Comments on: Useless Routers From Telkom

By: Arnold

Arnold — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 20:07:05 +0000

While I’m on the subject, service was shocking. All the advice the (help?) operator gave me was that my xbox should be able to connect wirelessly, but they can’t tell my how or why my connection isn’t working because it’s not one of their brands!

By: Arnold

Arnold — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 20:00:44 +0000

grrr….after being abroad for 10 years and having a 20 gig cap for 18 pounds a month (at a connection speed of 8MB/sec) I come back to a 3 gig cap at 386Kb/sec for R 258 and my Xbox 360 can’t connect wirelessly! Using my (old) Linksys router instead and have to live with the lag of our low speed connections.

By: Ajay

Ajay — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:21:31 +0000

hi. I have a friend that needs me to log into her computer remotly. She sends me the invite but when I try to open it I cant acces her computer. Is there eny other settings that needs to be changed and/or is it het telkom router that is blocking me from accessing her computer?

By: Prieur du Plessis

Prieur du Plessis — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 16:21:32 +0000

I have been using the Telkom Marconi router (got it with Do3) for about 2 years now and have had no problems at all. Wifi reception is fine even in the garden, it never drops, DSL connection is always stable etc.

In the office we have endless trouble with the much more expensive Cisco (Linksys) and Netgear ones.

So I guess it is a bit up to chance

By: SaulK

SaulK — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 06:15:25 +0000

The old Marconi brand modems were shocking to the point of basically being useless. You had to be within 2 meters to get vague wifi signal assuming it wasn’t about to explode from being on more than 20 minutes.

The new Billion make is better but I always still advocate getting a Linksys or Netgear router.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:32:18 +0000

Hey Tim,

7th? Wow, thats insane. I thought I was unlucky with routers.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:28:56 +0000

Hey Richard,

Thanks for the comment.

The modem I was working with today completely fried (as did another one I worked with in the past). Definitely not a line problem there.

Now, I am definitely not a hardware expert, but from my experience, using a so called “brand name” router has saved me a lot more time and money in the long run. Just my experience

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:27:49 +0000

I can’t agree with you more.

I wish more people would just go spend a couple of hundred bucks on a router that you won’t find in a lucky-packet. The Telkom routers use some of the worst electronic components, and feature the very worst firmware I’ve seen.

I have one friend who is on his SEVENTH (yes, seriously) Telkom ADSL router. Shocking.

By: richard

richard — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:20:19 +0000

Did you check the ADSL line stats for high error margins?

Line quality problems usually result in people (including Telkom technicians) faulting a perfectly good modem for a problematic line.

Some problematic lines work better on Telkom USB modems than Telkom ethernet-based ones. I only know this because I’ve replaced wifi modems 3 times at Telkom’s suggestion only to have them all behave the same. The problem being the line not the modem. This is a common problem because we use crap old lines for ADSL.

Please offer useful advice on diagnosing a problem correctly before suggesting people go out and spend money.