March 11, 2008 6:15 PM

I've also set up many DSL routers, so I do know what you mean. Plenty of web UIs are indeed poorly designed, with some ones like the old D-Links not even working correctly outside IE. Several of the newer models aren't awful, merely a bit rubbish, but then, as long as each settings page is logically segmented and each setting clearly marked, what more can you ask for, assuming the feature set is reasonable? Most of the newer devices offer a quick-start wizard which serves the average user well enough, it's only the techies & tweakers who need more and they'll want every feature accessible, making for a cluttered UI.

I'd recommend looking through the manuals of the Draytek and Billion models and seeing if they fit your needs:
http://www.draytek.com/support/download/Vigor2820.php
http://www.billion.uk.com/product/voip/7404vgp.htm

I've used this particular Billion model and it's good enough, though it's G-only and I did find a few UI shortcomings, notably that if the firewall & auto-blacklist is enabled and the blacklist fills, then the firewall is disabled, you can't clear out the blacklist because the setting is hidden. Whoops. Also, the way it requires you to commit everything to the flash memory's a bit odd. The Drayteks I've used had a better UI, in my opinion. The shell interface of these devices is remarkably similar and both offer a good degree of control, though through telnet only, no SSH. (Not sure on the backspace issue, either.)

Both allow you to manually set the Coding Gain and Tx Attenuation; I'd be really surprised if they couldn't handle the likes of Be's unusual configuration.

The best home-brew firmware I've used so far is Tomato for Broadcom-based devices such as the D-Link WRT54G, some Buffalo models, etc. I found it better than DD-WRT, OpenWRT, Sveasoft, etc., though I guess it's down to taste. The web interface is excellent and, as it runs Linux & BusyBox, the shell control's really good. See here:
http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato

Perhaps this is the way to go? Personally, I just want a device that works well and has access to all the settings, hence the Draytek recommendation.

Posted by Stef on March 12, 2008 5:46 PM

FWIW, the problem with Be is that they’re using a feature that was defined in an amendment to the original specification, namely the ability to set INP_min to 2 and still run the link faster than 7.5MB/s.

This isn’t, as some have claimed, a “Broadcom extension”; it's specified in G.992.5 Amendment 1, but unfortunately a lot of routers don’t support Amendment 1.

Some people have managed to get Be to reconfigure their DSLAMs to set INP_min lower, and indeed you have to do this for Draytek routers (see e.g. this thread).

Posted by alastair on March 12, 2008 5:58 PM

Ouch. I wouldn't go with NetGear I've so far suffered three different NetGear routers, and each of them had the nasty habit of spontaneously disconnecting for a second every couple minutes. What this meant is that it was impossible to do any VoIP or iChat, because those need a constant connection. Only web surfing and downloading e-mail worked, because there the connection generally happened in "small sips". Funnily, it had stretches where it worked for a week or so, usually when I was trying to diagnose what was going wrong.

I'm now on to my second DrayTek (first one was a Mini Vigor that I only dropped because we went from ISDN to DSL), and although the web setup stuff is a little geeky, it's a reliable machine. I only once had to restart it due to a power outage.

Oh, forgot to mention: Got my parents an AirPort extreme. Best investment
in a long time. Luckily we still had the old DSL "modem" from the phone
company to use with it. Haven't had to make any support calls since the AE
replaced the NetGear they had.

Posted by Uli Kusterer on March 12, 2008 11:20 PM

I Hate Routers

Alcatel SpeedTouch 780WL (Be branded)

ZyXEL Prestige 662HW

Netgear DG834N

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