2Wire behavior: Good... then fizzle... then die
Written: Apr 30 '04
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Pros: Easy to install; decent firewall and USB support
Cons: Habitually short lifespan
The Bottom Line: The perfect DSL modem for people who like their equipment to die early
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| dub273's Full Review: 2wire HomePortal 100 (1000-200002-000) Gateway |
The 2Wire HomePortal 100 is the standard issue broadband modem for SBC customers in the Little Rock area. It came installed with our service around April 2003.
Around October 2003, we started noticing sporadic outages of our DSL service. (I work from home and am connected to my workplace via webcam, so these outages are immediately apparent.) I also noticed that the webcam service was showing significant lag; often several seconds or more would pass before the video and audio would reach its destination. Uploading files to my VPN network became a nightmare; an 11 meg file, which normally took about 20 minutes, suddenly became a two-hour transfer.
The connection kept worsening. Flash forward to January 2004, and suddenly there were large portions of the morning and afternoon where broadband was simply unavailable. I called SBC to have a service man check out the problem. He ran a check on the lines (they were functioning perfectly), and concluded that the modem was faulty.
I asked him if such hardware failures were common, and he remarked that SBC had several 2Wire units die on its customers. (Why SBC would continue to do business with 2Wire is a question that begs an answer -- especially since SBC charged us $60 for that visit.)
He replaced the modem and voila -- connection restored. With the new modem in place, our connection was sparkly, shiny, and FAST again. For a couple of months, anyway. Now here we are in April '04, and I'm already noticing the degrading speed of my broadband: the lag in the webcam conversations, the transfer speed drops, and hiccups in my Xbox LIVE service.
I came here to see if other 2Wire customers were symptomatic, and they sure seem to be. I therefore submit this testimony: if you buy the 2Wire HomePortal, you're buying faulty hardware.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 120
Driver Availability: Don''t Know
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Epinions.com ID:
dub273
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Reviews written: 4
Trusted by: 0 members
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