All this software hate is all well and good, but this week I've been mostly hating hardware.
A couple of weeks ago I ordered an ADSL router to go with my shiny new ADSL connection. I decided on something from the Vigor 2600 range and had to decide whether or not so buy the a model with a built-in wireless access point. As I already had a Apple Airport I went for the non-wireless version (thereby saving myself a little bit of money).
Last weekend the ADSL comes online, the router works, the airport talks to the router and everyone is happy.
Over the last few days, however, things have been less rosy. Wireless connectivity is patchy. Actually what's happening is that the airport seems to give up completely. The only way to get it working again is to reset it (either from the Airport Utility on the Powerbook or by turning the power off). Earlier in the week this was happening once or twice a day. Last night it was working for about 20 minutes before failing.
Is this a known fault with older (about three years old I think) Airports? I've noticed that as it starts up the left-hand lights goes red for a few seconds - is this an indication of an error?
Should I just give up and buy a new access point?
As to the vigor itself, it works well enough, but it has an awful web interface, a worse command line interface, awful snmp support and poorly documented syslog messages. In short, it's a nice try, but could be done a lot better. My main complaint has to be the web interface. It's so full of Javascript it's very difficult to script properly.
Also, SEG (the uk distributors) are in the process of trying to shut down the mailing list for vigor routers and move everybody to the web forums instead. This sucks, web forums are a pain compared to the graceful mutt.
Anyway, sorry for being a bit ranty. The router has kept me online for 9 months without too many troubles...
-Dom
