ISP blows the whistle on router chip 'fault'

One of the UK's best-respected broadband providers has raised concerns about the reliability of the world's most popular ADSL chip. Zen Internet has uncovered a potential problem with the Texas Instruments AR7. The chip is at the heart of about a third of routers in use worldwide today - including Linksys and Netgear kit. …

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a conspiracy

Balmer or Paris Hilton is behind this TRAVESTY!!!

Either way, one of them is going to smoke a turd in hell for this!

[Tampa Dave]

adsl

nuf said.

It's adsl! No one cool uses adsl.

Consider this a free and un-documented feature.

[Anonymous Coward]

its all a bit silly

most of you people only decide to complain now... bah humbug to you all... gettin as bad as americans!!!!!

we have had two routers in our broadband lifetime... both use the AR7 chipl... and we never had a problem, we only had to change the the first one because it died from old age...

its most likely that zen are just have a shit time on their network and want to pin the blame somewhere else

[Anonymous Coward]

AR7 issues

Porblems here with Netgear routers! - all seem to be dropping or resetting at 29, 49 and 59 seconds according to the ISP's log - got fed up with this and went cable my 20Mb service (18 in real terms) is far, far better. It seems it's down to BT's policy of keep ovehead feeds regardless - and what copper network? it's all aluminium now!

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect mate

"its most likely that zen are just have a shit time on their network and want to pin the blame somewhere else"

Its seams you are a little confused as to how adsl works via BT Wholesale.

The router connects over the BT retail line, to a BT Wholesale DSLAM in the exchange, the Username and password details are then authenticated by the BT RAS servers which then pass the session over the ATM/Central network to the ISP.

So stability of sync is in no way related to the ISP's network.

Its also worth noting that the article and people and know have repeatedly said that the issue only happens under certain line conditions so its possible you can have AR7 routers on DSLMax and have no problem, thus your comment of I have 2 routers both AR7 and their fine so its cant be right isnt valid.

Also I know of several cases where people have had intermittent sync, they changed their AR7 routers for ones using another chipset and the line worked a lot better. Proving that those particular faults were the AR7 issue. I also seen people with intermittent sync and they put other routers on and it didnt resolve is so they were suffering another problem. Its just one more thing to look at if you have an intermittent connection. Nothing wrong with an ISP looking at all possible causes of a fault.

[Anonymous Coward]

Interleaving

Seems the AR7 might not be too keen on interleaved lines in the UK. I got that from a router manufacturer. I assume Zen (Phil Long is not one to shoot his mouth off) have been getting the same info?

[Bob D]

Hours of instability .......

I spent many days recording the noise margin "reported" by my Netgear DG834v2 after my circuit became unstable following LLU. What I discovered was that although the device with this chipset (and another brand of modem using the same chipset) would negotiate connection at the defined noise margin, over a matter of 10-20 minutes it would deteriorate until the DSL was unusable. This seemed to be a problem that commenced with ADSL2+. I spent many many hours on the phone to my ISP trying to identify the problem but in the end I concluded the DG834 couldnt cope with a slightly noisy circuit.

I replaced it with a 2Wire 2700 from ebay and all my problems went away.... and came back with the DG834v2.... so I got rid of Mr Netgear's box and since then I've enjoyed a fairly consistent 5mbs + on a 40dB attn line about 2km from the exchange.

How refreshing to see that someone else has identified a similar problem, take heed anyone having probs with this chipset, you could be amazed how quickly the "fault" goes away when you stuff it in the bin!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stop

It is paining to see different comments from half-baked idiots who don't knoiw anything about ADSL . Zen are partly at fault for openly saying it is a fault with the chipset, but in reality, it is, "INCOMPATIBILITY WITH THE CHIPSET AND SOME BT LINES". It is not a fault, incompatibility.This is no way a fault with an ISP because, the dropouts are the connection dropping between your router and the exchange which belongs to BT. Exception is if you line sync (i.e. connection to the BT DSLAM in the exchange) stays up and you still lose connection.

[Anonymous Coward]

@ Albert

Well, what a coincidence. I am also connected to the Byfleet exchange and I also have TalkTalk broadband and would you believe it - it drops out all over the place, exactly as you describe. Sometimes we lose it for days at a time.

I've got a Netgear DG834PN, slightly different from the ones mentioned here. I don't know what the chipset is but I'm going to open it up and find out.

To be honest, there's no easy answer to this. The service is of course crap, but then again it's bargain-basement cheap. I can ditch them in November without paying the penalty fee and I don't mind paying more to get something reliable, but as many posters have pointed out, ADSL can be shite whoever you get it from.

I was considering switching to Virgin cable, but their reputation for customer service makes me very scared indeed.

At the risk of starting another war, is cable a better technology in practice than ADSL?

[fon]

check the SIMPLE stuff first!!!

this link may help....

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3257-dsl-modem-chipset-issue-comes-to-the-fore.html

As it says, before you waste your money on another modem/router, to have it fail in the same way.....

check the phone socket, lines filters(they can dry out, and newer ones will be better now than 5 years ago!), length and quality of cable, connections, anything that cable passes that could create interference, etc, etc...

basically I would find a place as near as possible to where the phone cable comes in, and connect the modem there.. then cat5 network cable from a router...

[Andy Dempster]

My experience

I've had ADSL for the past 6 years, 5 years of those with Zen. I've used a DLink DSL504 up till 2 months ago when I switched to a Netgear DG834G v3. My first year of ADSL was with BT Openworld and I had nothing but trouble with the connection, several things were tried but eventually I switched over to Zen when my 1yr contract was up. The service improved dramatically and I had no problems until I switched to ADSL MAX just over 2 years ago.

The Dlink started disconnecting twice a day (so I bought the Netgear - same trouble) and I had real difficulties getting the connection back up involving a full power cycle of the router. I have a dedicated line for ADSL hanging off the master socket with a faceplate. No external filters, no extra devices. According to my research neither of these modems have the faulty chipset in question which leaves me in serious doubt as to the credibility of this claim.

[Marc-Oliver Kalis]

not faulty Chip, but flawed and useless 'BT'

I think, people don't realise, that it's actually not the chips fault, since it works very successful in millions of other routers, but the extremely poor and rotten BT infrastructure! An infrastructure that is being used to cash in through a quasi monopoly, but that they are not willing to maintain.

Any one who has read the article with just slightly open easy, will recognise the pattern.

In terms of speed the majority of Europe is far ahead of the UK, only where there has been some un-bundling, the line quality is reasonable.

I have tested AR7 routers (AVM Fritz!box, Linksys, Netgear) and non AR7 (Speedtouch) and can really pinpoint, that it is due to the chipset.

That doesn't mean that the chip is the reason.

It is absolutely normal, that equipment form the same manufacturer will communicate significantly better than equipment, that is "just compatible"

It would also not surprise me, if BT deliberately withheld this information, so they can cash in on "unnecessary call-outs".

Interestingly, when you go for BT Broadband, as a normal consumer and opt for a router provided by them ,you will always get one with a Speedtouch chip set.

In itself this may not hold up very much, but it certainly is an interesting coincidence.

[Kris Lord]

Sky Broadband

I had this problem with the DG834GT supplied by SKY.

I'm about 400m from the exchange and get 16Mbit, however still got dropouts.

I found the problem was caused by uPnP problems in the firmware.

Disabling uPnP has completely fixed things, currently been connected for 700 hours without a problem whereas i was getting at most 6 hours previously.

[fon]

check the above posts..

Andy Dempster, have you also tried *with* a line filter?? Vocal-band signals can interfere...

also try Disabling uPnP as above.. and talk to Zen about a full ADSL MAX line test... this should weed out other forms of interference...

[fon]

ask the experts on adslguide...

more technical details in this forum....

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=zen&Number=3159312

[Paul Dickinson]

What's good then?

I know it's subjective, but I suspect I have a dodgy BT line. They say it's ok, but I suffer with drops in speed in the space of an hour, by about 80%.

What ADSL2 routers are good/reliable with poor lines with noise?

Which routers DON'T use AR7?