Alcatel have been around in the upper, high-tech areas of many Australian Internet providers for some time. Telstra first introduced ADSL utilising Alcatel Exchange equipment and so naturally distributed Alcatel customer equipment (modems & filters) as a result. This has led to these modems being probably the most commonly found in people's homes to this day. Alcatel modems are a little more expensive to some others in the same categories and somewhat different to configure than what many people will be used to, but the payoff is the throughput and quality is possibly the best available. Defininitely worth consideration where reliability is paramount in any ADSL installation. Recently the old faithful Speed Touch Homes & Pros have made way to the Speed Touch 530 & 510 and there's also a fair numbers of "ol' Squidy" (the Speed Touch USB a.k.a Stingray) around and these can still also be bought brand new at surprisingly low prices. (Personally I'm not a huge fan of USB modems as a rule due to common installation difficulties and difficulty with Networking. If you plan to share your ADSL connection, don't specify the Speed Touch USB if you can help it, unless it's bundled with the signup fee and you plan to go for another brand of ADSL modem anyway. Other than that they're a nice cheap way of getting hooked up.)

Products:

• SpeedTouch 530 Single Port ADSL modem/Router

• SpeedTouch 510 4 Port ADSL modem/Router

Alcatel SpeedTouch 530 Single Port ADSL modem/Router

Price: Unavailable. Try where to buy at manufacturer's website. Rating: Not Yet Rated	Hardware Features			Wireless Features
		Built-in Modem			Wireless
		ADSL2/2+ Capability (for modems only)			Removable Antenna
		WAN Ports - 0
		3G Capable
		USB LAN Port/s		Other Features
		10/100 LAN Port/s - 1			UPnP Support
		Gigabit LAN Port/s - 0			Internet Sharing
		USB Print Server			QoS
		Parallel Port Print Server			DynDNS Client
		Dialup/ISDN Failover			Warranty - 1
		USB Storage
		FXO Ports for VoIP - 0
		FXS Ports for VoIP - 0
				More information
	Security Features				Manufacturer's specifications
		NAT Security
		SPI Firewall			Manufacturer support
		URL Filtering (Parental control)			Whirlpool Wiki
		Block sites by keywords			Whirlpool Forum Search
	VPN Features
		IPSec VPN Endpoints - 0
		PPtP VPN Endpoints - 0
		Supports VPN passthrough (single session only)

Comments: Both the Speed Touch 530 & 510 are currently standard Telstra issue so expect heaps on the 2nd hand market in a year or so.
I rarely hear of anyone with complaints about these modems from both new & experienced ADSL users, but there are quite often difficulties with working out how to configure them to do various things. See my Alcatel page for more information.

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Alcatel SpeedTouch 510 4 Port ADSL modem/Router

Price: Unavailable. Try where to buy at manufacturer's website. Rating: Not Yet Rated	Hardware Features			Wireless Features
		Built-in Modem			Wireless
		ADSL2/2+ Capability (for modems only)			Removable Antenna
		WAN Ports - 0
		3G Capable
		USB LAN Port/s		Other Features
		10/100 LAN Port/s - 4			UPnP Support
		Gigabit LAN Port/s - 0			Internet Sharing
		USB Print Server			QoS
		Parallel Port Print Server			DynDNS Client
		Dialup/ISDN Failover			Warranty - 1
		USB Storage
		FXO Ports for VoIP - 0
		FXS Ports for VoIP - 0
				More information
	Security Features				Manufacturer's specifications
		NAT Security
		SPI Firewall			Manufacturer support
		URL Filtering (Parental control)			Whirlpool Wiki
		Block sites by keywords			Whirlpool Forum Search
	VPN Features
		IPSec VPN Endpoints - 0
		PPtP VPN Endpoints - 0
		Supports VPN passthrough (single session only)

Comments: Same as SpeedTouch 530 but with built-in 4 port switch.

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