The original modem router that I received from Telkom upon first signing up for ADSL way back in our Nagua Bay days was of course the legendary Mega-105WR router. Unbelievably, it continued serving me like a relentless trooper all the way through to the end of December 2015 (since 2008), without failure or replacement even once during its lifetime!
That all ended though when it came head to head with my five year old daughter, who managed to push it off the desk and then rescue it by yanking it out from under the entanglement of wires I prefer to keep hidden behind my workspace. At that stage in December, I was still completely immobile following my operation, so I couldn’t really do anything other than advise Jessica to prop the modem up on a fabric ottoman under the desk – a bad move on my part because of course, the heat build up under there during our staggeringly hot Summer was enough to once and for all fry my dear old modem pal.
Disheartened at its demise, I got stuck in searching for a suitable replacement, something in the mid-range table that would get the house up and going again in terms of connectivity, with an eye on supporting more media streaming over WiFi in the near future.
After a lot of hand wringing, I eventually settled on the TP-Link TD-W8970 Wireless N Gigabit ADSL2+ Modem Router which I then picked up at the start of January from Takealot.com for R959.
Essentially an All-in-One Device, the TD-W8970 gives me an ADSL2+ Modem, NAT Router, 4-Gigabit-Port Switch and Wireless N Access Point. It’s advertised as supporting 300Mbps 802.11n Wireless speed, with four Gigabit Ethernet ports for wired connections. It supports three kinds of connectivity, namely standard ADSL, Ethernet WAN or 3G/4G modem and also comes with a nifty additional feature which is a USB 2.0 port at the back, perfect for storage, printer, ftp or media server sharing.
It’s been two months so far, and I have to say, I’m pretty pleased with the purchase. The dual antenna give me much better WiFi range in the house, the modem itself is sleek and sexy, the USB port works brilliantly for sharing files between all my PCs, and so far connectivity has been great. Music, video and game streaming all work pretty smoothly.
So yes, it might not have quite as catchy a name as my trusty Mega 105 once sported, but so far my TD-W8970 looks to be quite the worthy replacement!
Related Link: TP-Link TD-W8970 Wireless N Gigabit ADSL2+ Modem Router