Noise/attenuation: Netgear DG834T versus DLink DSL-G604T

I've just noticed something very strange...

My Netgear router reports:

Up Down
Attenuation 30 dB 29 dB
Noise Margin 6 dB 6 dB


Whereas a customer's Dlink router that I'm testing for him before
installation, shows

Attenutation 9 dB 9 dB
Noise Margin 31 dB 31 dB

for the same phone line, plugged into the same wall-socket by the same
cable.


This makes me wonder: has one of the routers got the headings for the two
attributes the wrong way round?


Given that lower attenuation and higher noise margin is better, and that I'm
only about 100 metres from my exchange, I suspect that the Dlink is right
whereas my Netgear is arse-about-face!

"Martin Underwood" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:42a1aaeb$0$21809$(E-Mail Removed)...
> This makes me wonder: has one of the routers got the headings for the two
> attributes the wrong way round?

Yes.

> Given that lower attenuation and higher noise margin is better, and that
> I'm
> only about 100 metres from my exchange, I suspect that the Dlink is right
> whereas my Netgear is arse-about-face!

What firmware version are you running in the Netgear?

http://kbserver.netgear.com/release_notes/D102700.asp shows that latest 3
firmware versions included a fix which "Corrected the display of Line
Attenuation and Noise Margin listed in Router Statistics."

Regards
Sunil

"Sunil Sood" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>
> "Martin Underwood" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:42a1aaeb$0$21809$(E-Mail Removed)...
>> This makes me wonder: has one of the routers got the headings for the two
>> attributes the wrong way round?
>
> Yes.
>
>> Given that lower attenuation and higher noise margin is better, and that
>> I'm
>> only about 100 metres from my exchange, I suspect that the Dlink is right
>> whereas my Netgear is arse-about-face!
>
> What firmware version are you running in the Netgear?
>
> http://kbserver.netgear.com/release_notes/D102700.asp shows that latest 3
> firmware versions included a fix which "Corrected the display of Line
> Attenuation and Noise Margin listed in Router Statistics."
>
> Regards
> Sunil
>

Heheh, good find

"[-=Dan=-]" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> "Sunil Sood" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>>
>> "Martin Underwood" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
>> news:42a1aaeb$0$21809$(E-Mail Removed)...
>>> This makes me wonder: has one of the routers got the headings for the
>>> two
>>> attributes the wrong way round?
>>
>> Yes.
>>
>>> Given that lower attenuation and higher noise margin is better, and that
>>> I'm
>>> only about 100 metres from my exchange, I suspect that the Dlink is
>>> right
>>> whereas my Netgear is arse-about-face!
>>
>> What firmware version are you running in the Netgear?
>>
>> http://kbserver.netgear.com/release_notes/D102700.asp shows that latest 3
>> firmware versions included a fix which "Corrected the display of Line
>> Attenuation and Noise Margin listed in Router Statistics."
>>
>> Regards
>> Sunil
>>
>
> Heheh, good find

I did think that a noise margin of 6 dB sounded very poor for a
newly-installed line (within the last five years) that is probably only
100-200 metres long (allowing for the line being routed via roads rather
than as the crow flies. People in various groups said that I was very lucky
to be able to get 2 Mbps with that much noise.

Now I know that Netgear had got their attenuation and noise the wrong way
round! Pillocks!

I'll upgrade the firmware now: I'm on V1.01.00 and I see that the current
Netgear firmware is V1.01.28.

Martin U:
>whereas my Netgear is arse-about-face

Not just your Netgear, ANY and ALL Netgear...
Regards,
Martin

"Martin²" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:42a25455$0$7524$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Martin U:
>>whereas my Netgear is arse-about-face
>
> Not just your Netgear, ANY and ALL Netgear...

Oh, had they made the same mistake in the firmware of all their routers?
What a cockup! At least the firmware upgrade for the DG843GT fixes it for
me, as well as fixing the logging emails which did not have a "Date:" field
in the header (!), and adding additional features such as Atheros Extended
Range on the Wireless page. Shame that Atheros Extended Range doesn't seem
to be documented in the on-screen help, a revised version of the user manual
or the knowledgebase.

Like all firmware upgrades, I was terrified that there'd be a power cut or a
mains glitch while I was uploading the new firmware to the router.


(Talking of cockups, I noticed that the DLink that I was testing had a great
one: on the summary page that shows how long the router has been up, it
always displays some ridiculously large number because it subtracts today's
date/time from the date when the router was booted - and the latter is
always 1 Jan 1970 or 1980 because the router's time of day hasn't yet been
adjusted early in the boot cycle.)

On Sun, 5 Jun 2005 09:49:43 +0100, "Martin Underwood" <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

> Oh, had they made the same mistake in the firmware of all their routers?
> What a cockup! At least the firmware upgrade for the DG843GT fixes it for
> me, as well as fixing the logging emails which did not have a "Date:" field
> in the header (!),

Actually adding that Date: line was IMO a step backwards. It is not a
required header in emails and is usually (in my experience) added, and
done so correctly, by the MTA. However the line now being added by the
routers is wrong because it gets the daylight savings (summer time) offset
wrong in the time zone. One of the mistakes already reported to Netgear.

Tony

"Martin Underwood" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:42a2c4e5$0$5825$(E-Mail Removed)...
> "Martin²" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:42a25455$0$7524$(E-Mail Removed)...
>> Not just your Netgear, ANY and ALL Netgear...
>
> Oh, had they made the same mistake in the firmware of all their routers?

No - Martin just had a single bad experience with a Netgear modem/router
(can't remember what model but it wasn't the DG series I think) a long time
ago and now everytime a Netgear thread appears he always feels compelled
says how bad every Netgear product is in his view.

> What a cockup! At least the firmware upgrade for the DG843GT fixes it for
> me, as well as fixing the logging emails which did not have a "Date:"
> field in the header (!), and adding additional features such as Atheros
> Extended Range on the Wireless page. Shame that Atheros Extended Range
> doesn't seem to be documented in the on-screen help, a revised version of
> the user manual or the knowledgebase.

If you have any questions http://forum1.netgear.com/support/index.php is
probably the best place to ask.

Regards
Sunil

"Anthony R. Gold" <not-for-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> On Sun, 5 Jun 2005 09:49:43 +0100, "Martin Underwood" <(E-Mail Removed)>
> wrote:
>
>> Oh, had they made the same mistake in the firmware of all their routers?
>> What a cockup! At least the firmware upgrade for the DG843GT fixes it for
>> me, as well as fixing the logging emails which did not have a "Date:"
>> field in the header (!),
>
> Actually adding that Date: line was IMO a step backwards. It is not a
> required header in emails and is usually (in my experience) added, and
> done so correctly, by the MTA. However the line now being added by the
> routers is wrong because it gets the daylight savings (summer time) offset
> wrong in the time zone. One of the mistakes already reported to Netgear.

Isn't the Date field compulsory? Every email that I've ever received from a
recognised email program such as Outlook, Outlook Express and the various
Unix mail clients such as Elm - they all include it. I'd have thought that
Date, From, Subject and To were essential parts of an email. I've found that
timestamps added by the various mail servers along the way are quite often
wrong by several hours because people don't bother setting the correct
timezone: if you translate all timestamps to GMT, each hop should always
occur *later* than the one before it. At least with the use of Windows XP
and W2K or W2K3 server, most computer clocks should be correctly synced to
Microsoft's master timesource.

I noticed this morning that the new router email reports the sent time as
1000 rather than 0900 because it's got the daylight saving wrong. However I
tend to display the received time in my Outlook Express. It would be so easy
for Netgear to have incorporated the standard rule for the dates when
daylight saving begins and ends - as Microsoft do with Windows.

By the way, does anyone know what the three hex numbers in the subject of a
Netgear router email are? Before the firmware upgrade the subject was
"NETGEAR Security Log [03:04:05]" and now with 1.01.28 "NETGEAR Security Log
[55:F3:B9]". When I first saw one of the emails, I thought for a moment that
it was the time when the email was sent - ie 4 minutes past 3 AM.

One feature that would be useful is if there was a way of making the router
generate a test email on demand to check that the recipient details are
entered correctly. You can set the interval to be every hour, but waiting up
to 1 hour until xx:00 isn't really an option, especially as with the Netgear
the time is taken from a time server so could can't keep faking the time to
xx:59 to trigger another email.

On Sun, 5 Jun 2005 12:07:28 +0100, "Martin Underwood" <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

> "Anthony R. Gold" <not-for-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>> On Sun, 5 Jun 2005 09:49:43 +0100, "Martin Underwood" <(E-Mail Removed)>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Oh, had they made the same mistake in the firmware of all their routers?
>>> What a cockup! At least the firmware upgrade for the DG843GT fixes it for
>>> me, as well as fixing the logging emails which did not have a "Date:"
>>> field in the header (!),
>>
>> Actually adding that Date: line was IMO a step backwards. It is not a
>> required header in emails and is usually (in my experience) added, and
>> done so correctly, by the MTA. However the line now being added by the
>> routers is wrong because it gets the daylight savings (summer time) offset
>> wrong in the time zone. One of the mistakes already reported to Netgear.
>
> Isn't the Date field compulsory?

No. See RFC 2822 which defines how the date syntax MUST be shown, but
only if one is included.

> Every email that I've ever received from a
> recognised email program such as Outlook, Outlook Express and the various
> Unix mail clients such as Elm - they all include it.

The header is permitted and defined where used but it is not required and
adding wrongly is IMO less than beneficial.

> I'd have thought that
> Date, From, Subject and To were essential parts of an email.

Then this thread will be an education, and you are welcome :-)

> I noticed this morning that the new router email reports the sent time as
> 1000 rather than 0900 because it's got the daylight saving wrong. However I
> tend to display the received time in my Outlook Express. It would be so easy
> for Netgear to have incorporated the standard rule for the dates when
> daylight saving begins and ends - as Microsoft do with Windows.

An automatic setting of the start and end points for daylight savings is
unrelated to the bug in which the router sends the wrong time zone. The
simple *nix time daemon in the router does not have time zones (which are
geographic areas) but just simple off-sets from UTC/GMT so for example the
program is not aware whether +0 means the router is in the UK or in West
Africa which have different time rules.

> By the way, does anyone know what the three hex numbers in the subject of a
> Netgear router email are? Before the firmware upgrade the subject was
> "NETGEAR Security Log [03:04:05]" and now with 1.01.28 "NETGEAR Security Log
> [55:F3:B9]". When I first saw one of the emails, I thought for a moment that
> it was the time when the email was sent - ie 4 minutes past 3 AM.

The last half of the MAC address. Log in to the router and in the status
page you will see the MAC is xx:xx:xx:55:F3:B9. I have DG834Gs and that
has never changed for me with the different software releases. Maybe the
DG834T had that wrong in some earlier releases.

> One feature that would be useful is if there was a way of making the router
> generate a test email on demand to check that the recipient details are
> entered correctly. You can set the interval to be every hour, but waiting up
> to 1 hour until xx:00 isn't really an option, especially as with the Netgear
> the time is taken from a time server so could can't keep faking the time to
> xx:59 to trigger another email.

Odd, in the DG834G you can. Go to the Log screen and hit the Send Log
button. Is that button not there in the DG834T?

Tony