Will Spark replace a potentially faulty router?

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Will Spark replace a potentially faulty router?

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Jase2985

13463 posts

Uber Geek

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#1616110 23-Aug-2016 05:12

i got a notification of a message but when i went to check there was nothing there, so something has gone wrong at your end by the sounds of things

Wheelbarrow01

1726 posts

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Chorus

#1616129 23-Aug-2016 07:57

bakery2k:

Thank you all for your advice in this thread. Thanks in particular to Jase2985, hio77, huckster and Wheelbarrow01 for the offers to borrow routers in order to test my connection.

Wheelbarrow01, I have sent you a PM.

(Jase2985, I tried to send you a PM on Saturday, but it did not show in my "Outgoing messages". Did you receive a PM from me?)

The modem is on it's way. Let us know if it makes a difference

The views expressed by me are not necessarily those of my employer Chorus NZ Ltd

bigears

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1617595 25-Aug-2016 21:38

Great to see the offers of support and Wheelbarrow01 coming to the party.

As a technical observation (this is Geekzone after all!), I have experienced:

- a Linksys AG310 ADSL modem/VoIP ATA become defective after almost exactly 3 years of 24/7 usage: dropped phone calls when picked up (going off hook when ringing).

- a Cisco SRP527 ADSL modem/VoIP ATA/Wifi become defective after just 1.5 years of 24/7 usage: won't start up, gets stuck with blinking power lamp trying to boot (a bit of research pointed toward the Marvell silicon in this having a strict requirement on power rail rise time: must rise to full value before 2 msec).

- a D-link G604T ADSL modem/Wifi become defective after more than 5 years' usage. Intermittent Wifi and intermittent routing/web access. Obviously a very old bit of gear. Nonetheless it still works if only for the annoying malfunction that sometimes goes long periods without skipping a beat, but when it does, it can be a real nuisance (leading to it being retired as a pure WiFi AP only now). I should add that the first time it stopped working it was persistent until the power supply adaptor was replaced. Arguably the replacement is not a genuine replacement and thus now an unwarranted system.

My hypothesis of all these experiences leads me to attribute "wearing out" of consumer network appliances (like routers and WiFi etc) is the power supply after 3 years' use (this can be influenced by the `dirtiness' of the power line you have). If you're lucky, the fault is the in-line or wall mount adaptor, but sometimes it can be the internal power supply circuits… uneconomic to repair (even the price of buying replacement capacitors sometimes outweighs the price of a new unit, before you've even paid yourself or someone to do the work).

Now I just resign myself to WiFi or modems becoming suspect after 3 years!

bigears

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1617596 25-Aug-2016 21:44

I just thought of an idea: if you relish the reliability of your beloved modems and other network boxes, put them inside a wine chiller or spare fridge - just like data centers and enterprise IT server closets (they house all their gear in air conditioned rooms to improve reliability). Would the cost of running the chiller outweigh the cost of replacing the gear in 3 years? Probably not, it would have to be that you value hassle-free uninterrupted service more than the cost of refrigeration.

bakery2k

79 posts

Master Geek

#1662510 2-Nov-2016 10:31

Wheelbarrow01, thank you again for sending me a free Spark-branded HG630b. When first plugged in, my connection was stable for a week or so, then the frequent disconnections resumed. I was worried that the new modem had not fixed the issue.

However, these new disconnections turned out to be the result of a new line fault. Unlike any fault which may have been causing disconnections in the past, this new fault also affected voice calling. After Chorus fixed this fault, the problem of frequent disconnections disappeared!

Now, through the combination of Chorus's original work on the line, the repair to this latest fault, and the new modem, I have had no unplanned disconnections for 6 weeks.

Thanks to everyone who offered advice and/or hardware for your help in fixing this problem.

Wheelbarrow01, I would like to take up your offer to keep the HG630b modem.

ghettomaster

387 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1662517 2-Nov-2016 10:42

bigears:

I just thought of an idea: if you relish the reliability of your beloved modems and other network boxes, put them inside a wine chiller or spare fridge - just like data centers and enterprise IT server closets (they house all their gear in air conditioned rooms to improve reliability). Would the cost of running the chiller outweigh the cost of replacing the gear in 3 years? Probably not, it would have to be that you value hassle-free uninterrupted service more than the cost of refrigeration.

Now this reminds me of a story I heard from a particularly creative individual once. His claim was that he ran a bunch of cables out of his CPU socket and into his CPU, in order to put the CPU in a fridge for overclocking. When I asked him why he would want to overclock his CPU so extensively, his claim was that it allowed faster downloading over dial-up (this was back in the day).

Aredwood

3885 posts

Uber Geek

#1664422 5-Nov-2016 23:48

If true the impressive part is that he was able to extend the CPU away from the motherboard and still have it work. As the clock speeds mean you are dealing with RF, so cable impedances and propagation delays can cause interesting things to happen.

Also his dialup modem might have been a winmodem type. They used the operating system to carry out some of the processing that otherwise is done inside the modem itself. So there is a possibility that getting the OS to run faster would have improved download speeds. But far better would have been to simply get a non winmodem type modem.

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