Cisco and Netgear stupidity

A couple of random bits worth mentioning; both regarding stupid configuration tricks.

First to Netgear. I have a Netgear WGR614v9 Wireless router that I use as an access point. Generally it works fine for me; I don't bother the access point, the access point doesn't bother me. This all changes on the odd day that I want to go look at the configuration for some reason. Accessing the web interface for the WGR614v9 is not as simple as keying in the IP address of the unit. No, netgear thought it would be clever to make the router only respond to requests for www.routerlogin.com. I have no idea why they would do this, security through obscurity perhaps? IMHO, it only serves as an annoyance to me; making me go and edit the hosts file (thats c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts for you windows types) to specify the IP address for the hostname to access the router.

Next up, Cisco! Although I am pleased with my recent Cisco 678 purchase, I have found that it is not the DSL routing nirvana that I was hoping for. Once I got the thing working on my DSL line I had to go and play with the advanced goodies I found in the configuration. The first thing I set up was SNMP, using Cacti to poll the router for throughput information. I got it working and life was good; until the next morning when I got to work and connected back to the house to do some testing. I noticed that my connections to the house kept freezing. After some thinking, I put two and two together and disabled SNMP. Since then I have not experienced any problems. Way to go Cisco, add features to a product that cause the product to malfunction when used.