Netgear & Broadcom

[Tacitus]

Can someone tell me which of the current Netgear routers have a Broadcom chip?   I believe it's currently just the DGN2000 but would like to to make sure before I get one.

[Steve]

I think looking at the current offerings on www.netgear.co.uk

DGN1000 Sercomm?
DGN2000 Broadcom 6348 same as DG834GT
DGN2200?
DGND3300 Broadcom 6358 same as DG834N
DGN3500 Infineon (former TI )

[Tacitus]

I think looking at the current offerings on www.netgear.co.uk ...
DGN2000 Broadcom
.......

Thanks Steve I'll go shopping.  I'm having weird probs at moment.  My router is switched off overnight and about six weeks ago it started taking a long time to get sync when I switched it on in the morning.  Thinking it was a sign the modem was failing I swapped to the backup 2-wire.

That's been fine for the last 4 weeks or so, but it's started to exhibit exactly the same symptoms.  Eventually it will get synced but it can take up to a couple of hours.

Contacted support and James ran a full set of diagnostics with the modem in the test socket and everything else disconnected.  Apparently the line is fine.  I can't say I'm entirely convinced since I have recently noticed low syncs recently and the 2-wire reporting a 28dB SNR; the SNR seldom, if ever, now drops below 15dB.

It seems odd that two modems should exhibit the same set of symptoms in such a short space of time but I suppose it's not impossible, hence my looking for another modem.  

I had thought of using a cheap single port modem together with a separate firewall.  From a wiring pov this would be simple.  Not only that but it would become impossible to monitor the signal as the modem would need to be in bridge mode.  The 2-wire would have been ideal to use as a simple modem passing PPoE to the firewall, which would have given me a nice VPN setup, but it's gone belly up before I could try it.

[Steve]

It is difficult to monitor stats with a port modem I use a Vigor 120 and an AEBS so its a PPOA/PPPOE bridge The Vigor 120 will give out one IP address so you can on an occasional basis look at the stats webpage which is not much use if things are changing on a day to day basis. It seems too much of a coincidence that you get the same symptoms with 2 routers, but have you looked at the Draytek 2710N as a possibility.?

[Tacitus]

The Vigor 120 will give out one IP address so you can on an occasional basis look at the stats webpage which is not much use if things are changing on a day to day basis.

I agree and since I have a poor line I really need to see what's going on.

It seems too much of a coincidence that you get the same symptoms with 2 routers, but have you looked at the Draytek 2710N as a possibility.?

Agree regarding the coincidence.  To me it implies there's something else going on, but looked at from iDNet's end all appears well and it's my end that isn't responding as it should.  The router plugs directly into the faceplate filter on the main socket; all wiring looks good and I get the same result in the test socket. 

Some years ago I had the same problem when I was on Demon - I had a Draytek 2600 at the time - and it turned out to be the modem.  It was replaced with a Draytek 2800 which worked well for a time but as the line went bad it couldn't really cope, despite a lot of tweaking.

Reason I was thinking of a Netgear is that I could probably get one from my local PCWorld.

[Rik]

It'll come with a 5 year extended warranty.

[Tacitus]

It'll come with a 5 year extended warranty.

Is that a Netgear or a PCW extended warranty? 

[Rik]

PCW.

[Tacitus]

PCW.

Hmm thought it might be :-(   The other thing about the Netgear is that I could fire up the PC and run RouterStats to see if that found anything.

Trouble with this modem lark is that you pretty soon end up with a shed full of the things, some of which work, some might work, and the rest just waste space :-)

[Rik]

Only one shed, Tac?

[Tacitus]

Only one shed, Tac?

I could always donate the surplus ones to Bletchley Park computer museum.......   

[Rik]

 

[Tacitus]

I've had a look at the RouterStats site and notice that RouterStats v 6.0c should work with the 2-Wire.  The site lists it for the 'lite' version so presumably the full version should also work.

It only lists 2Wire BT2700HG-V (firmware 6.1.1.48).  The one I have uses 5.29.107.12.  Is it possible to upgrade to FW 6 without any problems?  Firmware upgrades are not normally problematic, but since this router is technically specific to BT I wondered if it would throw up any difficulties.

Given that PCW only have the DG834 in stock - probably v5 - and the 2-Wire does work once it's got a sync I wondered if it might be easier to monitor that with RouterStats.

[Steve]

http://bt2700hgv.tripod.com/131.htm

The older versions of lite did work with firmware five, perhaps that's the easiest route rather upgrading the 2 wire. If the latest version doesn't work the previous versions are available for download.

[Tacitus]

http://bt2700hgv.tripod.com/131.htm
The older versions of lite did work with firmware five, perhaps that's the easiest route rather upgrading the 2 wire. If the latest version doesn't work the previous versions are available for download.

Thanks Steve I'll take a look.