No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Whoever it was that coined those words was indeed a person of great understanding. In my case, trying to be helpful has resulted in a bricked router. Here's how it happened.

Recently I flashed my router to the latest version of firmware. Normally I don't care too much about latest and greatest router firmware, but I had some connectivity issues with an application on my smartphone that syncs via wireless and the app's site said to ensure you were on the latest firmware for your router. I checked the Billion website and found I was indeed 2 versions behind and the release notes said that one of the changes implemented concerned wieless. So, off I go and upgrade.

After the painful manual reconfiguration following the firmware flash, it looked good for a few hours, but soon it became apparent that the router would drop the DSL connection and lock up every few hours. I googled around and found a thread on a Whirlpool forum that discussed it. Sure enough, there was a bug or two. Fine.

This forum has regular input from a Billion staffer and not long after a beta version was released. Most of the beta testers reported no issues so I gave it a try. Of course, I had the same issue with the router locking, which I duly reported back on the forum. Mr Billion was confused and asked me if I could assist them with tracking down the problem.

Here is when my brain clearly went to the pub. I said "sure". After all, it's nice to help and if they fixed it it would help others. Right? Well..

I provided the Billion engineers access to my modem so the could poke around and see why the router would lock. After a few days of them remoting in and sniffing around buffers and so on, they declared they had found the problem and released another beta, which they kindly upgraded me to along with their hearty "thanks" for helping. I felt so warm and fuzzy inside.

Then the clouds gathered. After a few hours of running, the router rebooted itself. No real reson to, just felt like it I guess.

Then it did it again. And again. Not impressed. Messaged the Billion representative on Whirlpool and after a few exchanges and some changes made at his suggestion, the router came up and was stable. Until this afternoon.

Around 4PM I was doing a few things on the computer when I lost internet connection. Looked down, and the router was rebooting. It came almost fully up and rebooted again. And again. And again. Power off. Power on. Up then reboot. Factory reset, reboot. then self reboot. Power off. Power on and it cam up looking fairly stable. Having had enough of this dodgy beta firmware, I decided it wa stime to roll back to the last stable version.

Now the storm breaks. I go to do the firmware upgrade and just as I click the upgrade button the router rests itself again. Now it won't come up. The console session says there is no bootable partion in the flash memory. I am now the owner of a Billion Brick.

To say I am less than happy would be somewhat of an understatement. I blew the dust off an old ADSL 1 modem and router I had in the cupboard, but since my phone is on VOIP, this doesn't solve all my problems. I have sent a message to the Billion representive over on Whirlpool and am waiting for his reply. Hopefully Billion will assit me in brick resurrection - I think they owe me that after days of allowing them to access my router.

All in all, I have not had a great experience with all this. My attempt to be helpful and maybe give something to the Billion user community has left me with downgraded internet access and an expensive paper weight at the time of writing this. Will I be so generous with my help in future? I don't know, but will certainly be thinking harder before jumping on the beta bandwagon.

Writing this one up to life lessons.