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Apologies for the downtime.

26 09 06 - 21:27 Well, my old ADSL modem died. Farewell, Linksys AG241. You served me well (except when you didn't, which was slightly more often than I wanted).

My network has been a huge mess for three days - everyone still connected up to the AG241 (the ADSL modem inside it doesn't work, but the switch/router still does), and my old SpeedTouch 530 connected to one of the LAN ports.

That SpeedTouch 530 was actually a very nice modem. Too bad it had a Netgear router hanging off it bringing it down all too often. It's ultra-reliable - it has NEVER dropped out on me. It's web config interface may not be the best, but you can telnet in and set anything you want. Why don't I still use it? It's not ADSL2 - only ADSL1. That'll get me 8mbit down, and 1mbit up.

If you're reading this from Australia, you're probably wondering how ADSL1 goes that fast. The answer is that Telstra artificially limit their ADSL to make it not compete with their cable internet. The maximum you can get inside Telstra's world is 1500/256. The maximum we can get outside that is 8000/1000. So if you are on another ISP's DSLAM, probably for ADSL2 (because hellstra don't offer that), you can actually get the full ADSL1 speed by using an ADSL1 modem, or in the case of Internode, where you can easily change your line profile, setting it to ADSL1.

Which reminds me of something else - the best way to annoy a Telstra tech is to ask them why their ADSL won't go over 1.5mbit. Maybe even hint that it's due to their technical incompetence.

Internode have a great graph of the ADSL line speeds you could get at various distances from the exchange here. Note the red box in the bottom left? That's Telstra's cage. Still, there is an advantage to this - it's fairly likely to work for everybody.

Anyway, I've gone way off the path here.

What I was meant to talk about is my new ADSL modem. Billion 7404VGP.

As for ports on the back, it's got a full complement. RP-SMA antenna socket (yeah, it's also a wireless AP too!), 4 LAN ports, one FXO port and two FXS ports, and a phone socket for the ADSL.

The phone is now wired through one of the FXS ports, and the analog phoneline goes through the FXO. When Internode send me back the setup details for NodePhone, I can then use that to make outgoing calls. 18c untimed, to all of Australia :D

Now, why does this thing own?

• The inbuilt wireless AP
• The VPN server in it
• The VoIP support within the router (plug it through phoneline, plug phones into it).

But, unfortunately, it has the odd problem:
• No WPA in the WDS mode (not many devices can do WPA and WDS though, AP Extreme can though).
• PPTP VPN server seems to have a nasty bug... it crashes the router eventually. Streaming radio over it kills it nicely.
• VoIP can be a little tricky to mess with, and get behaving. 18c untimed nationwide calls via NodePhone now!

But overall, it's a nice router. The AirPort is now WDS'd with it, half way up the hallway, so there's housewide wireless (and now AirTunes to a place that doesn't need it at all).

Only disadvantage is that if it blows up, out goes the main phone. Which kinda annoyed someone today when I crashed it with the PPTP strangeness.

Oh, and BTW, I've only made the blog page show 15 posts. Hopefully, it loads faster.