Modem/router for FTTC dualstack IPv6/v4

I've done some searches on the forums but not found much recent advice.

A bit ago various Billions were getting good reports, less so ASUS and I ended up unhappy with my ASUS RT-N66U. I forget what went wrong but I ended up back using my Plusnet 482N. The modem in each case being an unlocked HG612.

I'm still using the HG612 with a ZyXel VMG1312-B10A, supplied pre-configured by AAISP. I discovered soon after migrating to them using it that I wasn't getting a WAN IP address allocated by it, despite having a /48 on my account.

I had far more important things on my mind, and the IPv4 connection has run almost flawlessly, so I did nothing about it.

On Sunday I did in fact have an online chat with AAISP support, and discovered that this is a known fault with that router, and that there is little prospect of it being fixed. I was not right chuffed!

So I'd like now to get myself sorted out as per the Subject. When I was on the Plusnet trial I had dualstack running perfectly, until they started installing gateways that didn't do IPv6, (??? crazy or what?), and it became very hard to avoid being on one of those.

Any recommendations please? 5Ghz WiFi not a top priority though welcome. Huawei 288 cabinet. If the router also has a WAN port that could be useful if I find the modem component not as good as the HG612, but I wouldn't put it as an essential.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 23-Nov-16 19:19:57)

If you're prepared to stick with the HG-612 as a modem and make your own arrangements for Wi-Fi (Ubiquiti?), the forthcoming Netgate SG-1000 might be worth considering. This is a small ARM board that runs pfSense. I haven't yet seen any benchmarks for PPPoE, though, as the majority of the work is done in the FreeBSD kernel's netgraph code, I'm hopeful it will have enough power for full speed operation on UK FTTC.

I run pfSense on a small x64 device and find it an excellent choice. I submitted bug fixes for some PPP IPv6 bugs that are in the latest versions, also I contributed RFC 4638 support (PPPoE MTU > 1492, requires a jumbo capable NIC) that was shipped in pfSense 2.3, On top of the excellent work of all included with the pfSense project, this has made pfSense a good choice for IPv6 over UK FTTC.

Thanks David, but I just want a standard out-of-the-box solution.

I also suspect that some newer combo modem/routers now have better modems than the HG612. For a long time I don't think that was the case.

Though, I'll edit my OP as a WAN port on the box might be useful.

Listen to the talks at the recent IPV6 conference. I think it was the BT person who mentioned something about Netgear and some other routers which customers have connected to their network. He also said that home routers were the hardest part of the network to get right.

The Draytek 2760 and 2860 series routers have VDSL2 modems, are Openreach MCT approved and support simultaneous IPv4 and IPv6 with all firmwares. They're rock steady too.

You could purchase the 2760 without wifi and use the existing ASUS in access point mode.

Edited by caffn8me (Thu 24-Nov-16 17:00:23)

Sounds good, thanks. I'd forgotten about Drayteks.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Sounds good, thanks. I'd forgotten about Drayteks.

Cost induced amnesia perhaps, Bob.

The 2860 made me blink, I admit. The 2760 might technically suit but still leaves me with a two-box solution. Which is not a major drawback, having had such for at least five years.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Thanks David, but I just want a standard out-of-the-box solution.

The SG-1000 will be "standard out-of-the-box". Netgate are the company behind pfSense and they fund almost all of its development now. The SG-1000 hardware has been developed at their instigation, it will be supplied with access to a custom build of pfSense and some bundled commercial support. The difference compared to many competitor products is that there is an open source community edition of the software that can be run on non-Netgate hardware.

I'm not sure whether availability of the SG-1000 is being held back until a pfSense 2.4-RELEASE build is available or whether the hardware will start to ship before commercial release of pfSense 2.4.


pfSense on ARM is a new departure, but opens up the possibility of running pfSense on inexpensive hardware more suited to the home user market. Intel x64 hardware is just too expensive to be a serious player in this market.

I hope you're joking. From Netgate Home Page.

Best-in-class Network Security Appliances for any size network, even in the cloud. Low-power, high-throughput hardware appliances, many available with enterprise-class open-source pfSense® software. Secure networks start here.

How to make a security system insecure in one easy step.

Make the software open source. So anybody can get it and search out the weak points then test their hacks in-house so when deployed they work. Before the IS businesses detect the failing tries of an untested one.

Brilliant!