AnswersThatWork Blog September 2009

The AnswersThatWork Blog

Thursday, 17th September 2009

2Wire routers — an experience that still has us shaking

Now, 2Wire won't like this blog, guarantee, but sometimes some things have to be said, particularly when your engineers have to spend 10 times longer on a job than they should do.

In September 2009 the configuration of a middle of the range DSL/ADSL 4-port Modem Firewall router should take an expert no longer than half an hour all told. This is unarguable — 4-port DSL/ADSL Modem Firewall Routers are a stable mature technology where the hardware is made by handful of OEM manufacturers worldwide and where the differentiation is in the user interface. Netgear have become the World #1 router supplier for one reason and one reason only : a powerful but incredibly uncluttered and simple user interface which includes an excellently written Help. In the Czech Republic, Poland, the USA, and Russia you can find cheap routers that beat all Netgear routers hands down on features, but Netgear beats all of those with their user interface. So, back to my statement : the configuration of a standard DSL 4-port Modem Firewall Router should take an expert no longer than 30 minutes, period.

That is until you come across a 2Wire router which we did recently twice in the same week (actually, we'd come across a 2Wire router before, with a client in Miami Shores, Florida, who'd been given it by his Embarq ISP and had no end of problems). Two new clients we picked up had moved to BT for their broadband (relax — that decision happened before they became our clients!) and nowadays most BT ADSL 4-port modem firewall routers are 2Wire routers.

At this point let's introduce a small philosophical angle : Yes, in Life it is great to have differences, and sometimes differentiating oneself from others can give you an advantage, it can even make you cool. Hey, we all like cool ! But when differentiation makes the onlooker go ughh then that's the time to wonder whether the differentiation is cool or plain dumb....

Rollback to these two BT/2Wire DSL modem routers (model BT2700HGV).

The first difference between these 2Wire routers and the vast majority of other routers : if you change the IP address of your PC/server while you are configuring the router, to another IP address in the same range, you can no longer access the Internet — you have to turn off the router, then turn it back on and wait for 2 or 3 minutes while it reconnects to the Internet. Same thing if you change the network card on your PC/server keeping the same IP address as the previous network card. This is maddening — it drove our engineer crazy. As it happened, on this particular job part of her brief included checking the Internet throughput with different network cards, so an experiment that should have taken 15 minutes to complete took over an hour because the first time it happened our engineer thought she had a dead network card. Ridiculous : every other brand of router lets you change your network card's IP address to another one in the same range without you having to turn the router off and on.

Second problem : Port Forwarding. Now, all advanced users out there know what Port Forwarding is and what it is used for. The term Port Forwarding is an industry standard term. 2Wire : are you reading — industry standard ! Now, if a manufacturer does not want to use the industry standard term of Port Forwarding we'd still give them the nod if they decided to use the older term for Port Forwarding : Virtual Servers, as 3Com do for their routers. What do 2Wire call Port Forwarding ? Pinholes !!!!!!!!! Words fail me — Uncool and Dumb come to mind, but, in reality, I am totally unable to comprehend the mindset being calling Port Forwarding "Pinholes". That's way out there.

And this, my friends, is an excellent summary of what the rest of the interface on these routers is like. For example : you'd expect that setting a password on the router would prevent access to it, period. We all like this sort of security, don't we ? Think again ! Differentiate ! In this case the password is simply something you have to enter if you make changes. At all other times a friend, a client can visit you, ask you for the wireless key to use your wireless Internet access while they're visiting, and simply browse onto your router and note down the various external entry points into your network, or should I call them Pinholes (!!), for future hacking activities into your system.

Dear oh Dear — Give me strength !

—— (TUT) SpaceMan