Quote:
Originally Posted by iceman
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Hi Mike,
We have that exact same model for over a year and have had reasonably good luck
with it so far.
We've had several ADSL modem/routers in the past. Prior to the Billion we had
a Netgear model DG834N that had a well publicized design flaw that would result in
an over-heating problem which would cause the unit to fail in various ways.
It really was a poor piece of engineering and despite Netgear replacing it twice,
it was an unreliable piece of equipment that we could no longer depend on.
So we decided to replace it and did a reasonably extensive search on the net for
the best possible replacement and the Billion 7800N received many endorsements.
We've been reasonably happy with it .. touch wood ... so far. That is to say, it is the
most reliable router/modem we have owned so far. The unit has three antennae and
and reception is available upstairs and downstairs and outside. However, a machine
in the workshop that was probably only 12m away but on the same level required
an external antenna to reliably connect to it. Equipment in the workshop acting as shielding
and the fact that the signal needed to penetrate several walls undoubtedly attenuated
the signal. This particular machine was fitted with a generic D-Link card (not a wireless N)
which could also be a factor.
One only need run the utility on one's notebook to see the number of WiFi routers
operating in the immediate neighborhood to see how congested the bandwidth
is becoming. As WiFi becomes increasingly popular and you watch more and
more neighbours pop up on the RADAR with a WiFi connection, the signal
to noise ratio drops and the congestion goes up. What's more the data requirements
of the neighbours will have been increasing as well. Whereas in the not so distant
past they would have been happy to just check their emails and look at the weather,
chances are one or more of them are streaming a YouTube video or
playing a bandwidth intensive online game. Plus add into the mix the proliferation
of wireless telephone handsets operating in the 2.4GHz band along with
Bluetooth enabled mobile phones and headsets. What may have worked well
wirelessly for you, say, a year ago may no longer be true today as you
fight on the airwaves with your neighbours.
With regards the 7800N, I suspect there is an issue either with its DNS or with the drivers in
some of notebooks we use with it. Specifically, after several weeks, a notebook may fail
to wirelessly connect to it and stopping and starting the driver on the laptop or
rebooting the laptop may not be sufficient. The only cure has been to power cycle
the modem/router. Possibly something to do with the way it is caching DNS lookups.
Certainly its up-time as a modem has been much more reliable than the Netgear unit
it replaced.
Need a new wireless router
).
