I finally got DSL at home last week. It's great. I've got a wonderful ISP (not MSN!) so things are working out well. It was a little tough to configure since we had to do wireless between the modem and the computer, but that's another article. :)

Today I'm here to rant about the Actiontec router they sent me. It's got 802.11g wireless which is cool, and it's an embedded Linux device which definitely gets them some cool points. They even have the code available from their website like their supposed to. Cool beans. But it's not without issues.

My problem is one I've had twice so far in only the week I've been using it. It stems from an annoyance in configuring the modem. Changes made through the web interface take effect immediately but are only saved when you click "Save and Restart". Restarting takes a good 2 minutes including DSL negotiations, so that's a hassle.

When you do that, sometimes the modem will freak out and lose its configuration. It reverts back to 192.168.0.1 from the 10.x IP I gave it and most importantly the wireless is disabled! That means my network is dead in the water until I can plug my laptop directly into the modem and reconfigure it. Then I have to go through all the settings and remember what I had set to them. It's a good thing I have a knack for remembering that sort of thing.

All I wanted to do was forward an additional port. Is that too much to ask?