Ancient Modem

Saturday night, I experienced very patchy www
access. I turned off the router modem and IPCOP
server and re-started. Little different Sunday morning.

Pinging gave some weird and wonderful results.
Very erratic responses. The ratio of 'Request Timed
Out' to 'Reply from . . .' was spectacularly inconsistent.

I checked with Telecon, who said there were no
network faults and the line speed and connectivity
were fine. (They must now have test equipment in
the Fernhill PCM Cabinet!)

The guy said it was maybe time to replace the old
D-Link modem, given the existing one was six years
old. That seemed like a good idea, as pinging the 
modem produced erratic results, too. Huh? Yet,
later in the day, it seemed to come right. Odd.

Telecom are offering a free replacement TG585
wireless router modem in exchange for a 24-month
contract to supply broadband. I have no plans to
change ISP's, so that doesn't bother me.

But, seeing as the modem (and any replacement)
are hooked into the IPCOP server, there's going to
be some changes needed, so the modem and server
will talk to one another.

I also found out that, while D-Link IP is 10.1.1.1,
the TG585 IP range is 192.168.1.64-253.

Rene, Daniel - you know more about my set up
than anyone, (even me!) so, given that one or my
two LANs is using 192.168.11-14, it seems that
should not result in any IP address conflicts.

How hard is it for me to effect the change, if I do
decide to go ahead? Also, the one geekzone thread
I could find on the TG585 was positive about Thomson
stuff. Anyone had any experiences to the contrary?

Another question for Daniel and Rene: as the TG585
is also a WAP, as well as having ethernet ports, would
the change solve the present problems I have with
LAN and open WiFi and DHCP issues, given the
computer and printer hooked in, past the WAP?