Buying a DSL Modem
May 5, 2004 5:52 PM   Subscribe

I'm considering buying a DSL modem outright, to take care of that pesky rental charge each month from my ISP. Does the make and brand of modem make much of a difference in terms of reliability and speed, or are the ISP and phone lines in between more of a determining factor?
posted by danwalker to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)
 
danwalker,

Your best bet is to find out what modems your ISP supports and post a list here. DSL modems are somewhat like cell phones, they don't necessarily work with different providers. If you don't buy one your ISP supports, it might not work and they might tell you you're on your own if you ever need help.

I bought my Westell 2100 from BellSouth. Verizon gave me a Westell 2200 for free. They both work with the other's service, but I had to hack around a bit to make this happen. The two modems are basically the same, but they have ISP provided firmware which caused the need to hack.

The Westell 2100 and 2200 DualSpeed both have a USB and Ethernet jack. The ethernet is a lot faster, but requires your PC have a NIC.

The speed of your service is primarily dependant on distance to CO. As for reliability, unless you have driver problems or hardware problems, you should experience the same quality of service as with your rented unit. I've had more trouble with USB brand DSL modems than they are worth, even when they were given to me free.

The other thing that can effect the quality of your service is the quality of the wiring in your house, both to the telco owned jack and from the jack to your individual locations. If the quality is low, you can hear the DSL on the phone and the phone can cause disruptions to your service.

I recommend the Westells, though they have had some problems with DOA. Not sure if it was just BellSouth's shipment or product wide, but I had 4 Westell 2100 before I got one that worked. The DSL tech told me he always brings multiple units to the customer site because more than half of the ones he tries are DOA.

Hope this helps, but I can't make any specific recommendations without knowing your ISP, at the very least. You can also look for yourself at the VERY useful http://dslreports.com.
posted by sequential at 6:24 PM on May 5, 2004


I suggest you don't buy it, but if possible, rent it from the telco. Compare buy price, sometimes telco offer to rent it for a reasonably low cost. This way if anything is wrong with the modem you'll not end up with an useless modem.
posted by elpapacito at 6:39 PM on May 5, 2004


If you do buy, I'd suggest that you get a used Cisco 678 from ebay. The only time I've seen those crap out is if they overheat in a poorly ventilated server room.
posted by cmonkey at 7:23 PM on May 5, 2004


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