AOL broadband not compatible with routers

[fanofallconsoles]

My friend has OAL broadband and it doesnt seem to work with any adsl routers excpet the thomson range that aol sell. I was under the assumtion that you could use any adsl router with broadband. Is it possible that OAL have locked they're boradband down to only be compatible with thomson products?

Any ideas/help??


THanks

[mid]

I believe AOL do some sort of moronic custom sign-on thing that most router software doesn't know how to do - its why you can't just use XBox Live with it either.

Short answer: ditch the idiots and get with a real ISP; AOL is evil.

[Super Stu]

AOL have written their own winsock, tcp/ip stack and dialup network adaptor for connecting to their dialup service.

Sounds like their broadband uses similar pish.

[charlesr]

Ditch AOL. Although be prepared to help your mollycoddled AOL user friend through the difficulties of using Outlook and Internet Explorer instead of AOL "idiot friendly" software.

[VR46]

hey AOL make NTHell look good , never thought I'd say that, I remember being with AOL years ago, dial up service was so slow at the time, I can look back and laugh now but at the time it was not funny.

As Charles said, ditch them and get BB elsewhere.

[Mayhem]

As someone not using a router or Xbox Live... the funny thing is I've not got a single bad thing to say about AOL Broadband since using it. Speed and access are constant, no bugs, no spam, no hacking, no worries. We only use it to get online though, everyone has web email accounts (non AOL) however.

[Commander Marklar]

The Linksys one I have claims to with with AOL, although that's Ethernet based. Why not just buy one from AOL?? Support and the guarentee it'll work seem like a good deal?

[VR46]

Bet they charge about ?80 for a "recommended" one (like BT do)

Got my Belkin one for a tenner from Comet (when bought with Live), was a pain to set up but now works fine