Just Got a Asus DSL-N66U

Just send it back to the supplier i have read lots of good reviews about the RT-N66U seeing there is now a version that has a inbuilt VDSL modem ( DSL-N66U ), i decided to buy one and get rid of the openreach modem, i don't think i will ever buy another Asus product again after the response i got from there tech support.

i have a 80/20 FTTC connection, the average throughput i get is 76Mbps/18Mbps, so i get home plug it in and get it on line with only one computer connected and run a speed test and get 52Mbps/18Mbps ok so i try another speed test the next day 51Mbps/17Mbps, ok so there is a wan port on the router so i reconnect the Openreach modem, reconfigure the router and run a speed test, 76/18 so there seems to be a speed differnc of 25Mbps between using the inbuilt VDSL modem and the Openreach modem, so off go's a email to asus tech support.....asking about the speed difference when using the inbuilt modem and the openreach modem connected to the Wan port.


And this was there response........

"
Dear [Removed]

My name is {Removed} and it's my pleasure to help you with your problem

This is common, if you DSL-N66U, it will do the routing forwarding, and this will reduce litter speed.
Or you can consider to disable both Windows firewall and the Asus router firewall.

Welcome to refer Troubleshooting & FAQ for ASUS products in ASUS website:
[Web address removed]

If you continue to experience issues in the future, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Best Regards,
{removed}

ASUS Product Support Team
"

So back in the box and off to the supplier it ASUS make a point of how fast this router is, this did not seem to apply to the modem. if you are looking to but a one box sloution and have a 80/20 connection this is not the router to go for.

probably just the chipset compatibility

what router are you going to use

im back to the good old Billion 7800N with the Openreach modem, will wait and see what oneboxs solutions appear on the market next year.

Basically, you've discovered the downside of one-box solutions. The hard way!

Much better to choose each piece of kit to do the best for its particular function- your choice is drastically restricted when you want them all in one box and a compromise is pretty well inevitable.

The Asus RT-66 with the OR modem is excellent, and it's not as if the extra box is going to leave you short of space...

the 7800n downfall is the ewan maxing out at 100mb, there was reports of the ewan struggling to hit 38mb but this was down to firmware / QOS, so for the time being unless you get fttp then the 7800n is still a decent piece of kit, had it for over two years on adsl2+ now it will be on my fibre connection !, value for money !

7800dxl is the next best choice but even still I am wary of using alternative modem chipsets for VDSL considering how sensitive DLM can be

For my install next week I will be using the supplied modem with the 7800n plugged in and upgrading my internal network to cat5e

7800dxl is tasty though

Edited by Stanman_24 (Wed 18-Dec-13 09:53:14)

I used to have a 7800N- used it on an 80/20 FTTC connection with no bothers, but I wasn't using QoS.

Wireless seems to be a possible weak point- quite a few reports of it packing up after a while. Mine gave up the ghost about a month after the warranty expired (typical ), the rest of it still works so it's now in the cupboard as an emergency spare (the primary spare is another Asus).

The 7800dxl may not be entirely ready for prime time yet either- link

Yeh I had a dodgy 7800n with the faulty ralink wireless chipset

I did get 6 MB/s from the 7800n using an RAlink n300 usb adaptor, not much can get close to that

Model Name BiPAC 7800N
System Up-Time 7 Day(s) 22 Hour(s)
Hardware Version Annex A
Software Version 1.06h

Physical Port Status
Ethernet
EWAN Down
ADSL Up 828 / 18108 kbps

rock solid router that still has life left in it for a few more years

In reply to a post by billford:

Basically, you've discovered the downside of one-box solutions. The hard way!

Much better to choose each piece of kit to do the best for its particular function- your choice is drastically restricted when you want them all in one box and a compromise is pretty well inevitable.

The Asus RT-66 with the OR modem is excellent, and it's not as if the extra box is going to leave you short of space...

there is no reason why a one box soulition will not work as well as a modem and router, i have just setup draytek 2860 with two 80/20 connections one using the inbuilt vdsl modem and the second on the Ethernet wan via the openreach modem with no signs of slowdown, even had it at home to test and it worked flawless. though it is just two expensive for a home router.

In reply to a post by copex:

there is no reason why a one box soulition will not work as well as a modem and router

That's not quite what I meant, although I didn't phrase it very well.

As regards the basic requirement of getting a good, fast signal from your phone master socket to your computer's Ethernet port, I completely agree.

But if you want some particular function (QoS functions by LAN IP or something) that isn't available in a one-box solution then you're out of luck.

A modem is basically a simple piece of kit to convert xDSL of some flavour to Ethernet, provided it's adequately reliable and fast enough for the signal that's all it needs to do. Routers are a lot more complex and the users have a much wider variety of requirements, ranging from none at all (computer plugged directly into modem) up to needing something that they're more likely to get from Cisco than Netgear�

That sort of range of options is unlikely to ever appear in one-box solutions.

My other objection is the same as to the combined printer/fax/copier kit that's so common these days- if one bit goes wrong (or you want to update it) you have to replace to whole thing, with separated functions you just replace the bit that's gone belly-up (or out of date).

Unfortunately got one of these thinking it would be a good idea

Sync has now dropped by 10mbps from 34mbps

DSL Driver Version FwVer:5.4.11.21_A_TC3095 HwVer:T14.F7_0.0
DSL Link Status up
DSL Uptime 0 days 0 hours 25 minutes 51 seconds
DSL Modulation ITU G.993.2(VDSL2)
Annex Mode ANNEX_A
SNR Down 5.4 dB
SNR Up 6.0 dB
Line Attenuation Down 0.1 dB
Line Attenuation Up 3.1 dB
Data Rate Down 23961 kbps
Data Rate Up 7793 kbps
MAX Rate Down 31692 kbps
MAX Rate Up 7805 kbps
POWER Down 6.8 dbm
POWER Up 5.7 dbm
CRC Down 0
CRC Up 0

Sent feedback to Asus. Doubt they might be able to do much but hey ho

A drop in sync of that amount is often the result of Interleaving being turned on instead of Fast Path. Are there any stats from it that include the Bearer 0 part below?

Max:    Upstream rate = 14745 Kbps, Downstream rate = 58464 Kbps
Bearer: 0, Upstream rate = 14391 Kbps, Downstream rate = 59418 Kbps

Link Power State:       L0
Mode:                   VDSL2 Annex B
VDSL2 Profile:          Profile 17a
TPS-TC:                 PTM Mode(0x0)
Trellis:                U:ON /D:ON
Line Status:            No Defect
Training Status:        Showtime
                Down            Up
SNR (dB):        5.9             6.4
Attn(dB):        19.5            0.0
Pwr(dBm):        13.5            7.4
                        VDSL2 framing
                        Bearer 0
MSGc:           18              26
B:              239             237
M:              1               1
T:              64              62
R:              0               16
S:              0.1285          0.5260
L:              14936           3863
D:              1               1
I:              240             127
N:              240             254

First thing that strikes me is this:

In reply to a post by gf20:

DSL Uptime 0 days 0 hours 25 minutes 51 seconds

Assuming that's related to the time of your post, it's seldom a good idea to sync a modem at night if you can avoid it- too much interference from medium wave radio transmitters in particular and street lights etc.

Best time is usually in the morning, but anyway in daylight. Try again tomorrow.

Unfortunately thats the only DSL stats i've been able to find so far

Interestingly I reconnected the Openreach modem on its own about half a hour ago and ran a BT Speedtest which showed the profile as 30.76mbps which I think works out at around 31mbps

It's possible the ASUS supports telnet, (which if you are on Windows may need enabling).

Those stats I gave tend to only be available that way. Once you get into the router that way you are looking for a command such as
xdslcmd info --stats where the "x" may be an "a".

My RT-N66 doesn't support telnet:

iMac-3:~ billford$ telnet 192.168.1.1
Trying 192.168.1.1...
telnet: connect to address 192.168.1.1: Connection refused
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host

I just tried with my RT-N66U. First try zilch. Then checked the GUI and in Administration there is an Enable telnet option.

RT-N66U login: admin
Password:

ASUSWRT RT-N66U_3.0.0.4 Wed Sep 11 07:34:01 UTC 2013
admin@RT-N66U:/tmp/home/root# sh
admin@RT-N66U:/tmp/home/root# ?
sh: ?: not found
admin@RT-N66U:/tmp/home/root# /?
sh: /?: not found
admin@RT-N66U:/tmp/home/root#

.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Then checked the GUI and in Administration there is an Enable telnet option.

So there is, I'd never noticed that

Thanks

With vdsl2 it is more shortwave that will be an issue

True, brain wasn't working properly.

If you find any commands, preferably how to list them, that would be good to know .

I'll leave that to someone else if you don't mind- to say I'm unfamiliar with telnet grossly exaggerates my knowledge of it

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

ASUSWRT RT-N66U_3.0.0.4 Wed Sep 11 07:34:01 UTC 2013
admin@RT-N66U:/tmp/home/root# sh
admin@RT-N66U:/tmp/home/root# ?
sh: ?: not found
admin@RT-N66U:/tmp/home/root# /?
sh: /?: not found
admin@RT-N66U:/tmp/home/root#.

Its your basic Linux command line. So commands such as PWD or LS or CD work as expected. Since it doesn't have a modem in, there isn't any command or program to run such as xdslcmd on other devices.

You can check the standard interfaces using ifconfig and my configured local IP for the router seems to be on br0 which I assume is bridge0. The PPPoE session is on ppp0 and I have vlan1 and three non configured eth ports.

I'm pretty sure the ability to telnet (or SSH) into the router is so you can check logs, and/or run some advanced software packages. Its almost a NAS with these USB ports

Got home tonight and thought i'd do some more tinkering around.

First idea - Swap the DSL cable provided with the DSLN66U for the DSL cable I had in the Openreach modem

And as if by magic

DSL Driver Version FwVer:5.4.11.21_A_TC3095 HwVer:T14.F7_0.0
DSL Link Status up
DSL Uptime 0 days 0 hours 7 minutes 52 seconds
DSL Modulation ITU G.993.2(VDSL2)
Annex Mode ANNEX_A
SNR Down 5.8 dB
SNR Up 6.0 dB
Line Attenuation Down 0.1 dB
Line Attenuation Up 3.0 dB
Data Rate Down 30144 kbps
Data Rate Up 6725 kbps
MAX Rate Down 40736 kbps
MAX Rate Up 6731 kbps
POWER Down 4.5 dbm
POWER Up 5.1 dbm
CRC Down 0
CRC Up 0

A bit below what I had before but will try a resync at noon tomorrow

As far as I was aware there should be no difference between the DSL cables

In reply to a post by copex:

there is no reason why a one box soulition will not work as well as a modem and router, i have just setup draytek 2860 with two 80/20 connections one using the inbuilt vdsl modem and the second on the Ethernet wan via the openreach modem with no signs of slowdown, even had it at home to test and it worked flawless. though it is just two expensive for a home router.

I agree.

I manage a Draytek 2850 using its VDSL2 modem on a line that gives maximum attainable speed of 103,145kbps down and 3,7622kbps up.

It is currently synced at 79,984 down and 19,998 up.

It's at a remote site so I can't measure clean donwload speed at the moment but I'll have a look and see what it does when I'm next there. I think that when I was there for the install it was getting more than 70Mbps.

When set up correctly on a good line, I know the Cisco 887VA, which I also use, can achieve at least 72Mbps download using its internal modem - see http://hope.mx/cisco-887va-vdsl2-throughput. When I am able to put one of these on a good line I'll test it too.

Access lists, firewalls, NAT and VPNs are the sort of things that hammer all-in-one box peformance. I'm not sure that having an inbuilt modem should be a big issue. The modem will have its own chipset which shouldn't impact on main CPU performance.

While I agree there's somthing to be said for having a router and separate firewall (my configuration of choice) I can't see a router with build in modem is going to be worse for performance that a router with separate modem. Let's face it, router with inbuilt modem is the default way of connecting to ADSL services of various flavours so it can't be all bad.

I've just looked on Amazon. N66U - £72. DSL N66U £136. Gulp!

John

In reply to a post by JHo1:

I've just looked on Amazon. N66U - £72. DSL N66U £136. Gulp!

Get an openreach Huawei HG612 from eBay, and the N66U. Better combination.

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

While I agree there's somthing to be said for having a router and separate firewall (my configuration of choice) I can't see a router with build in modem is going to be worse for performance that a router with separate modem. Let's face it, router with inbuilt modem is the default way of connecting to ADSL services of various flavours so it can't be all bad.

Agreed, but ADSL was quite mature globally when the majority in the UK buy their own routers.

VDSL is a very picky and the UK ANFP protections against flooding legacy ADSL users, and the possible rollout of vectoring is a complex balance. Nobody knows if Openreach will block VDSL modems that don't participate correctly in Vectoring.

Could only find the Asus RT-N56U for £72.

If the RT-N66U is on there for just £72 then it was a bargain and has sold out.

Just updated my firmware ready for FTTC install in February and spotted a note in a mid January firmware release, that they had fixed a bug with PPPoE throughput. So be interesting to see if anyone with FTTP at over 100 Mbps is able to report better performance.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Just updated my firmware ready for FTTC install in February and spotted a note in a mid January firmware release, that they had fixed a bug with PPPoE throughput. So be interesting to see if anyone with FTTP at over 100 Mbps is able to report better performance.

Same comment from the Merlin third party firmware talking about PPPoE hardware acceleration.

Shame Sky don't do FTTP as they're the only big ISP that doesn't use PPPoE.