New modem

I need a new VDSL modem... my old HG612 has died and I'm using my spare one, also a bit elderly. That means I'm without a spare if that dies as well...

It'll be feeding an Asus RT66NU (also a bit elderly, but I've got a spare ) on an 80/20 connection, ISP is IDNet if it makes any difference.

Looking at the DrayTek Vigor 130, any comments, gotchas, better ones?

TIA.

The Vigor 130 is often recommended. I've had one for a year or so and it works flawlessly. Generally requires no configuration, just plug in and switch on.

if you do not want to go down the combine router/modem road, then why not have a look on ebay for another HG612?

I still have my Huawei Echolife HG612 from which I got from ebay when I started having problems for £20. It is now in its box just in case it is needed again.

In reply to a post by billford:

I need a new VDSL modem... my old HG612 has died and I'm using my spare one, also a bit elderly. That means I'm without a spare if that dies as well...

The Zyxel VMG1312-B10A is an option and I bought one to replace my HG612 about 6 months before I gave up VDSL. It worked fine in bridge mode, and is quite small. I had slightly slower sync, although its apparently the same chip as in the HG612.

I never got to the bottom of why my iPhone backing up to iCloud caused a resync with the Zyxel, which went away when I went back to the HG612. Everything else was fine.

I used it with my Asus RT-AX88U router.

In reply to a post by ashdown:

The Vigor 130 is often recommended. I've had one for a year or so and it works flawlessly. Generally requires no configuration, just plug in and switch on.

Thanks, a user's opinion is better than any amount of perusing adverts and spec sheets

Since posting I've also seen it mentioned in a couple of users sigs; I'll get one ordered.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

if you do not want to go down the combine router/modem road, then why not have a look on ebay for another HG612?

I thought about that, but it would likely be about as old as the one I'm using and any electrolytic capacitors etc (which is, I suspect, the problem with mine) equally approaching the wrong end of their bathtub curve.

OTOH they're cheap, so I may go down both routes; two spares is always better than one

In reply to a post by jchamier:

The Zyxel VMG1312-B10A is an option

A bit pricy to use just as a modem, and it wouldn't be much use to me as a spare router because it doesn't do 5GHz... but thanks for the thought.

I have two 130's on active service. Highly recommended especially if used in conjunction with a DrayTek router.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

The Zyxel VMG1312-B10A is an option and I bought one to replace my HG612 about 6 months before I gave up VDSL. It worked fine in bridge mode, and is quite small. I had slightly slower sync, although its apparently the same chip as in the HG612.

Different chips in the 2 devices.

The Zyxel VMG1312-B10A has a Broadcom 63168
The Huawei HG612 uses a much older BCM6368.

My Zyxel 1312-b10a synced about 3Mb higher than my HG612.
It synced higher than any other modem on my line and is a favourite over on the kitz forum.
It's useless as a modem router combo. I only recommend it as a bridge modem.

The BCM63168 is 1 of Broadcoms high end SoCs.

The BCM63138 is their newest and current flagship dsl chipset.

+1
AAISP supplied my VMG1312-B10A with a slightly modified firmware (bug fixes that later went into the mainstream) pre-configured by them in router mode using my (live on Plusnet at the time) HG612 as the modem. (The strange reason given when I queried why being that was to correspond with my existing historical setup ).

I didn't like its WiFi so after a bit swapped it out for my ASUS RT-N66U.

A while later when my HG612 died I changed the Zyxel to modem mode (not easy at the time) as the instructions were basically how to convert it from modem/router to router! Even the definition of "bridge mode" meant the incoming WAN signal was from modem rather than a phone line! Then fed it into the ASUS.

I found an immediate increase of 3Mbps from around 50Mbps on the HG612.