Chunghwa Telecom VDSL Fiber Modem Zyxel P874: Experience with an Unqualified Wi-Fi AP Wireless Access Point

Earlier, because my family bought a Sony PS4 game console, I readjusted the home wireless network configuration so that the living room devices could connect smoothly. At the time, since we happened to lack a Wi-Fi wireless access point (Wireless Access Point, or WAP, also called a “wireless base station”), I specifically contacted Chunghwa Telecom to apply to enable the built-in Wi-Fi AP function of our home’s Fiber Optic broadband VDSL modem “Zyxel P874,” trying to have this modem double as the home’s wireless router.

Unexpectedly, this attempt to “save money by not buying a wireless router” became the beginning of a nightmare of a series of network disconnections and network speed stutters.

The Three Painful Disasters of a Modem Doubling as a Wi-Fi AP

The first few days after activation were not much of a problem, but over time, various hardware bottlenecks and instability came one after another:

1. Overheating and Crashing Every Ten Days or Half a Month

After the modem had been used for a while, roughly every ten days or half a month it would inexplicably fall into a state where the whole family could not connect at all. At this point, whether it was phone Wi-Fi or computer wired network, everything was cut off, and in the end I could only helplessly walk over to the modem and “unplug the power and restart,” waiting for it to reinitialize the dial-up before things returned to normal.

2. Strange Scheduled Disconnections in the Early Morning

Every day in the early morning around six o’clock, the network would, as if by agreement, suddenly fall into a brief disconnected state. It would take about 10 to 15 minutes of dead silence before the connection slowly recovered on its own.

3. Network Speed Severely Crippled (Up and Down Stuck at 20M)

The most unacceptable part was the wireless speed test experience. Even after applying to Chunghwa Telecom for a higher-speed Fiber Optic plan, when testing the speed through the Zyxel P874’s built-in Wi-Fi, the download speed could only reach a maximum of 20M, and the upload speed was also stuck at 20M! The performance of the built-in wireless antenna and RF chip can be described as extremely unqualified.

Why You Should Never Rely on a Telecom Modem’s Built-in Wi-Fi

Unless absolutely necessary, I strongly recommend that everyone never use the free Wi-Fi sharing function built into a modem.

From the perspective of network hardware design, the main reasons are as follows:

The Ultimate Solution to Thoroughly Improve Home Wi-Fi Stability

If your home currently also directly uses the built-in Wi-Fi of a Chunghwa Telecom modem (whether Zyxel P874, DASan, or other models) and frequently experiences disconnections:

1. Turn off the modem’s built-in Wi-Fi: Call Chunghwa Telecom customer service (123) and ask them to turn off the modem’s built-in Wi-Fi broadcasting function, to prevent the modem from continuously overheating.
2. Buy an independent Wi-Fi router: On the market, you only need to spend a little over a thousand dollars to buy a mainstream-brand Wi-Fi 6 wireless router, connect its WAN port to the modem’s LAN port, and have the new router handle PPoE dial-up or DHCP distribution.
3. Enjoy full speed and stability: After switching to an independent router, the PS4 no longer stutters when downloading games, and the whole family’s phone connection speed can perfectly reach the real bandwidth you applied for, completely getting rid of the trouble of “unplugging and restarting”!