SpeedStream DSl hubs

[gabetodd]

Has anyone used any of Efficient Networks Routers the 5800 series :D

[rolend]

I use the Efficient Speedstream 5861 router/hub for the DSL line here in Ann Arbor Michigan. Going with Ameritech for our dsl connection. So far it works pretty good, when Ameritech's working. Had it installed the 24th of February, in which it was put in on time, but the connection on Ameritech's end was horrible until about a week ago, in which it's since been working fine. (Let's hope it stays that way).... Our service is currently limited to 768d/128u

The router's nice, the web gui interface is nonexistant, the windows gui is decent, but I've found most of my time spent telnetting into it. Though I've yet to really figure out how to get filtering to work, I've never had any previous experience with routers, so I can't give comparison's. It seems like you have a ton of options available, and I can easily monitor the connection, see real time percentages of how much of the connection is taken up, etc.

Our current problem is when we have 5 people playing cs (counterstrike), we avg 60-90ms ping times, this works fine for us. Get a 6th person on, and the connection drops. 1000+ms ping times. According to the router, we're using up approx 95-100% of the upstream bandwidth with 5 people connected. So I imagine the 6th is just maxing out the bandwidth...

If I can't figure out how to reduce how much upstream bw cs takes up, we'll probably move to 1.5d/384u dsl, from Ameritech.

Another comment on the possibility of what's wrong, is that we're putting data on 6 machines through a 100baseT switch, running at Full Duplex, and it all comes into the router, which is considered a 10BaseT hub running at Full Duplex, and the packets are just colliding left and right.

But seeing as we're already supposedly maxing out the upstream bw with 5 people, it looks more like we're limited by only 128kb of upstream data to shove through....

Wow, I think I managed to repeat myself 14 gazillion times...

I'm satisfied with the router, but not completely with Ameritech:)

- Josh Williams