# INFINITUM or INFINIDUMB That Is the Question



## Jolga (Jun 5, 2012)

The Internet has saved my technological bacon so many times. Life is not only about taking info, it's also good to give back. So here I go.

We are now retired in Mazatlan, Mexico..... aka Paradise  Along with the one of the best beach towns in the world comes a downside. In our brand new building only ADSL2 on POTS is available. They are laying fiber optic but it could be months, years (eons???) before they get to our beach area. Only one ISP is available with a maximum connection speed of 5mb/sec. The gateway they give you is a $5 piece of junk, called Infinitum, made by Huawei (no wonder Carlos Slim is the richest man in the world.) This gateway gave me no end of grief for over 10 months! Dropped connections and only 1 or 2 bars on my most important machine ( I am also a part-time Internet English teacher). I tried all kinds of solutions but never got above 2 bars.

On a recent trip to visit my son in Silicon Valley I upgraded his Comcast with a new gateway so his WNDR3700V2 Netgear router was redundant. I decided to try it in Mexico when I got back. I also researched Netgear's gateways but they are not their best hardware by far. So I picked up an Actiontec GT78WN ($65) gateway too just in case. We put the Infinidumb in its rightful place, a plastic bag in a dark closet never to be used again. With the help of a Telmex Support tech we got the Actiontec gateway working. It was a relatively painless process considering that the auto scripts were only for US ISP's. This solved the connection drops, WiFi coverage was increased quite a bit but was fluctuating wildly on my number one machine ( 0-2 bars). 

At this point I should explain to you non-Mexicans that Mexican homes and condos are built with concrete, not plaster and wood frames like in the USA and Canada. This problem room was behind two thick concrete walls. 

I still wasn't happy so I decided to throw the Netgear router into the mix. A knowledgeable Telmex tech walked me through the setup (in perfect English). We disabled the WiFi on the Actiontec and activated it in the Netgear. 

Voila!!! I now have 3 constant solid bars in my tough WiFi room and everywhere else is at a steady 5 bars. Even my front and back balconies are fives! The Oogla speedtest is 5.1 Mb/sec Up and .66 Down, which is as good as it gets right now in my area. Max speed and reliability, what more can we ask for? Life is good:biggrin1:

Hope this helps anyone who is having Infinidumb grief.


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## Meritorious-MasoMenos (Apr 17, 2014)

Super valuable, for sure. Thanks for posting.


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## lhpdiver (Jul 30, 2014)

We have Telmex (Infinitum) DSL. They gave us a Thompson TG585 router. I have a wireless network set up with it at 192.168.1.X. I've made no changes to the Thompson router.

I already had a Cisco E4200 router which was burned with dd-wrt and I was having the toughest time getting it to work with my VPN provider. Finally I gave up with dd-wrt and burned the Cisco router with tomato. Everything was working in about 15 minutes.

The two routers are wired WAN-LAN. The second wireless network is setup for 192.168.2.X. I have 6 wireless devices which now have VPN access - including a kindle, roku, android, laptop and 2 desktops.

Overall our Infinitum service has been excellent. Our routers sit just about in the middle of our 1.5 storied cement house. The laptop I am using now has 5 bars. And performance is pretty good when you consider I am going through 2 routers (with 2 firewalls) and a laptop running Norton 360 (with a firewall) and I am hitting a VPN server in New Jersey.

Man we have come a long way from those 120 baud modems I cut my teeth on.


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## sparks (Jun 17, 2007)

lhpdiver said:


> Man we have come a long way from those 120 baud modems I cut my teeth on.


300 baud for a short while and Fidonet. 1200 was big time

Yep .... you can plug in just about any modem to Telmex and it will work


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## Jolga (Jun 5, 2012)

Ah yes, the good old days! (sigh) Hearing the screech and wail of the dialup modem as you connected to a 4 telephone line private bbs using a Us Robotics Courier or if you had the cash a Sportster. Type a few characters and then wait for them to appear, type and then wait some more. Then hunt for some goodies.... wow look at that he has Putt Putt Joins The Parade, but it's 11 floppies ...... huge, oh well nothing too good for my little girl, so let it run all night and next day we`ll play with it. If it`s really great we`ll go downtown and buy the box set later.:bathbaby:


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## TundraGreen (Jul 15, 2010)

Jolga said:


> …
> At this point I should explain to you non-Mexicans that Mexican homes and condos are built with concrete, not plaster and wood frames like in the USA and Canada. This problem room was behind two thick concrete walls.
> …


The service I have is relatively fast, 20 Mbps, but I have the same problem with thick walls. In my case they are adobe and half a meter thick. So the signal is only good for the rooms right next to the modem/router. So I put a second wifi router in one of the back rooms. Between the two the signal is good in about half of the house.


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