ZOOM ADSL Modem/Router with Wireless-N (5790-00-00AG)

Easy Windows set up and ran fine for 3 months. Then when I turned it on one the morning only the power light came on. Called tech support - wow seemed to be in this country. When I told him it had had been OK the night before but failed when I turned it on I was told VERY firmly that it was not supposed to be turned off at night. Hmm so maybe it was my fault. Anyway it took several days to get the RMA number by email. They received the unit on Monday and I got it back Friday - very good. It seems to have been actually repaired and has been working fine since.I have had computers at home and at work for the last 25 years and have turned them and ancillary equipment off every night with no problems before now. This includes a Zoom X5 modem. Seems to me that this should not cause breakdown. But I'm no longer turning it off anyway.Edit after longer use: It will lose the DSL connection about 3 times a week. Neither of my 3 previous modems did this. It is easy to reboot using the browser interface but is annoying when in the middle of something and have to sit back and wait a couple of minutes to reboot. Went back to previous modem (no 802.11g) and no dropping connection.

This is the third DSL modem/router that I tried after our ancient ActionTec M1000 went flaky. The other two had problems with, among other things, glitching the DSL connection and handing out duplicate IP addresses, as well as lacking key features.This unit seems to have it all. It connected easily to our CenturyLink DSL, and has loads of advanced settings and detailed status information should you wish to view that. It can support four wireless networks with different features enabled on each, including isolation. It does DHCP reservations, port forwarding (which they call "virtual servers"), and lets you backup/restore its settings to/from a computer. The built-in Web server is a little flaky; sometimes I have to click on a link more than once to get it to respond. Also, the mechanism for entering lists of MAC addresses (e.g. for filters) is tedious.Basic configuration is simple, but not all of the advanced features/settings are documented in the user guide. As an example, the default maximum number of simultaneous clients on a wireless network is 16, and although this can be adjusted, it would not let me go above 16. It turns out that, on the densely-populated "Advanced" screen for wireless configuration, there is a(n undocumented) parameter "Global Max Clients" which also defaults to 16. Once you increase this, you can increase the limit on the defined wireless network as well. (16 is rapidly becoming an inadequate number for a family environment, what with smartphones, networked printers/TVs/BluRays, game consoles, tablets, visitors, etc.)I contacted tech support (via email) about that limit, and although it took a few days for them to get back to me initially, after that they were very responsive and helpful.It looks to me as though the Broadcom-based hardware is identical, aside from the top cover on the unit, to that used by the Tenda W300D (one of the previous modems I tested), but the firmware and user interface are vastly superior on the Zoom X7N.I was startled to see a previous reviewer mention that this is the same Zoom company that started out making dial-up modems very early in the networking game; the name had not rung a bell for me. I used many a Hayes/Zoom modem from about 1983-2000, and am delighted they are still around.[UPDATE 2013/07/12: Apparently the Web-server hiccups are a known bug when using Firefox, and Zoom engineering is working on the problem, which is minor.]

I've been trying to find a good, solid DSL modem/wireless router for the past three months. It all started when I lost my AT&T DSL service for about two weeks in December. They attributed it to my modem (their 2Wire). I went to the AT&T store, picked up a new modem and found out it wasn't the modem at all. But did read a lot of reviews on Amazon about a lot of modems and kept reading about issues with line drops, etc. that were caused by the modem. When I finally got my line back up and running I decided to discard my old 2Wire (the new modem having been returned to AT&T) and find myself a stellar modem. Well, the Zoom is modem #5.I had high hopes because the reviews were so good.Setup was easy, I've become a pro at it after all these setups. They never configure automatically so I use the browser admin tools, enter the email and password and I'm up and running.One of the things I do appreciate is the log file. Given my ongoing issues with both modems and AT&T, when there is no connection I want to see what's happening and what's causing the problem. I have been having occasional line drops, and had hoped that it was a modem issue. Maybe, maybe not.The Zoom modem had constant line drops, more frequent than any of the other modems. My biggest issue with any connection is when I try to download Audible audiobooks. For some reason the Audible downloads wreak havoc on any and every modem I've tried. I don't know what it is about the download, but each modem handles it differently, or the download tool handles each modem differently (anyone out there have an idea because I'm extremely curious and Audible has been useless). The Zoom modem crashed and burned constantly, usually 2 to 3 times an hour and to get the connection back I had to reboot the modem. Lucky the admin tools had a nice little modem reboot button. It wasn't only Audible that had problems, but it is my basic tester for each modem. The Zoom dropped the line even during browsing.I contacted Zoom and was given the regular spiel about checking to make sure everything was plugged in. That was about 4 days after the initial request for support. By then I'd already returned the modem.