Trouble with Vigor 130

Has anyone else had any problems getting a Vigor 130 to perform?


I have a FTTC line and live reasonably close to the cabinet - the line length is about 200m from the cabinet to my house. So I would expect to get something close to 76 Mbps. However I get something more like 62 Mbps. I currently use the Echolife HG612 modem that OpenReach gave me when I first got the line. The Echolife is connected to a Linux based VyOS box that I use as my router.

After seeing a number of good reviews for the Vigor 130, I thought I would buy one and give it a go and see if it performed any better. Very frustratingly it performs a *lot* worse. I started getting fairly frequent line drops, high packet loss and over a period of a week or so, the download speed slowly ramped down to ~40 Mbps at which point it stabilised a bit but I was still getting the occasional line drop. One of the worst things was the Vigor 130 sometimes didn't seem to know the line was down and I had to go and reset it myself.

I had an email exchange with Draytak support, who suggested increasing my SNR margin, which didn't seem to help much. And I also tried the "alternative firmware" - which wouldn't even go into "Showtime" mode.

I contacted my ISP and they got a OpenReach engineer to come out. He:
- Replaced my master socket, which fixed a copper junction fault
- Replaced the D-side copper pair between the cabinet and the pole
- Reset the dynamic line management

Initially things were looking better (with a download speed of 62Mbps). But then the DLM brought the download speed up and the problems returned. High packet loss and frequent line drops. I have now put the Echolife back and everything is stable again.


My gut feeling is that there is some kind of issue with my line (interference?) which the Echolife is coping with but the Vigor 130 isn't. I am just really surprised at how poor my experience with the Vigor was - it wasn't just a bit slower.


I am not sure if I should:
- Attempt to get Draytek to replace/repair my modem
- Give up and sell it on eBay, assuming that there isn't actully anything wrong with it and someone else will have more success with it


Has anyone else seen or experienced anything like this?

Thanks!

nick.

I had something similar. Also FTTC (but a bit slower than yours), also using an HG612.

Usually got around 68-70Mbps on speed tests, excellent BQM- Link
.
Around November last year it became clear the HG512 was dying, so I swapped it out for the spare, all fine again (although a bit lower sync due to neighbours Xmas lights!), but now I had no spare modem and I don't like single points of failure!

The Vigor had good reviews so eventually I bought one... it worked, but the BQM wan't impressive (link) and I lost a couple of Mbps on speed. The latter could easily have been just due to line conditions at the time it re-synced and wasn't a problem so I ignored it.

But over the next couple of weeks the BQM slowly got worse until the DLM threw its toys out of the pram (link). BQM was better, but I lost about 7Mbps

I wondered if it was a noisy power supply, so tried another with the same rating, no change.

So I reverted back to the HG512 and picked up another from a well-known auction site as the spare.

I've still got the Vigor as a last-ditch spare (it still works and I cba'd with the aggro of an Amazon return), but would also be interested in other's opinions/experiences.


Note- links to historical BQMs are to Dropbox, if you get a nag box to set up an account, just close it.

Thanks Bill. Useful to know someone else has the same problem.

Yeah, I think I should try and get a spare HG512, incase mine breaks.
I guess the good thing is that there were loads given out by OpenReach and most people would rather not have a separate modem.

It bothers me slightly that they are unsupported/not receiving firmware/security updates but maybe the risk is low.

I've got a Zyxel VMG8324-B10A I bought used and set it in modem mode. It works very well after BT fixed my line noise issues.