I'm using a copper/ADSL/wifi broadband. I recently visited someone who had just had fibre installed and I was a little puzzled with one aspect of the install.


He had a copper/ADSL/wifi modem. After the conversion to fibre his modem was discarded.

For the conversion to fibre he was shipped two modems. One is a fibre modem with 4 x LAN ports and no wifi, the other is an ADSL modem with 4 x LAN ports (one is an up-link) and it has wifi.

The fibre from the street comes into the fibre modem. There is a link via ethernet cable to the ADSL modems up-link port. The ADSL modem is setup with its modem disabled, and it provides the wifi as well as routing to its 3 x LAN ports.
 
To me it makes more sense to have just one fibre modem which includes wifi and also has 4 x LAN ports.

Anyone know the reason why they ship two modems?

Is this standard? Are all the ISP's shipping the two modem solution?

My guess is that they get the fibre modems without wifi cheaply, and they are already stuck with 1000's of ADSL modems in their inventory, so this helps clear their stock. Anyone got another theory?

cheers,

Ian.


PS: The location in his house of the new fibre modem and ADSL/wifi modem meant he wasn't getting good wifi signal strength when lying outside in his spa pool. I was able to run a 15 meter cable from his new ADSL modem to his old ADSL modem located in another part of his house. It worked OK as a wifi repeater to give good signal strength at the spa. So there can be a use for the old "discarded" ADSL modem ����