BeBox – now a Has-BeenBox

When you sign up for a connection with UK ISP Be, they send you a router known as a BeBox to use to connect to their network. This is actually a rebadged Thomson Speedtouch device, the latest incarnation of which is the TG585V7 ….. and it’s pants.

Running the latest version of firmware which at the time of writing is 7.4.20.3, the router reboots itself on a regular basis, resyncs for no apparent reason and randomly shuts down the wireless interface. These problems don’t appear to be limited to the V7 device, there are reports in the forums of users with earlier V6 boxes experiencing the same or very similar issues.

To work around the problem, I’ve laid my hands on a Draytek 2820 router and a separate Linksys 54G WAP and touch wood, everything appears to be fine at the moment. I have a Cisco 1130AG accesspoint at the office which I plan to bring home at some point but for now, I’ll keep monitoring the connection and see what happens.