Jim O’Halloran’s Weblog

Published July 3rd, 2003 by Jim O'Halloran

Internode and D-Link DSL-504

I’ve previously whinged about the lack of ADSL where I live, so I guess now that the situation has changed, I need to correct myself!

About a month ago, my local exchange (Morphett Vale East) became ADSL enabled, so I promptly signed up for an Internode ADSL connection, and got my hands on a D-Link DSL-504 ADSL Modem/Router. In the two weeks that its all been running I’ve had no major dramas with either.

Setup was a breeze, configure a machine to use DHCP and plug it onto one of the LAN ports on the switch, point a web browser at http://192.168.0.1/ (Mozilla works perfectly) and key in the settings provided by Internode. Then plug in your phone line, wait for the lights to start blinking and you’re done. My ADSL would’ve been up and running in 5 minutes had it Telstra not provisioned the service correctly the first time (not Internode’s fault, but they were very helpful in getting it sorted).

The only problems I’ve had with the 504 is that the DHCP server implementation on the thing seems pretty basic, and can (if you swap network cables around) allocate the same IP to more than one machine which is obviously a problem. If you’ve got a Linux box (or an NT/2k server), this is easy fixed by turning off the DHCP server on the Router and running a dhcpd on your own machine. If you’re not plugging in different machines all the time, its not an issue anyway. Also related to swapping cables about is when unplugging/plugging in network cables the device sometimes hangs and needs a quick power cycle to bring it back. In most cases though these won’t be a major problem once the unit is up and running.

I’ve had my ADSL running at home for a couple of weeks now, and can’t fault either Internode (simply excellent) or the D-Link DSL-504 (sensational piece of gear).

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