Bye bye TeleWell TW-EAV510, Welcome tp-link TD-W9970 & F-Secure Sense

I'll have to say that these things like WiFis and DSLs and stuffs are sometimes way complicated. Of course, it's partly up to you, as to how complicated things need to be, but still.

Our VDSL modem fried a few weeks ago, when my husband accidentally spilled a wine glass on top of it (don't ask). We bought a used (maybe, or maybe not) TeleWell TW-EAV510 as it happened to be readily available, and tried to cofigure it into our use. It did not exactly go very well.

After both I and my network architect husband had tried fiddling with the device for hours on three separate occasions, with and without some (outdated) instructions (we did google it), I threw my hands in the air with a frustrated: "How do normal people ever get their WiFi's working, when two IT pros can't do it?"

My husband answered, very rationally: "Well, normal people don't have a static IP. Their modems work with default settings they fetch from the ISP provider." Yeah. So, possibly - just possibly - that darn TeleWell might've worked if we weren't nerds with a static IP. Own fault. Still we should've been able to configure the damned thing.

So, we gave up and when we got our F-Secure Sense, we also got the cheapest DSL modem in the local nerdy store (verkkokauppa.com), a tp-link TD-W9970. It took us all of 5 minutes to configure it. Five. Minutes. Eat that, TeleWell!

TeleWell is a Finnish company and that kind of adds to the disappointment. Usually you can pretty well rely on Finnish technology, especially when it comes to interneting, but this TeleWell device deserves a code red warning blinker on it.

Trying to configure this device is sheer waste of time! *blink blink*

Once our modem was up and running, it was time to configure the F-Secure Sense. My husband had already once started it, but note: have your modem and Internet connection running and Sense hooked up to it (if using LAN cable) before even strating the configuration wizard. How many times is that an issue, I don't know, but we needed to reset the Sense after the config wizard hung since we didn't have the Internet connection when husband first was going through the wizard.

Configuring the Sense (once it was reset and we coud just start all over again) was straightforward and easy. It, too, was completed in no time at all. My only disappointment was that only one device at a time can be used to manage the Sense. So since it's connected to my husband's iPhone, I'm not able to manage it from mine. Probably it doesn't matter really, but I am a little curious about the device and would like to follow the stats etc. at least in the beginning.

So, now we are protected by the Sense. I have noticed slight glitches in my matrix after hooking it up. My Skype for Business was giving some server connection messages in the morning (then again, it could've been an issue with the customer's Skype server; they said they had some issues today). Also, my Chrome freezes occasionally for half a minute or so. Can have something to do with the Sense trackings or maybe not. Hard to tell.