Fibre Broadband

[Chinners]

Well, to much surprise, without any forewarning BT have upgraded our local exchange to Fibre. A very nice surprise indeed. Needless to say, within 5 mins of receiving the email, I was signed up. Estimated download of 59mb/s (boo!), estimated upload of 18mb/s(yay!)

Anyway, as part of the sign-up, a BT geezer is due out to fit an Openreach modem in a couple of weeks, and my ISP have sent me a new Wireless Modem. Looking at it, it just seems to be a bog-standard-isp-bit-of-rubbish-designed-for-numpties, or bsibordfn for short.

Reading a few reviews of it (it's a Technicolor 582n), people are saying the wireless is a bit poor, having no external antenna. It can, apparently, do some useful stuff such as port forwarding.

Has anyone else had experience of this modem? Is it worth my time getting it set up only to be disappointed later on? I have a deep routed fear of poorly performing ISP provided modems.

My current ADSL router is a Netgear 300N DGN2200, which does everything I need (VPN, Port Forwarding, QoS, Static IP etc). Would it be possible to just bob my router into the Openreach box and put the Technicolor one in "Storage" of some sort, or is the "fibre" port and firmware in this thing special somehow?

Too many questions, all which could be resolved if I had the thing in front of me, or a decent online guide... My ISP's guides assume all we want to do is watch iplayer.

 

[Tajmaster]

When its all installed, they usually stick a VDSL modem on the wall with an ethernet cable coming out of it and into the BT router. I think you can just stick this ethernet cable into your own router and continue using it as before. That would definitely work with cable routers, not sure about ADSL ones though, I guess they would?

 

[www_amigakit_com]

We use Plus.net for fibre broadband. Strangely enough, they are owned by BT but supply the Netgear N150 router instead. In this area it is very fast at 72Mb download and cheaper than comparable BT packages. A BT engineer came and installed it with an Openreach box which in turn plugs into the Netgear router.

Works great with the Amiga using Powerline adapter and an EasyNet wired network card.

 

[Chinners]

We use Plus.net for fibre broadband. Strangely enough, they are owned by BT but supply the Netgear N150 router instead. In this area it is very fast at 72Mb download and cheaper than comparable BT packages. A BT engineer came and installed it with an Openreach box which in turn plugs into the Netgear router.

Yeah, I'm with plus.net, but they have supplied this technicolor thing...

 

[www_amigakit_com]

They offered us the Netgear for free but we had to pay £4.99 P&P.

 

[fitzsteve]

I (think) I have the router you mention, I don't have any issues, It's by my front door and I can use the wireless down the end of our 40ft Garden so it seems ok for me

Also I got more then the quoted DL speed too. I was quoted 50mb but actually get 66mb

 

[Chinners]

I (think) I have the router you mention, I don't have any issues, It's by my front door and I can use the wireless down the end of our 40ft Garden so it seems ok for me

I hope that it's good. I read some people saying that it's very poor speed wise, and the wired ethernet ports are only 10/100 which is a bit of a joke!

Mind you, as with most things, people usually only contact with problems. I have yet to receive a phone call saying that a system I installed worked perfectly all weekend.

 

[Harrison]

I didn't realise they used Technicolor 582n for FTTC services. Ditch it asap!

I had one of these free from Be (BeThere) for standard ADSL and it was rubbish. Very basic features and annoying wizards needed to set it up. Worked OK initially, but then unstable. Needed rebooting to restore a dropped line or speeds dropping really low.

Its wireless is also really bad asit only has an internal antenna. Maximum wi-fi speed is definitely not n speeds. You are lucky to get 30Mbit next to the router, and go in another room and it would be anything down to 5Mbit.

I quickly replaced it with a Billion 7800n.

I've since moved to BT Infinity and they have given me a BT Hub 4.

Openreach install a new faceplate at your master socket, then either connect the openreach modem they bring with them directly to it, or they can run some very thin Cat 5 ethernet cable up to 30 meters from the master socket. I needed this done as I don't have a power socket near my master socket, so had it run upstairs into my office/study. They then connect the Openreach modem to your router via an ethernet cable (so the router needs to support a cable WAN modem style connection and not just ADSL). In my case the supplied BT Hub 4, although my Billion 7800n also works.

Do I like the Hub 4? It's OK and I've been using it since it was installed. No issues, but the wireless signal strength isn't the best. I'm considering going back to my Billion 7800n as it has much stronger wi-fi and a lot more features.

 

[Chinners]

Aye. There is a cobbled up version with the rj11 port disabled for use with fibre.
http://community.plus.net/library/hardware/tg582n-information-and-specifications/

I cant believe they still supply 10/100 ethernet ports. Looks like it'll be destined for the bin.

What do I need to look out for on a router to replace this crock'o they have conned me into getting? Will a standard cable router do?

Bum. Just re-read your reply and found the answer. Oops!

 

[Harrison]

BT were heavily criticised because their Hub routers didn't have gigabit Ethernet ports. But on the newest hub 4 they have provided 1 gigabit port + 3 x 100Mb ports. Not brilliant only providing one, but I currently have the Hub 4 connected to my gigabit switch via that port, so it's ok.

But seriously look at the Billion 7800n router. It isn't cheap, but it is really good. Also look at the highly recommended Asus RT-N66U. Draytek also make some routers that contain VDSL modems, so you could replace both the isp router and the outreach modem with one.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

 

[User1301]

The router I use to replace the BT supplied equipment is a Dreytek Vigor 2920n which has fantastic functionality in a single box (you don't need any of the BT supplied equipment with it). Comes with great wireless range; firewall; vpn capability; Dual WAN etc. Not cheap though (approx £180).

Cheers

John

 

[Chinners]

I was looking at the asus. Looks stylish and has good reviews. One thing I love about the higher end draytecs is the vpn endpoint, but 180 is a bit of a struggle for a Yorkshire man.

 

[bazzaq]

I work for a broadband supplier.

most seem to be supplying the Technicolor as we do.

Tis a crap box. but it works.

the openreach box is indeed a vdsl modem. you can then connect any router that supports pppoe to it.

It is possible to replace the OR modem with a vdsl router like a draytek.

 

[nick123]

I've just gone on to plusnet fibre and i also have the technicolor router BT also updated my BT master socket to one with a RJ11 + phone socket I'm sure i read up the technicolor router only had 10/100 ports i have a network setup in my house using cat 6 cable /patch panel and a gigabit switch but this was really done as future proofing i don't really want to be pulling up the floor boards any time soon. i currently don't have any pc`s plugged in here yet i only have a netbook as a pc as I'm sort of between two houses at mo. i have also noticed the wifi was crap on this router, when i done my first speed test i only got 32meg a sec and i was only about 2 - 3 foot away from the router at the time after plugging in a rj45 lead my speed increased to 61meg a sec.

I'm not to worried about my router being 10/100 and crap wifi as i will only use wifi for my phone and netbook etc and i think at the moment only my main pc and 1 netbook that is currently able to connect at gigabit speed i think all other pc/ other devices are only able to connect at 10/100 but as time goes on i guess every think here will be able to connect at gigabit speeds. with any luck by the time every device is on a gigabit connection i will hopefully be able to upgrade to purefibre by that time fingers crossed

 

[Harrison]

You might change your mind about continuing to use the technicolor router once you start to find the need to reboot it often because of ever decreasing broadband speeds that are only fixed by a full power down and reboot.

For me it was a fail from the start as I need good wi-fi to connect my consoles, Smart TV and Sky+HD box to the network, as well as tablets and my wife's laptop. The technicolor couldn't handle all that at all. My Billion 7800n did perfectly, and I'm about to return to it as my BT Hub 4 is having annoying issues trying to stream HD films to my smart TV. The TV keeps needing to pause to wait for the video stream to catch up, whereas on the Billion that never happened, so the BT hub 4 isn't perfect either. Although for everything else other than stream 1080p HD films to my smart TV it has worked perfectly to date.

 

[Chinners]

Well, after 3 days, I'm still using the Technicolor thing.

I hate to say it, but it's currently performing it's duties rather well. The wireless signal reaches the far corners of the house (tho not as strong as my old netgear), I have managed to get most ports open (it doesn't want to let me re-route FTP), and it gets past static IP addresses by assigning machine names to opened ports. I've just let my home network adjust for the router and currently things are good.

Yeah, the interface is clunky, restrictive and v e r y s l o w.......... but it has just about done the job of replacing my old router.

Time will tell though, if the dreaded slowdown occurs, or wireless collapses when streaming stuff (not connected the BR player to it yet), but so far, I don't think I can justify the cost replacing it.

Shocked.

 

[Gouldin]

How is everyone finding the throughput on their modems?
I'm on 80mb down and 20mb up. I've found the billion 7800n and Asus rtn66u use all the bandwidth nicely, whereas the freebies and my old routers only achieve about 40mb throughput, wired and even worse on wireless

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