Router Choice for FTTC upgrade - any experience ?

Hi,

Now that my exchange says that it is FTTC enabled (that and my neighbour telling me about his 13ms latency times!! - I am green with envy) I am looking to upgrade my ADSL to FTTC.

I'm quite happy with my current provider and have a block of 8 IPs, pretty standard I guess

My current setup is that I use a DG834GT into the BT master socket, and it serves my external /29 subnet approriately, with a netgear WNR3500 handling my internal network for machines that I don't need on an external IP.

So, ny ISP is listing the Draytek 2920n as a suitable router to plug into the BT openreach modem that gets supplied with the FTTC installation, But:

I noticed that it does not list IPV6 amongst the specifications (If I need to spend on a new router I would rather have it have IPV6 support rather than have to potentially spend another hundred pounds or so in x years to get *another* one with IPv6 Support),
so I have looked at two other routers:

The Draytek 2750 which does list IPV6 and the Billion BiPAC 7800N (A friend has this and recommends it).

Does anyone have any experience with these routers (I guess I'm really after pros/cons of the 2920n vs. the 2750 vs the 7800n ?)

My Usage is fairly standard - remote working from home from time to time, several external machines requiring external IPs and an internal network.

Oh - I assume that the BT openreach modem uses the same cable that the DG834 uses to plug into the wall socket - RJ11 is it ?

Thanks for any viewpoints / shared experience

Cheers

Andy

In reply to a post by snurt:

Billion BiPAC 7800N (A friend has this and recommends it).

I use this and I find it brilliant, especially the SNR Tweaks. My Sync/Speeds improved greatly just by swapping with my ISPs supplied Router....

The only thing I don't like with the 7800n is that you can't view the Full Line Stats without the need of Telnet, otherwise an excellent piece of kit even though it's expensive...

Hi,
Thanks for the reply.

Can the BIllion route external IPs to say, ethernet ports 1,2,3 and server internal addresses to port 4 (192....) ?

Thanks

Andy

In reply to a post by shaneosborne:

In reply to a post by snurt:

Billion BiPAC 7800N (A friend has this and recommends it).

I use this and I find it brilliant, especially the SNR Tweaks. My Sync/Speeds improved greatly just by swapping with my ISPs supplied Router....

Am I missing something?

The spec of it on the Billion website doesn't mention it having a VDSL2 capable modem. So how does it affect the sync speed, and how are you using it to tweak SNRM, on FTTC?

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 03-Mar-12 23:00:34)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by shaneosborne:

In reply to a post by snurt:

Billion BiPAC 7800N (A friend has this and recommends it).

I use this and I find it brilliant, especially the SNR Tweaks. My Sync/Speeds improved greatly just by swapping with my ISPs supplied Router....

Am I missing something?

The spec of it on the Billion website doesn't mention it having a VDSL2 capable modem. So how does it affect the sync speed, and how are you using it to tweak SNRM, on FTTC?

Judging by the sig I'd guess that the poster of that reply is on ADSL.

The 7800N doesn't have a VDSL modem, but it doe have a WAN thernet port to which you connect the VDSL modem supplied by BT Openreach.

Precisely .

My point was that "especially the SNR Tweaks. My Sync/Speeds improved greatly just by swapping with my ISPs supplied Router...." was irrelevant to the OP's question, and is stated to be a major factor in the poster's positive opinion of the router.

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 08-Mar-12 14:13:59)

Anything that talks PPPoE will do and is capable of dealing with your range of external IP addresses will do. You won't be replacing BT/OR's box, but connecting to it via ethernet and it connects to your master socket. I think that connection is RJ11, but you'll get everything you need in that respect anyway.

http://www.ebuyer.com/201376-buffalo-wireless-n300-c... does the job and is very cheap for the feature set, and seems to be a reliable device (I don't currently have one running an FTTC line but run several for their wireless AP function). If you are happy with all connections to the outside world seeming to come from the primary public address it does everything, but while it'll happily map external connections from ext.ext.ext.3 to 192.168.x.3 and so forth I couldn't get it to selectively SNAT outgoing connections to different addresses in my /29 so they all looked to came from ext.ext.ext.1. Depending on your use of the /29 this may or may not be a problem for you. IIRC the DG834GT doesn't do this either (I certainly had a DG834<something> that didn't, but they may have updated the firmware since then). I think it only supports IPv6 via pass-through.

I have now configured a Linux based server (which sits near the BR/OR box and runs 24/7 anyway) to talk PPPoE and I have it do internal<->external routing and firewalling, relegating the little black box to just being a wireless AP. This is easy enough to setup but not recommended unless you are particularly familiar with Linux networking as you'll be supporting yourself if something goes wrong!

I used one of those Buffalo's on IDNet fibre for a year, with absolutely no trouble.

Currently using the Plusnet supplied N150 WNR1000v3, but am less happy with that. It's wireless is lousy compared to the Buffalo.

Just using it for a while to see how its reported download/upload usage compares with what PN say. Then I'll probably go back to the Buffalo.

Grrr - at some stage the traffic monitoring has got turned off .