Out of the frying pan into the fire

July 12, 2009 10:19 AM

I am in the process of switching from Comcast cable to Verizon DSL. I am trying to figure out the wireless situation in my house.

So Verizon is offering a free netbook to new DSL subscribers, and I don't have any particular affinity for Comcast, so I decided to try it out.

With Comcast (which is actually still running), I have the following setup:
- Motorola cable modem
- Linksys WRT54g v 2.2 running Tomato and boosted output power

I have this unit set to forward BitTorrent, SSH, and icecast ports to one machine at home.

Verizon unexpectedly sent me a modem for my new service that also functions as a wireless access point and a router. It's a Westell 7500. It seems to be almost as configurable as my Linksys, and it looks like there is no need to boost the output power in order to get up to my office. The only missing feature appears to be DynDNS.com updating; the new router uses TSIG authentication which is only available on paid accounts, and I can just punt this to one of my computers.

So, is there anything I am missing that would be worth me keeping the Linksys around? Does this router have any hidden gotchas?

posted by mkb to computers & internet (4 comments total)

I do consulting on the side -- and time and time again, home and small business users have wierd issues with those Westell modems. My standard operating procedure is to simply disable all the gadgetry in them, and setup a standalone router.

Give it a go -- and if your happy be happy. If it has range issues, weird anomalies, or sets your hair on fire, setup the linksys again.
posted by SirStan at 10:28 AM on July 12

Just out of curiosity, is the free netbook promotion for all new DSL service, or just FiOS?
posted by entropic at 11:30 AM on July 12

No gotchas - but I've also had some problem with the westells. Why not:
a) Plug your linksys into it
b) see if your linksys supports Tomato Firmware - which has dyndns built into IT - making it pretty easy to send stuff to your machine(s).
posted by filmgeek at 9:25 PM on July 12

As stated in the question, the Linksys is currently running Tomato :)

I suppose I should look for a way to disable all the router and wireless functionality in the Westell, then.
posted by mkb at 6:44 AM on July 13