[plug] Westnet DSL troubles: probably not linux issue - firmware?

[garry]

Craig,

Ive recently started the ADSL with Westnet, and I bought a DSL-500 router. I 
can't remember the exact connection time, but I've had a continuous irc 
connection since Wed 16:49, making it just about 48hrs.. I have an IPCop 
firewall (Smoothwall derivative) and debian clients.

I will be putting Debian on as the firewall shortly (Sunday maybe) so thatll 
prove if there's an inherent Deb problem. I doubt there is!

I dont know how much of the guts of the 300/500 are shared, but mine is fine. 

Oh, if it could work, you are welcome to try your modem here to prove it, 
should you wish.

HTH

Garry

>
> BTW when your connection goes down, does the ADSL LINK light on the
> modem go out? Ours does usually and sometimes stays out for 5, 10
> minutes or occasionally up to 2 hours. Not a happy thing, especially
> since in addition to that we've had 3 Telstra-caused network outages
> since signing up. Uptimes are from 15 minutes to 14 hours, disconnects
> randomly distributed across that time frame. If this matches your
> experience I'd be very interested since you, too, use a DSL-300. It
> might indicate borked hardware not just crap lines, and if we can
> identify a systematic problem with that DSL modem p'haps we can _all_
> get it fixed faster. Or replaced - my Alcatel SpeedTouch at work has
> _never_ gone down except when Telstra kills the exchange.