Been busy travelling again, but thought we were overdue an update on the great broadand switchover of 2009. It was actually pretty much a non-event, I was away in Alderley Edge on the day we switched over and by the time I got back the phones were already with the Post Office (1571 message had changed) but Virgin broadband was still working via the Netgear router. That was just because it had been connected for days though, a bounce of the router and it would no longer reconnect.
So far so good then, broadband had switched over to the Post Office but unfortunately they hadn’t supplied the username and password for the router. Instead they provide a preconfigured Zyxel router for you to use, so we plugged that in and it worked first time. Unfortunately as a router its rubbish, and as pre-configured by the Post Office its a positive menace.
Using the default admin password of 1234 and leaving the configuration ports open to the internet is not a good combination, so plan was to extract the username and password from the router and plug them into the Netgear. Logging into the router clearly wasn’t a problem with the default password, and the ADSL admin screens showed the username in the clear (annoyingly similar to the broadband account name but not quite the same) and the password as a row of blobs.
Fortunately in keeping with the general naffness of the Zyxel router to see what the password actually was you just needed to do ‘View Source’ in your browser, so we plugged the details into the Netgear and the switch over was complete.
Its been working flawlessly for the last couple of weeks, and we’re getting about 25% faster downloads than we did from Virgin – and for half the price.
Thank you! Sick of this awful zyxel router cutting off every 40 minutes, had no idea how to get the stupid password
came across this as i was getting 70-80 drop outs from my zyxel router suplied from postoffice broadband.
I cant complain about the service as the price for the line rental and broadband is much better than i was paying and the download and upload is near their max output. plus i am on unlimited use so its pretty good. the router kept getting drops and after several calls to the helpline and call center ( freephone number ) i was passed between places. anyway got a wonderful person on the phone when i last rung who talked me through things and i was telling her my internet was going on and off like mad while on the phone. changed the microfilters. changed the settings and also tried the router in the first socket in the house etc. i told her i am no greenhorn with the settings and that i had a spare router i could try to see if this sorts the problem and she went through all my settings including pass and username settings for me. plugged different router in and its been fine since. zyxel routers a waste of time. asking for a better router now.
Twiggy