I'm actually quite fortunate.

I was one of the first few users in Singapore to use SCV's cable internet when it first came out. While generally reliable, after awhile, it started to clog up, hence my switch to Singtel.

Singtel's another story. It's generally very fast, but it's so consistantly unrealiable it's not even a joke. I came to the conclusion that because Singtel uses ADSL which is based the old telephone lines, it severely compromised reliability, especially in the older estates. So, when the opportunity came to jump onto the fibre optic based opennet, I did, so I signed up with Singtel's exStream plan.

It worked for awhile, then the problems came back hard and fast. It's always either the digital phone line or the internet cutting out. Sometimes both. The last straw came a few days ago when the system decided to not give all my devices an ip address on its own, even after I got Singtel to change the router.

After a little research, turns out it's not the infrastructure, nor Singtel's problem. It's the modem/router that's provided, which in this case, is 2wire's 5012NV black box, that sleek looking piece of crap.

If all you're using is the internet, without the digital voice and MioTV service, all you need to do is to get a new router and connect to the Optical Network Terminal.

If, like me, you have MioTV and MioVoice, then it gets tricky. Because of the way they are set up, you can't just get a new router.

Over the next few days, I'll introduce you to 3 ways you get get rid of the reliance on that useless black box, so stay tuned.

Update – It's up, check it out here : 3 Ways to Replace Singtel Extreme's 2Wire Router