Is interrogating a BT Hub possible?

My brother and his missus lives out in the countryside, about 6km away from his exchange. They're unfortunately signed up with BTInternet.com and therefore use a 'BT Hub', the fancy BT name for an ADSL router-modem. My brother tells me that they get a measly 240K bps downstream speed, even after recently revamping the phone wiring in the house and specifically using it in wired mode. I personally know very little about the BT Hub but am wondering if it can be interrogated from the PC to get the line stats. Thus far, he's had to rely on an online speedtester to find out their downstream speed. Does anyone know if this is do-able?

Further to that, can the Hub be replaced by a more standard router, such as a Netgear, Thompson Speedtouch or whatever, with the appropriate username and password configured into the router? Or will the BT account not connect unless uniquely a Hub is attached? I've got a couple of spare routers he could try on the line when I next visit them. If one of those routers can connect, I'm pretty sure he'd achieve a better speed. The Speedtouch uses a Broadcom chip.

In order to help him, at distance, the very least I need to know from him is the line attenuation but the tester he's used doesn't give him that. I suspect he's used the BT Tester. I think his PC uses Windows ME.

Have they tried http://kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.php

You can get the line stats from the Hub's advanced menu's its all part of the browseable menu 192.168.1.254

And yes you can replace it with whatever router you want, assuming they are not using the BT VoIP phone handset

I you are looking for a new one, consider this, I have seen some positive results on long distances.

http://kitz.co.uk/routers/2wire_2700_HGV.htm

6km and 240 k ... That might be the limit of speed, but without the stats, as you know, it is hard to tell.

If you can get a BT Business Hub - 2wire 2700HGV you will find it will normally sync at a higher speed than the residential hub and will hold up longer. They can be found on ebay for £10 or so ...

Yes, I've known about the 2700 for some years now and, at one point about a year ago, I recommended it to my brother, but he's a novice in this dept and in computing generally and has therefore been reluctant to spend money and experiment. But it'd obviously help if we could get a full set of stats from his existing Hub, as then some sensible conclusions could be drawn.

I've some spare Broadcom-based routers that could be tried on his line when I next see him. Possibly, with one of those, a few extra hundreds of K bps could be squeezed out of the line. I think his Hub is called a Type 2 Hub. Not sure.

Only recently in these forums, someone was saying they were on a very long line, getting attenuation of 62.5dB, and yet their downstream speed was around 1.8M bps.

My gut feeling is that there's still room for improvement in that 240K bps figure of my brother's.

Try it and see ... but you will possibly still get more from a 2-wire. Their modem front end was designed for them specifically and is one of the best on the market. Keep an eye on ebay though - there was a 2-wire that went for £0.99 last night and there are plenty there to choose from.

I have a long line - 6km with attenuation of 63dB (82.5dB @ 300Khz). Using a 2700 HG-V I'm getting between 768 and 896 kbps. Previously I used a DG834G v3 and managed 608kbs but the connection was unstable, particularly in the evening/night (very often no connection at all after 10.30pm).

The followig modems would not sync at all - DG834G v4, DSL-2640b, and DG834GT (all Broadcom chipsets).

For me installing a 2700 HG-V has proved very successful, not only a boost in speed but also much greater stability. I paid £12 for mine (inc delivery) but as has been pointed out you can get them even cheaper.

Good luck

Opps forgot to log in. So here goes again

I have a long line - 6km with attenuation of 63dB (82.5dB @ 300Khz). Using a 2700 HG-V I'm getting between 768 and 896 kbps. Previously I used a DG834G v3 and managed 608kbs but the connection was unstable, particularly in the evening/night (very often no connection at all after 10.30pm).

The following modems would not sync at all - DG834G v4, DSL-2640b, and DG834GT (all Broadcom chipsets).

For me installing a 2700 HG-V has proved very successful, not only a boost in speed but also much greater stability. I paid £12 for mine (inc delivery) but as has been pointed out you can get them even cheaper.

Good luck

Edited by deleted (Wed 11-May-11 13:46:32)

Good to hear your experience ... Yet again the superiority of the 2700 is demonstrated.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Good to hear your experience ... Yet again the superiority of the 2700 is demonstrated.

Pity Pace don't sell a version of the 2700 on the open market - they'd be killed in the rush

I'll pass that very useful information on, then. However, I doubt whether either my brother or his wife will bother to try to get one. They're not very savvy about these things and aren't technically inclined. They may also take fright at the thought of their Hub being surplanted, thinking that perhaps BT would throw the book at them if they ever found out.

I could try to get one myself, then see if they'll agree to it being connected when I next visit them. I'd have the same reluctance problem with any other router I offered them, except that I wouldn't stand to have wasted time and money.

768 - 896K bps seems a very reasonable sync for a 6km line, though I'm not sure that dismissing those other routers you've mentioned is necessarily fair, as the speed will depend on the Target SNR, negotiated between the router and the DSLAM in the exchange. So, if the Target SNR were 6dB, you'd get a higher speed than if it were, say, 12dB. On the other hand, a lower SNR would mean lower line stability! (With the Netgear routers mentioned, SNR could be controlled using the utility DMT). I suppose only experimenting will show whether a greater speed will, in practise, be possible.

Postscript: I've looked at that kitz link, where it was explained that changing the login on the 2700 router was possible only by using details found at a certain URL. I tried that URL and it never responded. I guess it's been blocked by BT. One of the risks involved in using any different modem is that BT apparently automatically updates Hub firmware over the Web. Havoc could result if, say, the 2700 got an update, when the BT account assumed they were using a Type2 Hub.

Edited by deleted (Wed 11-May-11 19:06:22)

Your best bet is to ring Bt and ask for an openreach engineer to come out and check the line. They should raise a broadband boost task (these tasks do not have a time limit) the engineer can check the line loss using a tool called SEAM and find the best possible line pair back to the Exchange, if there is a spare.The engineer will also look at the wiring in the property and will make sure the main socket is correctly located, ideally where the Hub is and they should fit an SSFP or nte2000 faceplate. This is a filtered frontplate and can improve the sync speed. The visit will be free of charge and is worth asking for as improvements can be made!! Regards Jon

The target SNR is 6dB which is set by the Router. FT do not impose their own target SNR as far as I'm aware. For example the DG834G v3 will sync at 608kb at 3dB because that's the best it can get. Presumably the Broadcom chip set Routers, mention previously, can not even get that.

All I know is the 2700 HG-V works better than all other routers on my particular long rural line.

Edited by deleted (Wed 11-May-11 20:40:42)

The target SNR is 6dB which is set by the Router. FT do not impose their own target SNR as far as I'm aware...

Not quite correct. The target SNR margin is set by the service supplier (BT, or LLU ISP for instance). Some makes of router/modems can ignore the target by a plus or minus amount.

In reply to a post by FrenchUser:

The target SNR is 6dB which is set by the Router. FT do not impose their own target SNR as far as I'm aware. For example the DG834G v3 will sync at 608kb at 3dB because that's the best it can get. Presumably the Broadcom chip set Routers, mention previously, can not even get that.

I can't avoid being rude, sorry, but that is tripe.

The sync-time margin is set at the DSLAM/MSAN unless over-ridden by the tweaking of routers where that is possible. Many are not tweakable. I don't know about BT Hubs tweakability.

I assume FT means BT. They use BT Wholesale connections which default to 6dB, which can then be automatically changed by the DLM. There are recent reports that the WBC DLM can lower the target margin to 3dB on very stable lines when accessed by a Home Hub. I haven't heard of it doing so with anything else, but that isn't to say it can't. I've also seen reports of the stability on the 3dB setting being acceptable to the DLM but not to the user.

All I know is the 2700 HG-V works better than all other routers on my particular long rural line.

There I believe you . Seemingly on most very long lines.

I agree with Roberto. And my own, long experience with tweaking my own Target SNR to suit different routers bears out what he states.

Having just done a bit of googling on the 2700, I think I've now twigged what's going on with my brother's Hub. I think he must be using the Home Hub v2. The 2700HG-V seems to be the Business Hub.

From my brother's usage of it, it looks like the Home Hub 2, which has a feature for allowing several phones and similar devices to be connected into it, is not at all suited to his long line.

Maybe a straight swap of the existing Hub to a 2700 will be admissible? But I see that, in using the 2700 on any account, let alone a BT Broadband account, will require resolution of a login issue. There may also be problems with the fact that BT downloads firmware updates to these two different Hubs automatically.

At a guess the FT refers to France Telecom given the posters nic.

I'm pretty sure he's already done that, more than a year ago. The BT engineer told him that no further improvement was possible. I somehow doubt that using a different pair in the cable would make any difference, even if available, since attenuation, and therefore the resultant speed, is almost wholly a function of distance.

Actually, I wouldn't necessarily take a BT engineer's comment as being the last word, particularly as I've understood that the massive star-configured telephone wiring my brother's got in the house - just about the worst scenario you could envisage - still had the Ring wire attached throughout, until I recently told him to detach it.

In reply to a post by meditator:

There may also be problems with the fact that BT downloads firmware updates to these two different Hubs automatically.

Hi,

Not sure why you keep going on about the updates, I don't believe its possible (automatic or otherwise) for any router to get an update by accident intended for another model of router, there are checksums involved.

Just because a customer is supplied a particular model of homehub the ISP doesn't pump down firmware updates randomly and its tough luck if your router can't handle it, there's more logic/checking done than that.

For auto updates is usually the end device (the router) that sends periodic checks back to the ISP to see if an update is available not blindly buckshotting updates to everyone.

In reply to a post by meditator:

I'll pass that very useful information on, then. However, I doubt whether either my brother or his wife will bother to try to get one. They're not very savvy about these things and aren't technically inclined. They may also take fright at the thought of their Hub being surplanted, thinking that perhaps BT would throw the book at them if they ever found out.

I could try to get one myself, then see if they'll agree to it being connected when I next visit them. I'd have the same reluctance problem with any other router I offered them, except that I wouldn't stand to have wasted time and money.

768 - 896K bps seems a very reasonable sync for a 6km line, though I'm not sure that dismissing those other routers you've mentioned is necessarily fair, as the speed will depend on the Target SNR, negotiated between the router and the DSLAM in the exchange. So, if the Target SNR were 6dB, you'd get a higher speed than if it were, say, 12dB. On the other hand, a lower SNR would mean lower line stability! (With the Netgear routers mentioned, SNR could be controlled using the utility DMT). I suppose only experimenting will show whether a greater speed will, in practise, be possible.

Postscript: I've looked at that kitz link, where it was explained that changing the login on the 2700 router was possible only by using details found at a certain URL. I tried that URL and it never responded. I guess it's been blocked by BT. One of the risks involved in using any different modem is that BT apparently automatically updates Hub firmware over the Web. Havoc could result if, say, the 2700 got an update, when the BT account assumed they were using a Type2 Hub.

Hi, the BT Business Hub 2700HGV wireless router will have no problems working on a BT Home broadband connection. I cannot see how BT would be upset as you are still using one of their routers. The router will only update with the correct firmware, so no problem there.

I bought one two years ago on ebay, it was brand new and box sealed, I paid £28 + £8 p&p. It's a good router and was money well spent.

BT Business Hub 2Wire BT2700HGV Router.

ebay http://shop.ebay.co.uk/?_from=R40&_trksid=m570&_nkw=...

RobertoS, Please feel free to be rude. I stand corrected, I was simply quoting what the France Telecom engineer told me. Obviously either he was wrong or perhaps I got something wrong in translation.

As you'll probably of gathered from the previous sentence FT = France Telecom and not British Telecom.

Edited by deleted (Thu 12-May-11 08:41:20)

In reply to a post by john2007:

The target SNR is 6dB which is set by the Router. FT do not impose their own target SNR as far as I'm aware...

Not quite correct. The target SNR margin is set by the service supplier (BT, or LLU ISP for instance). Some makes of router/modems can ignore the target by a plus or minus amount.

Thanks for the correction

Sorry, I assumed FT was a typo for BT. I'm sure you are right for France, they just operate differently.

Vive la diff�rence.

Perhaps I was being a bit too pessimistic, GMAN98. I googled for info on the 2700 and in the masses of guidance notes I found on unlocking and general usage the reader was warned that BT would instigate their own updates with this and the Home Hub and that they would occur in the background. Maybe this was just scare tactics but, with BT, you can never tell; they never seem to be all that user-friendly with their kit.

I've had a (slow) e-mail reply from my bruv. He tells me that the device he's got at present is the Home Hub v.2.0 Type A (no telephone).

The concensus among you all appears to be that he could replace this with a 2700HG-V and merrily connect into his BT Broadband account. The main caveat would be unlocking.

Is this an accurate summary?

In reply to a post by FrenchUser:

RobertoS, Please feel free to be rude. I stand corrected, I was simply quoting what the France Telecom engineer told me. Obviously either he was wrong or perhaps I got something wrong in translation.

As you'll probably of gathered from the previous sentence FT = France Telecom and not British Telecom.

You may have noticed in my post I assumed FT meant BT, as did John. Apologies therefore, as quite possibly this is the case on FT systems. But it is emphatically not so on BT Wholesale or any LLU system in this country.

I think I was in a ratty mood at the time as well . Sorry.

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 12-May-11 23:58:38)

It is perfectly possible to block the auto-updating of the firmware in a BT Business Hub (a.k.a. a 2Wire HGV2700).

I purchased a brand new, boxed and security sealed unit via eBay for use on a non-BT broadband service. With the latest available version, there is no "unlocking" required.The HGV2700 that I purchased has the BT v6.1 firmware installed. With the v6.1 firmware, only this section of the comprehensive site need be read and understood.

Replacing a BT Home Hub with a BT Business Hub should give your brother a measurable, if not significant, improvement in his broadband performance.

Burakkucat,

Is it possible for you to give me the name of the supplier on EBay from whom you bought your 2700HGV? Via a private message here, for example?

I've already advised my brother to get one that's new and fully boxed.

In reply to a post by meditator:

Burakkucat,

Is it possible for you to give me the name of the supplier on EBay from whom you bought your 2700HGV? Via a private message here, for example?

I've already advised my brother to get one that's new and fully boxed.

Hi meditator, it don�t work like that! You wait for the routers to come up for sale.

At this very moment, I can see two brand new factory sealed boxed routers there for sale on ebay.

Have sent you Personal Message.

In reply to a post by meditator:

Burakkucat,

Is it possible for you to give me the name of the supplier on EBay from whom you bought your 2700HGV? Via a private message here, for example?

I've already advised my brother to get one that's new and fully boxed.

Here's the link to a recent eBay search. I purchased mine under the Buy It Now category rather than via the auction process.

As E7er has said, eBay doesn't work that way. However I did check with the seller (a second hand electronics dealer) but they currently do not have any in stock.

OK, got bored with no one giving the answer to your original question....

Yes, it is perfectly simple to get the data from a Homehub. http://192.168.1.254 this will get you to the GUI. Then depending on which version Homehub they have it's just intuition to find the data you are after. You *may* have to set up an admin password, but again this is simple.

You seem to have had many posters extolling the virtues of the 2 wire, and yes, it's a good 'un on a long line, but if it's a Homehub 2 (the curved black one) then this will sync about as high as the 2 wire. If it's a 1, then OK ish ..... if it's a 1.5 (the square one) then bin it.

Yes, you can happily use whichever router you please, but always worth keeping the BT Broadband issued one if they need to call Tech support.