Router Problems
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The new "cheap" Infosmart router causes dreadful problems

The First Router Notes

In late August 2003 I purchased an Infosmart AFN4000 modem/router/firewall for $135 at a swapmeet one Sunday morning. It was a "no name" brand, but the features seemed to exceed those of the "big name" brands which were twice the price, so I took a money-saving risk. After struggling with the pathetic Taiwanese documentation for a couple of days I managed to get the thing working on the Nancy Street LAN. The browser based configuration screens were very difficult to understand and the help was appallingly thin and unhelpful. At this point I started to realise my possible mistake!

For 2 weeks I suffered random ADSL reconnections that might occur up to 200 times per day, thereby causing my dynamic IP to change as frequently. After many newsgroup posts that produced no replies I borrowed a Dynalink RTA100 modem and replaced the AFN4000. All reconnection problems vanished immediately. I therefore presume that the Infosmart is incompatible with Telstra's ADSL or there is some obscure setting inside the thing that couldn't be found.

I think the motto of this story is that "buying cheap components might backfire on you" (and yes, I'm old enough to be generally aware of such things). My initial excuse is that the AFN4000 seemed to have fabulous features, but the help and support were atrocious, and worst of all, the Vietnamese chap I bought the thing from simply said to me on the phone "you ring Telstra" and washed his hands of my problems. If I'd paid twice the price for a brand name like Dynalink or Netgear then I would have joined a large helpful user community and enjoyed comprehensive online help. The RTA100 is the lowest entry-level Dynalink modem/router, but it has rich features and comprehensive help that seem to exceed those of the AFN4000 that I originally thought was so impressive.

The whole modem/router fiasco cost me perhaps 8 man-hours of suffering and wasted time. I am donating the ANF4000 to a friend who is getting an ultra-cheap (non-Telstra) broadband connection, so I can only hope that it works for him.

The Later Router Notes

The Infosmart AFN4000 router continued to randomly perform ADSL reconnections up to 200 times per day. Sometimes it would keep the same IP for 12 hours at a time then suddenly it would start reconnecting and changing IP every couple of minutes. I borrowed a Dynalink RTA100 router off a friend, plugged its single LAN output into an 8 port router and connected the Nancy Street network. All reconnection problems vanished immediately. I presume therefore that the Infosmart router was incompatible with Telstra ADSL or there was some obscure setting inside it that needed tweaking and could never be found. So the $135 Infosmart router has been placed back in its original packing and might be useful to a friend who is getting a cheap ADSL account.

The Network Neighborhood

After several weeks of puzzlement, the empty Network Neighborhood on the server was found to be caused by a "phantom" network card that had the same IP as the active one. While changing some small TCP/IP option a huge dialog box popped-up to say that the network card IP was already assigned to a card that was missing and inoperable and hidden from view - This was the vital clue. Despite showing all devices in Win2K Device Manager the phantom card could not be found. I'm quite sure that the phantom card was caused by removing a card without uninstalling it (so don't fall for that trap). I eventually removed that dead card under the following registry keys (don't try this yourself unless you're a rocket surgeon):

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\{GUIDs}

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