NEWS: ISP blows the whistle on router chip 'fault' [ADSL]

<http://www.theregister.com/2007/10/22/zen_ar7_infineon_bt_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.

Zen has told its customers not to buy models that contain the chip
because they provide an unstable connection.

[MORE]

Incomplete list of some of the dozens of routers that contain the chip:
<http://www.linux-mips.org/wiki/AR7>

--
Best regards,
John Navas <http:/navasgroup.com>

On Oct 22, 2:48 pm, John Navas <spamfilt...@navasgroup.com> wrote:
> <http://www.theregister.com/2007/10/22/zen_ar7_infineon_bt_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.
>
> Zen has told its customers not to buy models that contain the chip
> because they provide an unstable connection.
>
> [MORE]
>
> Incomplete list of some of the dozens of routers that contain the chip:
> <http://www.linux-mips.org/wiki/AR7>
>
> --
> Best regards,
> John Navas <http:/navasgroup.com>

could be true this I was doing a adsl wireless installation with a
linksys router and I could not get the router adsl light to stop
flashing, I used another type of router in the end that connected no
problem

On Mon, 22 Oct 2007 13:48:26 GMT, John Navas
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

><http://www.theregister.com/2007/10/22/zen_ar7_infineon_bt_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.
>
> Zen has told its customers not to buy models that contain the chip
> because they provide an unstable connection.
>
> [MORE]
>
>Incomplete list of some of the dozens of routers that contain the chip:
><http://www.linux-mips.org/wiki/AR7>

My Actiontec GT-704 is as stable as a rock(AR7 chipset), uptime since
last config change 91days. And I've got one of the worst lines in DSL
hell..

So far this modem is of the best (S/N wise.. connection
reliability, performance), I've ever run into (verses 6 other DSL
modems)..

P.S. Their is a nasty DNS bug in th eGT-704.. But I've shut off that
service.

Meanwhile, Bellsouth/AT&T keeps on splicing in more and more junk
into my 11,500ft underground loop. BS measurements now indicate that
it's a 26,000 ft loop.

BT's weak point is that it uses the defective PPPoX protocol on top of
the ATM bridging functionality. .

That makes the whole setup highly vulnerable to anything less than a
perfect connection. BS/AT&T compensates for this built-in weakness
by increasing the interleave factor(Noise profile) to 16
milliseconds.. (which sucks big time.)

Note to gamers: A 16ms interleave ratio adds 32ms to the round trip
time of any packet sent to/from your IP address..

And each time their is a packet lost, the PPPoX connection is broken
and must be re-negioated/restarted. (Big time disruption. several
seconds + TCP timeouts & retries)

Fortunately, I've got a bridged (no PPPoX), 2ms interleaved connection
through Covad.. and a few dropouts don't bother my low latency
connection to the net.