Billion 7800n Router and FttC Connection

Hey /all.

I wanted to ask, are you required to use the BTO Modem with the Billion 7800n?

I'm almost certain that I previously had no need to use the BTO Modem along side the Billion 7800n but i've read elsewhere that you MUST use the supplied BTO Modem.

The 7800 is an ADSL/ADSL2+ modem chipset, but can work with a VDSL2 modem (the openreach ones) and make use of an Ethernet WAN port.

The 8800 series from Billion is the ones with a built in VDSL2+ modem.

I have two BTO Modems, one has a CFW and the other has OFW. Which would be best to use or doesn't it really matter?

Many thanks for all your help...

P.S. The BTO Modem with OFW wasn't, at the time, able to install and accept a CFW...

In reply to a post by shaneosborne:

Hey /all.

I wanted to ask, are you required to use the BTO Modem with the Billion 7800n?

I'm almost certain that I previously had no need to use the BTO Modem along side the Billion 7800n but i've read elsewhere that you MUST use the supplied BTO Modem.

Yes you need to use a BTO Modem with the 7800n on FTTC, as the 7800n only has an ADSL/ADSL2+ modem built in.

The BTO modem will need to be plugged into the WAN Port of the 7800N.

In reply to a post by shaneosborne:

I have two BTO Modems, one has a CFW and the other has OFW. Which would be best to use or doesn't it really matter?

Are they the same model? What model are they?

If they are the Huawei model, use the custom/unlocked firmware! You are able to see your line status then - At least I can with my HG612 if that's what you have?

Edited by chris6273 (Thu 24-Sep-15 15:29:17)

In reply to a post by shaneosborne:

I have two BTO Modems, one has a CFW and the other has OFW. Which would be best to use or doesn't it really matter?

Many thanks for all your help...

P.S. The BTO Modem with OFW wasn't, at the time, able to install and accept a CFW...

?????? What is OFW & CFW ??????

In reply to a post by tommy45:

In reply to a post by shaneosborne:

I have two BTO Modems, one has a CFW and the other has OFW. Which would be best to use or doesn't it really matter?

Many thanks for all your help...

P.S. The BTO Modem with OFW wasn't, at the time, able to install and accept a CFW...

?????? What is OFW & CFW ??????

At a guess original firmware and custom firmware. I wish people wouldn't invent acronyms.

I went with the Huawei model with CFW.

I dont expect much of an improvement over my ADSL Connection but at a reduced rate and only paying £2.50 extra per month, I didn't mind.

My ADSL2+ Sync was;
Down: 18616kbps Up:1300kbps


VDSL Sync;
Down: 22896 Up: 5324

SNR Margin;
Down: 6 Up: 5.9

So i'm not going to get much of an increase and will return to ADSL once the offer ends in 12months time.

We have had some BTO work near to me and I was hoping this was going to be an improvement or an upgrade but getting any information from Superfast Cornwall and BTO is impossible. I had another post about this work on the forums.

The work was a new pole and underneath that was a large access area covered. The pole had nothing going to it, no wires etc. so no idea why a pole was put there.

Lets hope something is done as the next street to me all have FttP

The quadrupling of upload speed on FTTC might be very important for some uses, such as cloud storage.

It's very unlikely that you will get FTTP when you already have 18Mbit/s ADSL2+ and 22Mbit/s FTTC available. There are a handful of addresses where both FTTP and FTTC are available, but these are very rare. Limited public funds will be focused on areas with slower connections.


Please stop using the CFW and OFW acronyms - these are non-standard and nobody is quite sure what they mean.

CFW & OFW are used, as normal when refering to hacked firmwares for many devices. It's not something which I just made up and they are used widely when refering to firmwares...

OFM
CFM

Incidentally, in your Subject it is normal to use FTTC, not FttC.

In reply to a post by shaneosborne:

I wanted to ask, are you required to use the BTO Modem with the Billion 7800n?

... need to use the BTO Modem ... use the supplied BTO Modem.

BTO.

We've all taken that to be referring to the Openreach modem.

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 25-Sep-15 19:17:02)

The BTO Modem wasn't supplied, it was purchased.

[cough] [chuckle]

The word "supplied" was part of a direct quote from your OP.

If you follow the three links in my post you will not find your acronym meanings exist in them. They are obviously not as commonly use as you say. It would be better if you used the same abbreviations as everyone else. As per this post and the two by David_W.

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 26-Sep-15 12:27:38)

Although I would love to stay here and discuss such issues, I have many important things to do.

I have no idea what OFM and CFM have to do with our discussion but I assume you meant OFW and CFW.

I see many abbreviations used by many people and if I can't successfully guess what it means then i'll politely ask or search for it. I wouldn't make an issue out of it but I stand corrected and think it's best to avoid using these, I wouldn't want to cause a confusion and divert attention from the 'original post'.

Anyway, have a good day.

In reply to a post by shaneosborne:

I have no idea what OFM and CFM have to do with our discussion but I assume you meant OFW and CFW.

Oops . How true!

Only OFW appears in the lists. That leaves two of the three .

I would have thought your attention to detail would have picked up on that slight error

Anyway, have a good day...

Having searched the internet ive read that my exchange is being upgraded to Fibre OnDemand... What exactly is this and will it offer me anything better than I have now? I read that this could be ordered at a cost but the must be a huge expense if it involves replacing the copper part of my line to fibre (3km approx)...

Thanks all

Having decided to go back and check the articles date, it was 2013 so probably of no relevance now and i've heard nothing about it being offered but I doubt I would have...

Would be interested to know more about it, how to get it and what exactly it costs. I can assume this would be suitable for areas with poor connection who want to raise funds as a group and have the lines upgraded...

Fibre on Demand is on hold at present. BT are expecting to release something new to replace it in the near-ish future but what it will be and how widely available it will be is currently guesswork (at least for those of us that don't have insider knowledge).

It was quite expensive (could be in the thousands for install - dependent on distance) and required a 3 year contract to BTs 330Mb/s package which wholesaled at £99 per month.

Many thanks for that info.

The article I read listed my exchange as one of the very few to trial this but if it's on hold, I guess it is irrelevant now. At that cost, it must be directed at groups wanting to fund raise as they have in other areas or for bussiness use.

Thanks again...

It was a per house cost so getting groups together didn't make much (any?) difference. Mostly it became a business product (it used to be cheaper when first trialled).

The expectation is that with G.Fast trials and improvements to the way they can rollout FTTP that the new product will be more cost effective - but only time will tell.

Many thanks for that info, appreciated.

Will g.fast be rolled out to all fibre lines (fttp/fttc) when/if available and offer greater speeds?

My fibre sync has settled @

25.7Mbps || Down
5.1Mbps || Up

Not a great improvement as my ADSL Line Sync was at the max available for such a line (18.6/1.3). Although the upload offers better pings when gaming...

A couple of days ago, I switched from my Billion 7800n to the Sky Router and not using the BTO Modem but the networks speed was all over the shop and never reaching the max nor settling at a rate. Just decided to go back to my 7800n and the BTO Modem and everytging is fine and no more fluctuating speeds. Although the Sky Router offered a better sync speed the 7800n offered more stable network speeds...

Edited by shaneosborne (Wed 30-Sep-15 13:45:06)

I'm hoping someone here can assist.

For some reason, as mentioned previously, the Sky router offers a better sync rate *+5Mbps but the wifi side of the router is very poor.

Can I use the Sky Router as the modem and connect my 7800n to the LAN of the Sky Router (removing the BTO Modem) thus allowing wifi devices to connect to the 7800n as it offers better wifi range and speed?

Many thanks in advance.

Edited by shaneosborne (Fri 02-Oct-15 11:48:44)

Will and all are words with distinct meaning.

All we can say is Openreach has said 10,000,000 G.fast lines rolled out by 2020 if allowed to do so, e.g. Ofcom changes may cause delays or force a change in direction. With expansion after 2020 to the majority of the UK - presume to mean 55% to 65% of premises.

If G.fast does not offer faster speeds then no point in rolling out.
More FTTP (not just FoD2) is expected as in some places that will be cheaper to do than G.fast, but no one can say where.

Take-up from the FTTC roll-out is giving Openreach more data to use when deciding on which areas may get upgrade, so might not be an exact mirror of the FTTC roll-out.

Remember Virgin is talking of another 4 million plus homes passed.
Sky/TalkTalk are talking of 10m FTTH premises.
Gigaclear and Hyperoptic have expansion plans too.

Keep the Sky unit as a modem/router.

Connect a LAN port on it to a LAN port on the 7800n.

Give the 7800n a fixed IP address on the same subnet as the Sky unit, outside the allocatable range in the DHCP settings of the Sky modem/router.

Disable DHCP on the 7800n.

You can then use both for wifi if you wish, in various ways, to give even better coverage. Or just disable it on the Sky if you don't need it.

Thanks... Seems odd that the Sky unit offers a greater sync than the billion, it was the complete opposite on ADSL2+. As for the wifi on the Sky unit, it is really bad and i'm surprised at how bad it is...

Thanks again for your help...

In reply to a post by shaneosborne:

Thanks... Seems odd that the Sky unit offers a greater sync than the billion, it was the complete opposite on ADSL2+. As for the wifi on the Sky unit, it is really bad and i'm surprised at how bad it is...

Thanks again for your help...

The Billion 7800 is an ADSL only modem ,and has an Ewan port to connect to a VDSL modem such as the BT Huawei or ECI

I think that you ment to say that the SKY modem/router obtained a higher sync than the BT modem , as the billion has nothing to do with sync on FTTC

Edited by tommy45 (Sun 04-Oct-15 14:13:22)

Yup. That is correct, thanks.

Thought it best to ask here for now, instead of starting another post.

I'm thinking of purchasing the Billion BiPAC 7800DXL and use that instead of my Sky and 7800n, what do you think of this new modem/router? I know it's expensive but it does have a lot under the hood and it's on offer over at Amazon atm.

Thanks all...

It doesn't have a VDSL2 modem

Oh! I thought this one did....

I do know that Billion produced a router simular to the 7800n with VDSL Modem but can't think which one it was...

The one I listed above seems rather expensive knowing it has no VDSL Modem

8800AXL is the one I need but boy does it look ugly :/

In reply to a post by shaneosborne:

Oh! I thought this one did....

I do know that Billion produced a router simular to the 7800n with VDSL Modem but can't think which one it was...

The one I listed above seems rather expensive knowing it has no VDSL Modem

8800AXL is the one I need but boy does it look ugly :/

Currently the only VDSL modem / router AIO solutions that they sell in the uk are 8800nl and the 8800AXL But they are going to be releasing the 8900 range at some point, but i don't know when they will release it , but imo it could be a better product than the 8800 series, they also would appear to of returned to the same design as the earlier 7800 series box(shape) the BiPAC 8900TAOX model isn't going to be sold in the uk , apparently according to a poster on the billion forums , but they are going to sell other models in the 8900 series , i would wait and see, and see were we are with the g.fast roll out by then , as there ain't no point in spending money on something that becomes obsolete within 1-2yrs

Edited by tommy45 (Sun 04-Oct-15 18:24:20)

So, it's a boring Sunday and i've decided to reconfigure my network. If I don't do it today, it will never get done.

The Sky Router and the wi-fi feature is still very poor, even after changing wi-fi channels etc.

I'm going to use the Sky SR102 Fibre Modem as a standalone modem and connect my Billion 7800n to handle the wi-fi and ethernet connected devices.

I wanted to ask;

On the Sky Router, one of the ethernet ports has a green line below it, is this port a QoS Port or Gigabit Port and would it be worth using this port to connect my Billion 7800n too?

Another quick question of which i'm confused by the various answers found online. The SR102 shows 0.0db under the upstream noise margin, is this a bug limited to the broadcom chipset? The router doesn't seem to be affected by this...

Many thanks in advance

Something has gone wrong... Grrgghhh!

I've disabled Wifi on the Sky SR102 and disabled DHCP on the 7800n but the wifi speed, now provided by the 7800n alone is poor.

WiFi is disabled on the Sky SR102 but i'm still able to access the GUI via wifi even tbough it's disabled, is that normal?

I can no longer access the 7800n GUI, i've clearly done something wrong.

Accessing the internet is fine...

Any help is very much appreciated.

Edited by shaneosborne (Sun 11-Oct-15 16:46:45)

WiFi is disabled on the Sky SR102 but i'm still able to access the GUI via wifi even tbough it's disabled, is that normal?

I can no longer access the 7800n GUI, i've clearly done something wrong.

You will still be able to access via WiFi because you are accessing it via the LAN - so you connect wifi to one router and it uses the wired connection to connect to the other.

As far as why you can not access the 7800n what IP addresses are you using? I suspect you either have them both on the same IP address or you have them in 2 separate subnets (ie one is 192.168.1.254 and the other is 192.168.0.1). You need to make sure both routers have unique IPs in the same subnet - and the DHCP does not offer either of those addresses in its pool.

I think I know what has happened, I disabled DHCP but didn't allocate an IP Address. So, The Sky Router is using 192.168.0.1 and the Billion is 192.168.1.254. I don't know what the IP address assigned to the Billion. I've looked at the attached devices within the Sky Router but none of those IP Addresses allow me to access the Billions GUI.

Something strange has happened to day, I received an email from Sky saying Line Training has started (a week late) and after looking at the sync log, the Sky Router resynced and the speed of both upload and download has increased. Prior to this, my sync speed never changed and I had room left with the noise margin. So, it looks like Sky are a week late in starting my line training!

Just like to say thanks to all those helping me on this, appreciated.

Look at the DHCP settings on the Sky box, in particular the allocatable range.

Then go to the DHCP settings on the Billion. Keep its DHCP disabled, but assign its IP address as a fixed one outside the allocatable range of the Sky box, instead of the 192.168.1.254. So 192.168.0.n. Save it, and things should be good, with both GUIs available at the same time.

Edited as per ian72's post. You may need to adjust the Sky box allocatable range, as we both have said. 192.168.0.254 would seem a good one to use for the Billion. I was just picking what I believed was certain to be available so as to avoid doing that.

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 12-Oct-15 16:09:34)

You shouldn't assign any device to the first or last address in a range - so using 192.168.0.0 is not a good idea as it is a reserved address. The OP may need to shorten the range on DHCP to free up an address as likelihood is that it is set to hand out 192.168.0.2 - 192.168.0.254. Changing either end and assigning the freed up address to the router would do the job.

Bah! I didn't know that . But I'm sure I've seen 192.168.0.0.or 192.168.1.0 used as a router address. Netgear 834 series? Or perhaps my old Linksys.

Anyway, post edited to comply , and thanks.

The first address is reserved as it references the entire subnet and the last address is the broadcast address for the subnet. Neither should be used for devices. However, you could have a subnet that crosses several ranges (ie 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.1.254 where 192.168.1.0 would be a valid address).

When getting blocks of addresses from an ISP if you get a block of 8 addresses and you configure as a subnet then you would only actually have 6 usable.

The fun of IP subnets - I never bothered to learn how to calculate subnets as it all seems a bit too much like voodoo to me.

Yep - Netgear 834s are ....0.1 and Linksys ....1.1

A little of topic but seems silly to start a new thread when this one is open.

Does anyone know what Skys' target SNR is for both upload and download on fibre? In other posts, some say 6db but others say 5db.

I have previously mentioned this here but is there a bug with the Sky Fibre compatibilty routers and the current line noise as my shows 0.0db on the upload stats?

Thanks /all

It's outside of Sky's control. 6dB on Openreach FTTC.

Would the IP Address: 192.168.0.254 be okay to use for the 7800n?

Also, should I setup a default DMZ pointing to the 7800n address (above) and disable UPNP on the Sky Router?

Thanks...

That IP address should be fine. I'm sure the Sky router will complain if it isn't.

Yes, you can put it in the DMZ but why disable UPNP?

I'm not sure why, I read in an article about this subject to disable UPNP when setting up DMZ. It didn't explain why and like you, I was wondering why :/

You don't need a DMZ if you get what we've said correct. It all just works.

Okay thanks. All is working but why would you want to disable UPNP and setup DMZ?

Anyway, thanks for all your help. All is good and running sweetly

Good. So did you or didn't you set up a DMZ and disable UPNP?

No, I didn't bother. I just followed the advice here, that way if I did have problems then I could come back and ask. Doing anything else, I feel, would be wasting everyones time and advice given.

Thanks again, much appreciated.

In reply to a post by shaneosborne:

Would the IP Address: 192.168.0.254 be okay to use for the 7800n?

There's no problem using x.y.z.254 on a /24 (an IPv4 network with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0) as the only 'special' addresses are the lowest, called the subnet address (x.y.z.0 in this case) and the highest, which is the broadcast address (x.y.z.255 in this case).

It is usual to use either the first address after the subnet address or the last address before the broadcast address for the gateway address. In the case of a /24, this means using x.y.z.1 or x.y.z.254. I use x.y.z.254 on IPv4 /24s, largely out of mostly fond memories of Acorn's Econet (where the default fileserver was station 254 on the local network, expressed as 0.254).


Subnets only seem to be voodoo because decimal numbers are used for IPv4 addresses. The mystery disappears when you use binary. I have a public IPv4 /28. This means the first locally allocated bit in the address is the 28th bit. Subtract 28 from 32 gives you five - so the five least significant (right most) bits are local, making the subnet mask is 27 1s followed by 5 0s (255.255.255.224 in decimal).

My public network is x.y.z.112/28. 112 is 01100000 in binary, so x.y.z.112 is the network address. The broadcast address will be 01111111, which is x.y.z.127 in decimal. The 'normal' addresses in my /28 are x.y.z.113 to x.y.z.126.

Zen use the highest normal address in the block as the gateway address, so my router's WAN interface must be x.y.z.126. I NAT all IPv4 traffic without a dedicated public IP address onto x.y.z.126.


In fact, I use the /28 as two /29s. You can usually get away with using the network address of a subnet smaller than a /24 as a normal address (though I do not do so, as I have enough addresses not to need x.y.z.112 and x.y.z.120).


On IPv6, I follow the usual practice of <prefix>::1 for a statically allocated gateway, though IPv6 routing is typically done using link local addresses in the fe80::/10 subnet advertised, along with the network prefix and prefix length, using Neighbour Discovery.

IPv6 addresses contain 128 bits and are expressed in (up to) 8 groups of four hexadecimal characters separated by colons. An IPv6 subnet is usually at least a /64, though there are some circumstances where smaller allocations are used.

In almost all circumstances, you can omit leading zeroes in each group, also you can omit any number of groups that are entirely zero once only using ::. These rules allow 2a02:0001:03fe:0201:0000:0000:0000:0001 (which I've made up, though it is a globally routable address) to be written as 2a02:1:3fe:201::1. 2a03:2880:fffe:000b:face:b00c:0000:0099, which is a Facebook NS, can be written as 2a03:2880:fffe:b:face:b00c::99.

Typically an ISP gives its customers a /48 (delegation starts with the fourth group) or /56 (delegation starts with the right most two characters of the fourth group). This gives a lot of address space to play with! I have a /48 from Zen, but only use a small fraction of the lowermost /56 (currently the lowermost five /60s). A /56 delegation would be more than ample for my needs and I restrict myself to the lowermost /56 in case Zen ever want to recover the rest of the /48.

I hope someone can help.

Everything runs fine but sometimes access will stop. I try turning on wifi on my phone and nothing. It just keeps trying to connect to the network. However, once I reset the routers, everything is fine until it happens again. Everything is setup as advised. Anyone assist?

Well, the above problem seems to have settled a little but does happen on the odd occasion and no idea as to why it happens at all.

I also wanted to ask about 'FTTrN'.

I've read that trials have started in some areas from June/July this year and was wondering if this type of solution is used more widely than suggested. I ask because the next street on from me has green boxes attached to telegraph poles and lines are fed from that to the property and this is advertised as FttP/FttH. So, is this different to that of FTTrN?

Many thanks in advance.

Oh! Hope someone can also help with g.fast tech, will this eventually be rolled out nationwide or is this just a solution for rural areas and those of long lines?

Thanks again...

FTTH delivers a fibre connection all the way into the home/premises, unlike FTTC that only delivers it to the cabinet - from where it uses the old copper.

FTTrN takes fibre all the way to the pole, and just the copper from there is used. So similar to FTTC but shortening the copper length greatly.

G.Fast I don't know a lot about but is an advance on the VDSL2 used for FTTC, expected to be useful on copper runs of 500 metres or shorter.