ADSL Modems

[Malcpreston]

Hello All,

We have a house on the edge of a Dordogne commune and were informed by France telecom that our post code said no ADSL but our telephone line comes from the Haut Vienne and I have just found out that we can get broadband but as yet not ungrouped (in other words it will cost more until we become ungrouped). Can any of you very helpful people tell me if ADSL Modems are universal. Providing they can read the French protocols of PPTP & PPPoE that is.

 

Regards 

[pattsie]

Is preston your surname or are you from preston its just we are from Preston and wondered

[Deimos]

Firstly check who can provide you a service (e.g. http://www.degrouptest.com/). I would recommend you select an ISP and stick with them for their min contract period. Doing this you will probably get your ADSL modem for virtually nothing (check what different ISPs that can give you service are offering at the moment, and check what speeds the different ISPs can offer).

If you want ADSL, then your choice may be limited and you will have to check the different offers. When I first got ADSL it was over 6 months before anybody other than Wanadoo had any offerings and even now it if only one other ISP with only two speed offerings.

For me the Wanadoo price is the same de-grouped or not (makes no difference – but affects other ISP prices and speeds and who provides service).

Certainly for some ADSL modems UK firmware does not work. I know this as I upgraded my Speedtouch with more recent firmware from the UK and it would no longer work. I called Speedtouch and they said that UK and French firmware is different and sure enough, as soon as a loaded the French firmware it ran fine again. It may be that some (or many) ADSL modems include all protocols are are thus geographically more universal. I am only recounting me own Speedtouch experience. As for compatibility between French ISPs, then I don’t know but would imaging they are the same.

Ian

[bigjimbishop]

The netgear DG834 ADSL router and firewall works in france.

I've set it up in a few friends houses where the ISP provided a modem and lots of bad software which kills pc performance.

My advice is use a generic ADSL modem and Zonealarm NOT Norton. Norton is bad, very bad for PC and it doesnot work oh and did I say it was bad?

Use Mozilla Firefox instead of internet explorer.

Use Mozilla Thunderbird instead of Outlook.

Get Adaware and Spybot for keeping the sy programs out

....for the more experienced

Get Codestuf Starter to free up the rubbish that gets into the start menu and sucks power

Get Hijackthis to clean your registry but be careful as you need to keep the important stuff intact

All the above are free with no advertising, developed opensource by nice web people round the world.

Jim