Avoid Centurylink Zyxel PK5001Z modem/router combos!!!!
Posted: Tue 13 Aug 2013 2:05 pm
In a couple of other threads ( https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=10428 and http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=19866.0 ) I wrote about a problem I had with my DSL signal which was stopping updates from making it to my website and to WU and other reporting sites. Below is my short review of the Centurylink PK5001Z DSL modem...it is not a favorable one.
It's been 12+ hours since I booted up Cumulus with the old equipment back on line. The old equipment that has been placed back in service is a Zyxel 660 modem feeding a DLink DIR-655 router. So far no red light warnings on the Cumulus desktop...www.BeeWeather.com continues to percolate along nicely, WU is updating in Rapidfire mode at about every 5 seconds (it had dropped to 1.5 minutes at times and was regularly at 45 seconds), CWOP and PWS are updating correctly.
All I can say is that if you're a Century/tel/link/stink customer and they are installing DSL at your house or doing a "repair" call to your house DO NOT let them install a Centurylink Zyxel PK5001Z combination router/modem as you will very likely encounter issues with FTP.
This modem *might* be ok, but with the Centurylink firmware flashed on it and from my frustrating experience it is a piece of junk that is useless for a weather station that uploads data frequently to a webhost.
Other than errors stopping FTP uploads and bringing updates to my website to a screeching halt the modem did pretty good...for *only* surfing webpages it seemed to be fast, maybe even faster than the Zyxel 660 model modem and DLink 655 router that I put back on line. But, I'd rather have a 5% slowdown in speed than a 100% slowdown like I got when FTP would stop uploading my weather data.
The FTP errors would strike anywhere from 15 minutes to 8 hours after a fresh reboot or manual disconnection and reconnection to the network...sometimes it would even take out HTTP which was odd. The errors were haphazard and created a very frustrating situation.
Something I found that really irritated me and is at the best a fraud is the speed "measurements" that the Centurylink's PK5001Z would give. The router would state this in the little "Connected" icon on the margin of each bios page and also in the "modem status" page itself. It read constantly without waivering something like 1.47x mbps download and 0.26x mbps upload. Those speeds could not be replicated at the three major speed test websites...the best I ever (and this was one time at one server) got with the PK5001Z was 1.23/.22...mostly the speed ran around 1.1/2.0. The 660 modem isn't doing any faster speeds but at least ftp isn't stopping with it. I don't know whether to bug Centurylink about the degraded speeds or not...they might screw things up again.<sigh>
Anyhow, I STRONGLY recommend staying away from the Centurylink Zyxel PK5001Z modem/router unit...run far, far away from it!!!
Just thought I'd pass this along...fwiw
Ed
It's been 12+ hours since I booted up Cumulus with the old equipment back on line. The old equipment that has been placed back in service is a Zyxel 660 modem feeding a DLink DIR-655 router. So far no red light warnings on the Cumulus desktop...www.BeeWeather.com continues to percolate along nicely, WU is updating in Rapidfire mode at about every 5 seconds (it had dropped to 1.5 minutes at times and was regularly at 45 seconds), CWOP and PWS are updating correctly.
All I can say is that if you're a Century/tel/link/stink customer and they are installing DSL at your house or doing a "repair" call to your house DO NOT let them install a Centurylink Zyxel PK5001Z combination router/modem as you will very likely encounter issues with FTP.
This modem *might* be ok, but with the Centurylink firmware flashed on it and from my frustrating experience it is a piece of junk that is useless for a weather station that uploads data frequently to a webhost.Other than errors stopping FTP uploads and bringing updates to my website to a screeching halt the modem did pretty good...for *only* surfing webpages it seemed to be fast, maybe even faster than the Zyxel 660 model modem and DLink 655 router that I put back on line. But, I'd rather have a 5% slowdown in speed than a 100% slowdown like I got when FTP would stop uploading my weather data.
The FTP errors would strike anywhere from 15 minutes to 8 hours after a fresh reboot or manual disconnection and reconnection to the network...sometimes it would even take out HTTP which was odd. The errors were haphazard and created a very frustrating situation.Something I found that really irritated me and is at the best a fraud is the speed "measurements" that the Centurylink's PK5001Z would give. The router would state this in the little "Connected" icon on the margin of each bios page and also in the "modem status" page itself. It read constantly without waivering something like 1.47x mbps download and 0.26x mbps upload. Those speeds could not be replicated at the three major speed test websites...the best I ever (and this was one time at one server) got with the PK5001Z was 1.23/.22...mostly the speed ran around 1.1/2.0. The 660 modem isn't doing any faster speeds but at least ftp isn't stopping with it. I don't know whether to bug Centurylink about the degraded speeds or not...they might screw things up again.<sigh>
Anyhow, I STRONGLY recommend staying away from the Centurylink Zyxel PK5001Z modem/router unit...run far, far away from it!!!
Just thought I'd pass this along...fwiw
Ed