Motorola's NVG510 DSL modem... not very good

The reason I mention this new found delight is that we wanted to watch it on Netflix and the best way to do that was on the Second Generation Apple TV connected to the TV upstairs. I discussed the Apple TV in a few words here in Gearhead last September and I realize that the problems I discussed at the time must have been related to the kind of problems I'm about to discuss.

The reason for choosing that particular TV

The reason for choosing that particular TV was that the house isn't hard wired for data and as the Apple TV handles WiFi very so then and as my AT&T DSL service was, at that time, stable, all was fine and we happily watched the episodes. For a during.

I've written about my problems with AT&T's DSL service a few times recently and it is, in truth, a complete and utter mess. What's more, it appears I'm not alone. I've had more reader responses from those columns than nearly anything else I've written, and it seems like when your AT&T Internet service has problems, it's nearly always an ordeal.

In my case, my AT&T U-Verse connection is mediated by a Motorola NVG510 DSL modem. This device, customized for AT&T, has an ADSL2/2+ WAN port, a four-port 10/100 Ethernet switch, a 400mW 802.11b/g/n access point, and a single RJ-14 port for VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service.

Note that Motorola offers no support whatsoever for this device and you cannot get the manual for this product from either Motorola or AT&T. You have to download it from Ron Berman, a PhD student in the marketing department of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, who as well explains on his Web site how to download the manual from the FCC's archive of product approvals.

Next, the user interface: Quite extraordinarily, much of the NVG510's user interface isn't, and can't be, password protected although other sections of the user interface are protected by what Motorola calls an "access code". The first thing you see when you load the root page in your browser is way more detail than you'd expect, just as the wireless SSID and the network key in plain text!

Wait! It gets better: If you go to the Device page you can see the IP addresses of all network-connected gear, during the broadband page gives you lots of detail about your WAN interface and the Home Network Page shows you everything any hacker could ever want to know about your LAN configuration.

The access code is only required to restart the device

The access code is only required to restart the device, configure the WAN, LAN, firewall, and wireless services, examine the VoIP interface details, and, for no accountable reason, to examine the device's log.

The as a matter of fact annoying thing about the NVG510's DHCP implementation is that it can't be configured to tell customers to use any DNS server other than its own version of dnsmasq! To get a more reliable DNS resolution you have to either set up each client with a static network configuration or use some other machine on your network as a DHCP server.