BT infinity modem

Joined BT infinity 3 weeks ago. The last week has seen the openreach modem stop working 4 times due to power failing. It seems to me that its overheating because you have to wait for the modem to cool down before it will restart. I rang the BT helpline last Sunday & was told an engineer would contact me within 48 hours to change the modem as it appears to be faulty. I am still waiting for the engineers visit. Beginning to regret moving to BT already. Be warned.

I have only had BT Infinity since 4th March and I have already had to get the BT Openreach modem replaced twice.

Darren

Edited by deleted (Sat 09-Jul-11 20:13:09)

Other posters have suggested wall mounting the modem to avoid it being left on a window sill in sunlight. Just a thought.

Wall mounted here, rock solid so far.

It is well know that the OR modem is not the greatest piece of kit and prone to overheating. Vertically mounting it does seem to help with with ventilation and cooling.

Horizontal on desk, next to Iomega 500GB disc chucking out heat roughly in its direction as the layout and space is not very flexible, plus router, plus often an old Advent laptop. South-facing window, (usually closed), with temperature monitored for a couple of months by a sensor in the middle of that lot. Central heating radiator a metre away.

At the time of posting, showing 22.7C, often shown over 28C when I've bothered to look. No problems.

It seems to be standard now: the BT/or person that switched by line over to FTTC did it as part of the install (and asked where I wanted it rather than just plonking it somewhere random).

Hi davyboy

If you send me over your details via http://bt.custhelp.com/app/contact_email/c/4950 I will gladly look into what is happening with the engineer visit you were promised.

Regards David

Hi David, Just to let you know a BT engineer is due in about an hours time, hopefully to solve the problem Cheers

I'm wondering if Huawei made a manufacturing change to this modem as I've had mine powered up 24/7 since August last year and it doesn't even get warm let alone hot (and that's sitting flat on a table)

Mine was installed early this year ... but the modem was built in October 2010 so not one of the early ones that had problems. Mine does get warm/hot.

What is the serial number of yours? Mine is:21530304288K0A009938 Y2 with Firmware: V100R001C01B028SP06 If there is a chance to identify different builds from the SN & Firmware it may give pointers to the ones that get warm!

I'll double check later but there's absolutely nothing on mine that refers to a manufacturing date and I'm 99% sure there's no mention of which firmware it's running either.

Perhaps they did indeed change something in manufacturing which is why yours has that information on it and mine doesn't?!!?!?

The label on the underside of mine has serial number and firmware - the box it arrived in has the build date.

I'll have another look later. As for the box the OR engineer took it with him and I didn't get a look at it.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Mine was installed early this year ... but the modem was built in October 2010 so not one of the early ones that had problems. Mine does get warm/hot.

What is the serial number of yours? Mine is:21530304288K0A009938 Y2 with Firmware: V100R001C01B028SP06 If there is a chance to identify different builds from the SN & Firmware it may give pointers to the ones that get warm!

Dunno what the build date is for mine as there's no indication on it. Its serial number is 21530313858K15015824 and the Firmware is V100R001C01B028SP10.

I guess the SN is different for every one but the first part is presumably sequential so may give a clue. The firmware is presumably that installed on build as I assume it updates automatically.

Mine is warm to the touch when being used heavily - but only warm. When it's not been used for any length of time it's pretty cool.......... (cool as in temperature that is )

Edited by Garyilka (Thu 14-Jul-11 16:25:11)

Interesting: The Huawei BOM / part number of mine is 53030428 which corresponds an early part of the Serial Number,

In yours the corresponding number is: 53031385 does suggest yours could be a later build than mine and maybe the SP06/SP10 in the Firmware could indicate a later or different build.

Post deleted by Garyilka - thought I'd spotted another clue, but it was a false lead!!

Edited by Garyilka (Thu 14-Jul-11 16:44:04)

The label on my box says: FTC VDSL NTE without the /2 !

Back home now so I've managed to check mine -

SN - 21530304288k04019952

FW - V100R001C01B028SP06

(Just to confirm it was installed at the start of August 2010 so obviously manufactured before then and it doesn't get warm AT ALL even with heavy use)

Edited by deleted (Thu 14-Jul-11 19:46:29)

In reply to a post by MHC:

The label on my box says: FTC VDSL NTE without the /2 !

Hmm - I deleted my post as I thought it was a red herring given that I found that NTE2 is BT's description of the Master Socket for BT megastream services (see http://aa-asterisk.org.uk/index.php/NTE ). Perhaps it isn't though - perhaps the 2 indicates a modem version ????

Take that with my comments above and it may well be that we have found the version 1 and 2 modems based on the first part of the serial number, the Firmware final digits and the NTE/2

Got mine installed yesterday and i've noticed my modem is cool to touch even after 20mins of full speed downloading, hoping its a newer model and any issues resolved

What are the corresponding numbers on the back of yours?

Just at work here now, i will post them up when i get in

In reply to a post by Garyilka:

What are the corresponding numbers on the back of yours?

SN: 211530313858K16034069
FW: V00R001C01B028SP10

Mine which is fine:-

SN: 21530304288K09016231
FW: V100R001C01B028SP06

Picture of the installation here. The top of the temperature sensor can just be seen at the bottom of the picture, currently reading 26.4C.

Looking at what MHC and I have been comparing, that suggests you have the latest version, which doesn't appoear to be the one that suffers from overheating providing it's installed properly

Here's mine - Repaced in January.
S/N: 21530304288K08005681
FW Ver: V100R001C01B028SP06

It seems that there was a tie-over period when the SP10 firmware was shipped in the earlier 530304288 hardware.[1]

At some point the HG612 hardware was changed, and a new part number (aka board number / barcode) was issued (530313858).

The board was updated with a new flash chip, and maybe other changes.

Previously a Macronix MX29LV640D 8Mbyte parallel NOR flash IC was used but this was replaced with a Spansion S29GL064N.[2] Both chips are in a 44 pin TSOP package.

That change of the flash ID probably required the CFE bootloader to be rebuilt to recognise it. However, the bootloader in SP10 firmware still reports "CFE version 1.0.37-102.6 for BCM96368 (32bit,SP,BE)". That is the same CFE version that was reported in SP06.

The Linux kernel in the SP10 firmware also reports the same version number as the kernel in SP06 (version 2.6.21.5). However, the kernel has been rebuilt, probably with different configuration options.

The root file system also differs between the SP10 and the SP06 firmwares. At some point, I will try to discover what those kernel/file system changes involve.[3]

It would be interesting to see whether the xDSL PHY driver has been updated in SP10.

The Broadcom 6368 processor in the HG612 modem has dual 400MHz MIPS32 VIPER cores which access shared memory.

One of those two cores is exclusively running the xDSL PHY driver. The code for that driver is contained in the binary /etc/adsl/adsl_phy.bin. [4] The second of the two cores runs everything else, including the Linux operating system. The Linux core moves the xDSL driver code from the flash memory into the address space of the second core. It's possible that if there has been an upgrade to the xDSL driver (adsl_phy.bin) then that could see an improvement to line sync speeds or stability.

The flash dump of an SP10 firmware is linked below for those interested. [5]

As with SP06, unlocking an SP10 HG612 is very simple. It involves modifying the default config.xml file to remove the iptables rulechain that is firewalling HTTP access to the device from the LAN side.

[1] http://huaweihg612hacking.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/h...
[2] https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B6wW18mYskvBODZjMTk...
[3] http://huaweihg612hacking.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/w...
[4] http://bcm63xx.sipsolutions.net/AdslPhy
[5] https://docs.google.com/#folders/folder.0.0B6wW18mYs...

Edited by deleted (Wed 20-Jul-11 22:34:08)

Excellent, but beyond my ability to use it .

When you say "As with SP06, unlocking an SP10 HG612 is very simple. It involves modifying the default config.xml file to remove the iptables rulechain that is firewalling HTTP access to the device from the LAN side" do you mean it can be achieved by someone like me, because way back you said getting into the thing needed soldering etc., and I'm not going that way.

Impressive!

Incidenatlly, which are failing, the old or the new? I get the impression from people recently getting FTTC it is the kit they get now, not what I got back in February, see my earlier post for SN/FW, where I have no problem despite it being on a desk in a fairly hot environment, 24.2C at this point in time, 11pm.

No soldering is needed to just unlock the HG612 modem. The unlock instructions are here [1].

However, I deliberately haven't built the unlock firmware. I would rather not take the blame if it bricks the modem. That said, the source code for all the tools to do the unlocking are in this tarball [2] ready to use at your own risk.

Since it seems there are (at least) two different firmware releases for the HG612 - SP06 and SP10, it would make sense to combine the unlocking with an automatic upgrade to firmware SP10. As SP10 firmware is already installed in some of the earlier models (53030428) of the HG612 that should work okay, but it needs testing first to be sure.

cheers!

[1] https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chro...
[2] https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B6wW18mYskvBODI5ZGJ...

As a result of your musing, I visited my neighbour and asked if I could take a look at all the relevant numbers (serial, firmware, etc) of his HG612 modem.

For other reasons, I actually posted the information to a forum thread at Kitz' website and asbokid saw it there. So, for tbb'ers, I now repeat it here --

It was only yesterday that I called in on my neighbour (FTTC enabled) to ask if I could note down all the details from his OR provided modem. For those who have never seen one in real life, or the box in which it is delivered, here follows a transcript from my note pad --

On the Box

Huawei Home Gateway, EchoLife HG612
Support VDSL2
2 Ethernet Ports
Advanced Management via HTTP, TR-069
Support Router Mode and Built-In Firewall

On a Sticky Label Affixed to the Right Hand End of the Box

ITEM: 53030428
MODEL: EchoLife HG612
NAME: FTTC VDSL NTE
DATE: 2011-01-24
NOTES:

On a Stickly Label Affixed to the Left Hand End of the Box

UOI (PRIMARY PACK)
BT Item Code 049586
Description FTTC HG612
Quantity 1
Unit of Issue PCS
Contract No
Date of Man/Del
Use by Date
Calibration Date
Huawei BOM code 53030428

On the Underside of the Device

Serial Number: 21530304288K11031127 Y2 HG612
Firmware Version: V100R001C01B028SP10
MAC: <elided by b*cat>

Had mine in now over a week, and my router isn't even the slightest bit warm to touch, even after downloading a few GB. touch wood it aint one of the dreaded models