My PS3 vs Eircom's F1000 Modem -- a story of constant annoyances

Hello there, now, where to begin, really? Well, I guess I'll tell my story from the start....so you'd best grab a stool...

I guess I want to begin with saying that I am officially sick to death with Eircom and their 'supposedly super-awesome' eFibre F1000 modem.

We've been customers with the ISP for a long while now, but only signed up for broadband a few years ago. Then, earlier in the year, around June we applied for the fibre optic upgrade, and finally got it set up around the end of July. So yay, an upgraded connection, 'faster, uncongested speeds' and no more warring for Netflix buffering time, etc etc. The modem worked a treat with my laptop, android phone, and most other devices that wish to connect to the network. All, except, for my ps3.

*Sigh* So soon after we get the new modem installed, I'm thinking 'Great! no more laggy connections', feeling grateful that I could finally banish that nasty NAT3 connection from my memory. But, soon after, this is when my woes began. About a day or so after upgrading, I tried signing into the PSN network, but lo and behold I am greeted with a sign-in error. 'That's odd,' I start saying to myself, until I try sign-in again. And again. And again. Growing annoyed, I decided to leave it, and come back that night and try and sign in again; with similar results.

After that, my disruptions began. I started having hit-and-miss days where some times I could be signed in all day and nothing would happen, or on other days I could have a repeat of the above and not be able to sign in at all. Now I'm not a big 'online-gamer' but can you imagine how much of a hassle this would be to someone, especially after forking out the extra dosh for a 'superior connection.'

A record of the errors I've been experiencing can be viewed at the following links;
http://community.eu.playstation.com/t5/PlayStation-Network-Technical/Can-t-Sync-Trophies-80710D23-Error/m-p/19509898#M24958
http://community.eu.playstation.com/t5/PlayStation-Network-Technical/PSN-Woes-Part-2-Error-code-80710092/m-p/19698644#M29109

But that's not all. So, realising now that I'm stuck with a connection that works perfectly fine with everything else bar my ps3, I had to grow tolerate of its as-of-yet unexplainable tendency to randomly 'kick me' from the network, and render downloading and using media server a strictly hit-and-miss affair. But patience would only last for so long.

After about two weeks of this, I decided to bite the bullet and contact eircom, in the first of five phone calls to be made all pertaining to this exact same fiasco. Other than being frankly unimpressed by their 'tech support,' I began to try all solutions that they proposed, like adjusting firewall settings, etc etc. In short, half the time that I rang, I ended up telling them what I needed done, and the third timeI rang I ended up talking to some joker who tried telling me that when I used the old netopia silver box I 'was meant to have problems,' when in fact I did not. Not. EVER. AND I used TWO netopia boxes during different times and periods to connect with the ps3, and never had an ounce of trouble. But this is besides the point.

Growing weary of my troubles & also the staggering phone bills we'll probably be getting for these fruitless phone calls, I rang up eircom for the 4th time to file a complaint. I got told to expect a phone call 'within 7 working days' and then I got inadvertently transferred to tech support again. And this time, after waiting 10 minutes on hold, I got utterly fed up and cancelled the call.

Despairing by now, my Dad, whom is the account holder in our house, phones up eircom for the 5th and final time and sweet hallelujah, we finally get on to someone who knows his stuff and can relate. Willing to dedicate some of his off-work hours to help solve my problem, we spent a night trying all manner of ways to solve the problem. I'm not particularly techy with the works of the F1000 modem but what I can tell you is that between us we changed numerous settings, lowered and even turned off the firewall, done this, that and the other thing, all of which accumulated in trying to set up portforwarding.

In brief, that didn't even work, which left the guy who was helping me utterly stumped, and also his friend stumped too, which leaves me at a complete and utter loss for what to do next, save of ring up Sony to try and get their insight on this problem. But again, I shudder to think of the phone bill...

So, this is why I've come here, to get some perspectives on my woes, you know?

Stuff worthy of mentioning I guess; particular model of ps3 is the Super Slim edition, bought last October when my 'fat' ps3 died. Tried using the custom connection settings on it, like manually entering ip, primary DNS etc etc, but it was just not happening.

The console itself is in the exact same place it was when I used to connect to the old modem.

Ahmmm. Nothing else is in the room that I'd say would interfere with the signal...if that's any help...haha...

Another thing; after fiddling with the settings that time, as soon as I get kicked, I can sign in again straight away, and it is behaving better...but I still worry....

Not sure what else to add, other than saying I'm getting really pissed off at Eircom and their ****-tastic modem.

So I would gladly appreciate some help.

Thank-you.