Interesting install - no Openreach modem

I had an install done in North London this morning. The Openreach engineer asked if the router was fibre compatible (FTTC) and when I told him it was he said that was good as he'd already plugged the RJ11 cable from it into the wall socket. He didn't even bother getting the Openreach modem out of the box or suggest using it.

I logged onto the router to see if we had a connection and it was all up and running.

The BT Wholesale ADSL checker estimate was for a download speed of 68.4Mbps and upload of up to 20Mbps.

The Draytek 2850n shows a line sync of 79984kbps down and 19999kbps up.

Attainable rate down is 127115kbps and up is 43215kbps. If only Profile 30a was available. This was the fastest the engineer had seen to date.

I suspect this is one of the first connections into the cabinet so it's going to be interesting to see how speeds drop over time as more connections are made. and crosstalk increases.

The Openreach engineer left the modem just in case there were faults which needed sorting ut. He did comment that he liked Draytek routers

It's going to be interesting to see how long it will be before BT offers a wires only product and no longer requires the use of an Openreach modem. I think today's experience was a good sign.

Edited by caffn8me (Thu 08-Aug-13 23:15:46)

That Draytek is pretty expensive. for that price I would want it to be gold plated

The Draytek's pretty cheap compared to the Cisco 887VA I use on another FTTC connection (also without Openreach modem).

This is for business use and credit card processing from handheld terminals is done over this connection so we need a robust solution. We also have 3G backup via a USB dongle which works very nicely. That's something even the Cisco can't do.

Edited by caffn8me (Thu 08-Aug-13 23:09:12)

If you need it for business and credit card processing then yes you need something that is robust. I still think it is a lot of money.

I suppose all in one VDSL unit are few and far between as well, so they can inflate the prices at the moment.

The impending introduction of the HomeHub 5 and no doubt other VDSL router/modems from other ISP's would suggest that wires only FTTC is just around the corner

With wires only we shall see a return of the micro-filter and all the attendant problems with customer wiring that plague many ADSL installations.

Still it all makes work for the working man /woman to do.

Edited by deleted (Fri 09-Aug-13 08:10:00)

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

I had an install done in North London this morning. The Openreach engineer asked if the router was fibre compatible (FTTC) and when I told him it was he said that was good as he'd already plugged the RJ11 cable from it into the wall socket. He didn't even bother getting the Openreach modem out of the box or suggest using it.

The only question I would have is if this actually a correct install. Wires only is a good move, but if its not yet officially launched, then hopefully they left the modem with you in case?

e.g. you might find the DLM and the Draytek "fight" over something really obscure, and the line performance degrades, as we've read about Draytek VDSL in this BBS before.

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

... the Cisco 887VA I use on another FTTC connection (also without Openreach modem).

This is for business use and credit card processing from handheld terminals is done over this connection so we need a robust solution.

My bold.

BT have requirements for 3rd party modems that will be used on an FTTC connection (I think they relate mainly to vectoring, but don't know the details).

Does the 887VA meet those requirements?

It doesn't seem to be any problem at the moment- to the best of my knowledge BT's DSLAMs haven't declined to connect to anyone using a non-compliant modem, but in the future... who knows?

It might be worth further investigation now, in case you find you have to do it in one hell of a hurry one day!

In reply to a post by jchamier:

The only question I would have is if this actually a correct install. Wires only is a good move, but if its not yet officially launched, then hopefully they left the modem with you in case?

It's been launched on a limited basis, to allow trials and stuff.

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

This is for business use and credit card processing from handheld terminals is done over this connection so we need a robust solution. We also have 3G backup via a USB dongle which works very nicely. That's something even the Cisco can't do.

Still overpriced IMO. A £10 router with a free OS on it can do all that, and is just as robust, if not more so. All this enterprise branded stuff is just hogwash. I get more disconnects and reboots on Cisco 2602's than on a £5 router running an alpha version of Openwrt.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

... then hopefully they left the modem with you in case?

Wakey, wakey .

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

The Openreach engineer left the modem just in case there were faults which needed sorting ut.

so its not really a no openreach modem.

I read the subject and thought no modem had been left, instead the engineer just didnt plug it in.

?
Have you read the opening post?

In reply to a post by jchamier:

The only question I would have is if this actually a correct install. Wires only is a good move, but if its not yet officially launched, then hopefully they left the modem with you in case?

e.g. you might find the DLM and the Draytek "fight" over something really obscure, and the line performance degrades, as we've read about Draytek VDSL in this BBS before.

I run two other sites with Draytek 2850 variants and one with a Cisco 887VA - al without Openreach modem. No problems yet after many months.

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

Still overpriced IMO. A £10 router with a free OS on it can do all that, and is just as robust, if not more so. All this enterprise branded stuff is just hogwash. I get more disconnects and reboots on Cisco 2602's than on a £5 router running an alpha version of Openwrt.

and your recommendation for an unbranded router with built in VDSL2 modem is......?

In reply to a post by billford:

BT have requirements for 3rd party modems that will be used on an FTTC connection (I think they relate mainly to vectoring, but don't know the details).

A quick check shows that the 887VA with current firmware should support vectoring, at least on the 17a profile.

In reply to a post by systemx:

The impending introduction of the HomeHub 5 and no doubt other VDSL router/modems from other ISP's would suggest that wires only FTTC is just around the corner

With wires only we shall see a return of the micro-filter and all the attendant problems with customer wiring that plague many ADSL installations.

Still it all makes work for the working man /woman to do.

I would imagine that a wires only install would include the interstitial filter plate as used currently rather than external microfilters. This should reduce the level of problems. Of course, if a customer has no NTE5 then one may need to be installed (as happened for me yesterday)

It seems the BT Shop sells Cisco 887VA routers which it advertises as VDSL/ADSL compatible.

http://www.shop.bt.com/products/cisco-887-vdsl-adsl-...

I wonder how well BT would fare if it tried to take action for breaching Ts&Cs againsst a BT Infinity customer who purchased this router from BT and used it to replace the Openreach modem.

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

In reply to a post by systemx:

The impending introduction of the HomeHub 5 and no doubt other VDSL router/modems from other ISP's would suggest that wires only FTTC is just around the corner

With wires only we shall see a return of the micro-filter and all the attendant problems with customer wiring that plague many ADSL installations.

Still it all makes work for the working man /woman to do.

I would imagine that a wires only install would include the interstitial filter plate as used currently rather than external microfilters. This should reduce the level of problems. Of course, if a customer has no NTE5 then one may need to be installed (as happened for me yesterday)

Trials using micro-filters have already taken place

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5213-openreach-in...

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

Attainable rate down is 127115kbps and up is 43215kbps. If only Profile 30a was available. This was the fastest the engineer had seen to date.

I suspect this is one of the first connections into the cabinet so it's going to be interesting to see how speeds drop over time as more connections are made. and crosstalk increases.

We were the first FTTC connection on our cabinet on 1 June 2013 and our initial attainable rates were 106/36. Over the last year the attainable rates have dropped to 86/27 and have been stable at that for some months now.

But there will still need to be a visit to teh cabinet and that is where a majority of the work is actually done. The premises side is just a small part and the cost savings small.

In reply to a post by MHC:

But there will still need to be a visit to teh cabinet and that is where a majority of the work is actually done. The premises side is just a small part and the cost savings small.

So long as the customer is at home, and not forgotten about the install, or been called away that's fine.
For Openreach life is much simpler if they only require access to their network and can schedule this to suit themselves.
How lovely it would be if they could connect a group of lines at the PCP and then just check at an external nte that all was well. No need to bother the end user at all.

Not really true, all ports are activated remotely the night before activation. All an engineer would have to do is pop there and do a few jumpers depending if anyone needed to be connected.

Obviously, message the EU before and after.

In reply to a post by MHC:

But there will still need to be a visit to teh cabinet and that is where a majority of the work is actually done. The premises side is just a small part and the cost savings small.

Part of the reasoning is probably along the same lines VM developed the Pooperhub, having an "all in one" integrated device is... well. People like shiny. No real technical or economic benefit though.

In reply to a post by systemx:

In reply to a post by MHC:

But there will still need to be a visit to teh cabinet and that is where a majority of the work is actually done. The premises side is just a small part and the cost savings small.

So long as the customer is at home, and not forgotten about the install, or been called away that's fine.
For Openreach life is much simpler if they only require access to their network and can schedule this to suit themselves.
How lovely it would be if they could connect a group of lines at the PCP and then just check at an external nte that all was well. No need to bother the end user at all.

Indeed, we're getting to the point where lots of people are coming out of contract with Openreach FTTC services and may be disconnecting/reconnecting or switching providers - and will have all the necessary equipment installed already.

Furthermore you can easily batch up cabinet work - one tech could connect ten lines in the cab in ten minutes, even just driving to ten different customers' homes after that and dropping off a box would probably take over double the time. Doing it this way, the customers' preference for visit time also becomes irrelevant, so you could conceivably cut it down to one single tech visiting a particular cabinet once a week and setting everyone up in a matter of minutes, rather than needing him in the area all day because one customer wants a visit in the morning and another in the area is only available in the afternoon...

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

and your recommendation for an unbranded router with built in VDSL2 modem is......?

And your requirement to have a built-in un-approved TOS violating VDSL2 modem is?

I have,. and a openreach modem was left.

So nothing special about that install.

In reply to a post by systemx:

The impending introduction of the HomeHub 5 and no doubt other VDSL router/modems from other ISP's would suggest that wires only FTTC is just around the corner

With wires only we shall see a return of the micro-filter and all the attendant problems with customer wiring that plague many ADSL installations.

Still it all makes work for the working man /woman to do.

Around 13 years ago when I first had ADSL ( time flies) I had a BTOR engineer come and install it, and a good job really as there was a few problems that he sorted out. When I went back to BT the second time I had a couple of problems again, no one to sort it out just someone on the end of a phone in a different country and they knew nothing what so ever, they just followed a script.

Microfilters are horrid things, they get knocked, they break and they are cheap and nasty, I had more problems with micro filters than I ever did with my ADSL faceplate, which is why I fitted another one.
I can see people having even more problems if they do self install fibre., also there is not enough VDSL combined modem/routers at a decent price, not every one Uses BT and also not everyone uses large ISPs.


I know my broadband is a different system as the work was on the roof, but I am sure glad that they put it in and not me, any problems, they sorted and they even got my router which they don't support working on it.

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

Still overpriced IMO. A £10 router with a free OS on it can do all that, and is just as robust, if not more so. All this enterprise branded stuff is just hogwash. I get more disconnects and reboots on Cisco 2602's than on a £5 router running an alpha version of Openwrt.

I suspect the problem is that Cisco have hardly any (percentage terms) of people using their kit on ADSL services - as generally Cisco kit is used to support a lot of users where ADSL service wouldn't have sufficient capacity.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Wakey, wakey

Ha, you got me :-/
Yes I did need more sleep last night.

Edited by jchamier (Fri 09-Aug-13 22:10:54)

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

I wonder how well BT would fare if it tried to take action for breaching Ts&Cs againsst a BT Infinity customer who purchased this router from BT and used it to replace the Openreach modem.

Excellent, nice find Would be amusing

I wonder if Juniper do any VDSL kit, that would be nice (we are a Juniper shop at work). I can't see the benefits over my 3 month+ uptime Asus RT-N66U with Openreach Huawei HG modem.

Maybe the all-in-ones will support baby-jumbo frames over PPPoE properly, so those of us on the WBC backhaul network can get 1500byte MTU. I suspect Sky uses MPoA to solve this (and give routers less work to do).

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

Still overpriced IMO. A £10 router with a free OS on it can do all that, and is just as robust, if not more so. All this enterprise branded stuff is just hogwash. I get more disconnects and reboots on Cisco 2602's than on a £5 router running an alpha version of Openwrt.

I suspect the problem is that Cisco have hardly any (percentage terms) of people using their kit on ADSL services - as generally Cisco kit is used to support a lot of users where ADSL service wouldn't have sufficient capacity.

We use Cisco kit for just about everything at work (phones etc.). Trying to do any work in our new office on a 3.5Mbps down/1 Mbps up backup ADSL line for two weeks while waiting for Openreach to get our fibre connection up and running was quite interesting.

Still it's all good now with a nice 100/100 connection.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Maybe the all-in-ones will support baby-jumbo frames over PPPoE properly, so those of us on the WBC backhaul network can get 1500byte MTU. I suspect Sky uses MPoA to solve this (and give routers less work to do).

The Cisco is set to a 1500byte MTU - the Draytek won't set to anything above 1492.

What's all the fuss about over an additional 8 bytes of MTU? Do you really think you'll notice a 0.5% difference?

In reply to a post by jchamier:

I wonder if Juniper do any VDSL kit, that would be nice (we are a Juniper shop at work). I can't see the benefits over my 3 month+ uptime Asus RT-N66U with Openreach Huawei HG modem.

The SRX110 Services Gateway seems to fit trhe bill

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

I wonder how well BT would fare if it tried to take action for breaching Ts&Cs againsst a BT Infinity customer who purchased this router from BT and used it to replace the Openreach modem.

That could certainly be interesting

But I don't think I'd want one- nearly £340 for:

Four 10/100 Mbps fast Ethernet-managed switch ports

Pull the other one

In reply to a post by billford:

But I don't think I'd want one- nearly £340 for:

Four 10/100 Mbps fast Ethernet-managed switch ports

Pull the other one

That's not exactly a problem as the line it's on won't go above 35Mbps and there's no likelihood of FTTPod at an economic price. There's also a dedica\ted hardware firewall with gigabit ports inside the router that handles all NAT and security.

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

That's not exactly a problem as the line it's on won't go above 35Mbps and there's no likelihood of FTTPod at an economic price.

I wasn't thinking of the internet connection but about transfers within the LAN.

There's also a dedica\ted hardware firewall with gigabit ports inside the router that handles all NAT and security.

Not sure what you mean by that- the spec tab on your link only refers to the four 10/100 LAN ports?

In reply to a post by billford:

Not sure what you mean by that- the spec tab on your link only refers to the four 10/100 LAN ports?

The router is connected to another box that does the firewalling and LAN and this has gigabit.

Don't confuse home world "all in one box" stuff with corporate stuff

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

In reply to a post by jchamier:

I wonder if Juniper do any VDSL kit, that would be nice (we are a Juniper shop at work). I can't see the benefits over my 3 month+ uptime Asus RT-N66U with Openreach Huawei HG modem.

The SRX110 Services Gateway seems to fit trhe bill

Ha, excellent! Now to save up for one! (I've just been playing with our new SRX 210 and 220's).

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Don't confuse home world "all in one box" stuff with corporate stuff

I don't usually, but Sarah's phrase "inside the router" threw me a bit.

Thanks for the clarification

Perhaps she meant "the router room"?

Possibly, but I suspect it was used as a sort of "black box" name for the collection of bits and pieces that takes a phone line in at one end and presents you with a number of gigabit ports at the other

Edited by billford (Sat 10-Aug-13 12:03:30)

In reply to a post by billford:

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Don't confuse home world "all in one box" stuff with corporate stuff

I don't usually, but Sarah's phrase "inside the router" threw me a bit.

Thanks for the clarification

Ooops, sorry about that!

I run a Cisco router with a separate dedicated hardware firewall connected to it. This is pretty much the same setup as I've run for fourteen years at home (albeit with several different Cisco routers and two different firewalls which were both from the same vendor).

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

What's all the fuss about over an additional 8 bytes of MTU? Do you really think you'll notice a 0.5% difference?

it can be worse then that some sites/routers dont handle the smaller mtu too well, so might get occasional hangs on pages and such.

I see tomato firmware shibby etc. allows to use 1500mtu on pppoe, as well as BT's homehubs. using jumbo frames to get round the 1500 packet size limit.

Thanks, think I'll stick with my Fritz! 7390

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

It's going to be interesting to see how long it will be before BT offers a wires only product and no longer requires the use of an Openreach modem. I think today's experience was a good sign.

EE have their new fibre broadband router that you connect with no engineer required to call at your home.

The Bright Box 2 is designed to complement EE�s own superfast Fibre broadband network and when it launches it will lead EE to become the first UK broadband provider to offer plug and play Fibre broadband, as the Bright Box 2 is just that- it can easily be set up and doesn�t require an engineer to come to your house. All you have to do is plug it in to your phone socket, meaning that you can quickly and easily get online, rather than having to wait around for potentially days for an engineer to come and install it.
To make things even more convenient the Bright Box 2 is small enough to fit through a letter box so you don�t even need to be in for delivery.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2013/07/full-sp...

http://www.4g.co.uk/broadband/operators/ee-launching...

In reply to a post by E7er:

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

It's going to be interesting to see how long it will be before BT offers a wires only product and no longer requires the use of an Openreach modem. I think today's experience was a good sign.

EE have their new fibre broadband router that you connect with no engineer required to call at your home.

Same as BT's HomeHub 5 then!!

I hope EE's Bright Box 2 does a better job of handling SIP Protocol for VOIP than the Bright Box 1 which is a total disaster.

Only one gigabit LAN port, the other three are still 100Mbps, which at a claimed £175 RRP is a bit poor, and since when did EE have their own FTTC network ?

They conveniently forget to mention the engineer visit to the cabinet required.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by E7er:

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

It's going to be interesting to see how long it will be before BT offers a wires only product and no longer requires the use of an Openreach modem. I think today's experience was a good sign.

EE have their new fibre broadband router that you connect with no engineer required to call at your home.

Same as BT's HomeHub 5 then!!

... and the Mk 2 version of the Sky SR101 Hub when get out of beta testing.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Only one gigabit LAN port, the other three are still 100Mbps, which at a claimed £175 RRP is a bit poor, and since when did EE have their own FTTC network ?

They conveniently forget to mention the engineer visit to the cabinet required.

In all fairness no ISP ever mentioned the exchange work required for ADSL.

The point is that this router can be posted to the customer, and the customer informed that on such and such a date they can plug it in and away they go.
Just like ADSL.
No doubt it will come with a couple of micro-filters.

These routers get smaller and smaller and then people wonder why they over heat and go belly up. No room for air to move, that is the problem.

Only last week that I saw what happens when a BT HH3 overheats. i am not saying we need massive routers, like the old days, but they seem fixated now and making them as small as possible.

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

I hope EE's Bright Box 2 does a better job of handling SIP Protocol for VOIP than the Bright Box 1 which is a total disaster.

Orange old routers was awful.

In reply to a post by systemx:

In all fairness no ISP ever mentioned the exchange work required for ADSL.

The point is that this router can be posted to the customer, and the customer informed that on such and such a date they can plug it in and away they go.
Just like ADSL.
No doubt it will come with a couple of micro-filters.

Oh good grief, I thought with people i know going to fibre, BTOr would sort out problems and I would be left alone, now it seems I will not be left alone.

ADSL all over again

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

In reply to a post by systemx:

In all fairness no ISP ever mentioned the exchange work required for ADSL.

The point is that this router can be posted to the customer, and the customer informed that on such and such a date they can plug it in and away they go.
Just like ADSL.
No doubt it will come with a couple of micro-filters.

Oh good grief, I thought with people i know going to fibre, BTOr would sort out problems and I would be left alone, now it seems I will not be left alone.

ADSL all over again

I agree with you comments about small routers and also that self-install with micro-filters will lead to a poor service for many. But ISP's want a small package so the delivered router will fit through a letter box so there is no need for their customer to retrieve a parcel from the post office should they not be at home when it is delivered.

ISP's also want a cheaper activation fee so that they can offer shorter contracts as there is less to make up during the contract period. so self-install is the way to go, and for most this will use micro-filters unless they wish to install an ssfp

Just like ADSL now.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

These routers get smaller and smaller and then people wonder why they over heat and go belly up. No room for air to move, that is the problem.

Only last week that I saw what happens when a BT HH3 overheats. i am not saying we need massive routers, like the old days, but they seem fixated now and making them as small as possible.

You are right routers get smaller and smaller; Orange did supply that small Netgear DGN1000 router. I am not kidding it got frighteningly hot, so hot you could fry an egg on it. Orange stopped supplying it.

After then Orange supplied the even smaller letter box size, "Bright Box 1 router" and you can hardly feel any heat coming from the router, it's a very good small router they supply now. If the Bright Box 2 router performs as good as the earlier model it will be a good bit of kit.

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

I hope EE's Bright Box 2 does a better job of handling SIP Protocol for VOIP than the Bright Box 1 which is a total disaster.

Are you getting mixed up between the Orange Livebox and their Bright Box routers, the Livebox has a dedicated VoIP port.

Sadly this router is now discontinued http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Livebox

In reply to a post by E7er:

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

I hope EE's Bright Box 2 does a better job of handling SIP Protocol for VOIP than the Bright Box 1 which is a total disaster.

Are you getting mixed up between the Orange Livebox and their Bright Box routers, the Livebox has a dedicated VoIP port.

Sadly this router is now discontinued http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Livebox

No, if you plug a VOIP phone (I was trying a SNOM 370) into a network with the old Bright Box router, calls mostly fail. I can't remember the exact nature of the failure but it may have been something like voice quality being too poor or not working in one direction at all.

Swapping it out for a Draytek (the customer's choice) solved the problem straight away.

micro filters isnt a big deal, I tested my old adsl filters on my FTTC and there is no noticeable difference. I didnt test long term use but the sync speed wasnt changed.

The biggest problem I see is if the line/service is faulty on activation, with a self install then its a bad position for the end user.

I remember back to my adsl install back in 2000 I was over the 43db attenuation limit allowed for the service and was a problem on install day, the engineer was a top guy who worked round the problems and got me up and running. He was excited as me as I was the first one in all of leicestershire to have adsl.

What happens when the HH3 overheats? Any pictures? Mines often very hot. I have noticed it gets far far hotter than any router I've ever personally used (apart from the netgear dg834gt which just boiled away all day).

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

micro filters isnt a big deal, I tested my old adsl filters on my FTTC and there is no noticeable difference. I didnt test long term use but the sync speed wasnt changed.

The biggest problem I see is if the line/service is faulty on activation, with a self install then its a bad position for the end user.

I remember back to my adsl install back in 2000 I was over the 43db attenuation limit allowed for the service and was a problem on install day, the engineer was a top guy who worked round the problems and got me up and running. He was excited as me as I was the first one in all of leicestershire to have adsl.

I agree, micro-filters in themselves are not the problem (no more than ADSL SSFP's are) However when moving away from centralise filtering to individual filtering, the building extension wiring is brought into the VDSL circuit with its possible bridge taps and non-twisted pair cable, that may have a serious effect on FTTC services.

In reply to a post by systemx:

I agree with you comments about small routers and also that self-install with micro-filters will lead to a poor service for many. But ISP's want a small package so the delivered router will fit through a letter box so there is no need for their customer to retrieve a parcel from the post office should they not be at home when it is delivered.

I can see why they want that, but I still think it will cause more problems.

ISP's also want a cheaper activation fee so that they can offer shorter contracts as there is less to make up during the contract period. so self-install is the way to go, and for most this will use micro-filters unless they wish to install an ssfp

Just like ADSL now.

Only with some packages and some ISps, Bt still got 18 month contracts with ADSL, whihc I think in this day and age is stupid. ISPs want to keep people as long as they can and long contracts is one way of doing it. I am shocked that we don't have 24 months to be honest.

6 months should be the maximum for ADSL these days.


Yes, I know my broadband contract is 24 months, it works on a different principle and the company is a small company and no doubt have to get their money back on the module. I am not sure if I would go for such a long contract again, but I suppose it depends on the circumstances.

In reply to a post by E7er:

You are right routers get smaller and smaller; Orange did supply that small Netgear DGN1000 router. I am not kidding it got frighteningly hot, so hot you could fry an egg on it. Orange stopped supplying it.

After then Orange supplied the even smaller letter box size, "Bright Box 1 router" and you can hardly feel any heat coming from the router, it's a very good small router they supply now. If the Bright Box 2 router performs as good as the earlier model it will be a good bit of kit.


I have never had a router that got hot, warm yes, but not hot. i think the warmest one is my old Safecom, but the case of that is metal and I think it acted as a heat sink as well.

Both netgears was fine even the old 834 one.

all electronics produce heat and if the heat is not being distributed then something is going to go pop at some point. Even my little Tp-link wi-fi adaptor gets warm, sometimes too warm.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

What happens when the HH3 overheats? Any pictures? Mines often very hot. I have noticed it gets far far hotter than any router I've ever personally used (apart from the netgear dg834gt which just boiled away all day).

No pictures, but it was a bit messy, the plastic was all melted on the front. It have been posted back to BT now and I stuck my old Speedtouch in it's place until it is replaced.
My old Netgear Dg 834 was fine, it got warm, but never very hot. the TP-link I got now pushes out a bit of heat at the bottom, which is why I made little stilts for it but I still don't think it is that bad,

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Bt still got 18 month contracts with ADSL, whihc I think in this day and age is stupid. ISPs want to keep people as long as they can and long contracts is one way of doing it. I am shocked that we don't have 24 months to be honest.

We do have 24 month contracts.

Plusnet (part of the BT Group) pushed me into a 24 month contract with that half price deal for 6 months.

That's in spite of Ofcom stating that it wanted minimum contract terms to be shorter (ideally a month).

dont worry ofcom will act, they are currently consulting on how to enforce minimum contracts. They do consider long contracts anti competitive.

What to expect in future is both

1 - vdsl migration fees same as current adsl migration fees. This doesnt mean retail charges will match but makes it likely.
2 - openreach min term reduced to 1 month. This should combined with self install and lower migration fees bring retail min term down to something reasonable.

NOTE: That one 1 month is in relation to the Openreach requirement for a new 12 month contract after a migration.

PlusNet already offers ADSL with 1 month contracts, it may cost more than the longer contracts, but is that wrong if the costs are real?

While the good ISP's can be said to have nothing to fear from short contracts, humans will always chase the best deal, which may mean a higher churn as people chase the next greatest deal and then come back a month or two later when they discover other provider was cheaper due to their lack of bandwidth.

adsl is irrelevant in this case ofcom are consulting on fttc contract lengths.

short term adsl availability doesnt excuse whats happening in the vdsl market.

if you read revk's blog you will eg. see that bt use the same automated process for vdsl migrations as they do for adsl yet vdsl is 5x the cost for a migration.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

PlusNet already offers ADSL with 1 month contracts, it may cost more than the longer contracts, but is that wrong if the costs are real?

It needs to be fixed at the wholesale level - don't openreach have min 12 month contracts?? So until that is fixed ISPs are losing out if they let you cancel earlier.

In reply to a post by E7er:

The Bright Box 2 is designed to complement EE�s own superfast Fibre broadband network

Whose own network? BTw's you mean? EE doesn't have any (BB) network period.

By the modem/router they are just plagiarising BT's latest HH modem/router .

Just as you have just plagiarised EE's own press release w/out attributing it .

Edited by XRaySpeX (Tue 13-Aug-13 23:01:17)

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

In reply to a post by E7er:

The Bright Box 2 is designed to complement EE�s own superfast Fibre broadband network

Whose own network? BTw's you mean? EE doesn't have any (BB) network period.

Well they must have an ISP network.

Back in the old days of dialup you could dial lots of different ISPs, and get different performance, some could saturate the 56k modem, some couldn't at peak times. Its no different today with the wholesale bit (either BT's WBC, Sky's LLU network, or TalkTalk's LLU network) just connects your home to the ISP network at higher and higher speeds. How the ISPs network performs depends on how good you think the "internet" is.

Your post implied it was all BT run with white label re-branding?

Edited by jchamier (Tue 13-Aug-13 23:03:59)

The Bright Box is surely designed to complement Openreach's superfast Fibre broadband network? Backhaul from the exchange and ISP internal routing systems have always been nothing to do with the home kit design.

The advertising fluff is just that. Fluff!

In the case of EE, it is indeed BT Wholesale White Label.

In reply to a post by edwincluck:

We do have 24 month contracts.

Plusnet (part of the BT Group) pushed me into a 24 month contract with that half price deal for 6 months.

That's in spite of Ofcom stating that it wanted minimum contract terms to be shorter (ideally a month).

I would certainly not go for a 24 month or 18 month contract with a normal ISP. i only went for a 24 month with this one because of what it is.

not that I am planning to change when my contract ends.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

The Bright Box is surely designed to complement Openreach's superfast Fibre broadband network? Backhaul from the exchange and ISP internal routing systems have always been nothing to do with the home kit design.

Agreed, but who said it was specific to the home router, but was talking about the whole service?

The advertising fluff is just that. Fluff!

You're safe I agree there!

In the case of EE, it is indeed BT Wholesale White Label.

Ah-ha, I'd not taken that on board, but its just Orange renamed isn't it. (doh!).

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

adsl is irrelevant in this case ofcom are consulting on fttc contract lengths.

short term adsl availability doesnt excuse whats happening in the vdsl market.

if you read revk's blog you will eg. see that bt use the same automated process for vdsl migrations as they do for adsl yet vdsl is 5x the cost for a migration.

Why just FTTC contracts? i bet there are some people out there that don't want a 18 month contract on ADSL.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Well they must have an ISP network.

No, they don't! Not a single wire! It is all BTw White Label.

You did indeed infer what I implied

In reply to a post by jchamier:

but its just Orange renamed isn't it.

Actually the BB side is still 'Orange, brought to you by EE' (duh!) and is basically a marketing, and perhaps support, only organisation.

adsl is already 1 month on wholesale. so nothing for ofcom to fix.

that doesnt mean all retail will do 1 month, but some do.

on vdsl none do 1 month due to the wholesale situation.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

In reply to a post by jchamier:

but its just Orange renamed isn't it.

Actually the BB side is still 'Orange, brought to you by EE' (duh!) and is basically a marketing, and perhaps support, only organisation.

Same branding they're using with the mobiles. I can only guess its to stop those people who left Orange for T, or T for Orange from ditching both and going to O2/Voda/3.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

adsl is already 1 month on wholesale. so nothing for ofcom to fix.

that doesnt mean all retail will do 1 month, but some do.

on vdsl none do 1 month due to the wholesale situation.

Then they need to sort out retail then, not saying all contracts should be a month, but no more than 12.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

adsl is already 1 month on wholesale. so nothing for ofcom to fix.

that doesnt mean all retail will do 1 month, but some do.

on vdsl none do 1 month due to the wholesale situation.

Then they need to sort out retail then, not saying all contracts should be a month, but no more than 12.

ofcom has the view retail sorts itself out.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

In reply to a post by qasdfdsaq:

What's all the fuss about over an additional 8 bytes of MTU? Do you really think you'll notice a 0.5% difference?

it can be worse then that some sites/routers dont handle the smaller mtu too well, so might get occasional hangs on pages and such.

I see tomato firmware shibby etc. allows to use 1500mtu on pppoe, as well as BT's homehubs. using jumbo frames to get round the 1500 packet size limit.

ok since BT decided to boot me of my PPP session last night losing my ip I did some maintenance on my broadband.

Installed latest shibby on router, it has cosmetic errors in the gui with the mtu but I can confirm 1500 mtu is now up and running on my pppoe service. Using a asus rt-n16 router, should also work on the more popular (on here) asus rt-n66 router also. If interest is shown I will make a new thread on what I did to get the mtu working.

Also power cycled my modem to up my speed a bit as I had some spare snrm.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

Installed latest shibby on router, it has cosmetic errors in the gui with the mtu but I can confirm 1500 mtu is now up and running on my pppoe service. Using a asus rt-n16 router, should also work on the more popular (on here) asus rt-n66 router also. If interest is shown I will make a new thread on what I did to get the mtu working.

Yes please, I have an RT-N66U and currently running Merlin's build, but it doesn't support 1500byte MTU with PPPoE.

ok this is a cutback version. I am quoting myself.

so as some may know using a homehub one can have a 1500 byte MTU on FTTC.

Sky is excluded on this as they dont use PPPoE.

Most other routers, especially in default states are limited to a 1492 byte MTU.

AAISP made some noise about this when they modified their firebrick devices to allow a 1500 byte MTU to be used, they did this by enabling baby jumbo frames and allowing the interface to have a MTU higher than 1500 so the overheads of pppoe do not eat into the 1500 bytes.

I also read on some other sites that the version of the ppp software used on tomato firmware's was patched to support higher mtu values, although people were having issues getting it to work due to the tomato code forcing lower mtu values (probably as dummy protection). The dev had posted he would remove this handholding of mtu but not much else was said.

So last night I flashed the latest shibby firmware on to my asus rt-n16. Which is v1.28. I am using the AIO version.

I configured the device whilst it was offline (pc online via 3G tethering), enabled jumbo frames on PC (not sure if this bit needed), enabled jumbo frames on the router, manually set the mtu to 1500 on the pppoe config page on the router and added mru 1500 mtu 1500 to the optoins field (not sure if this bit needed either). I manually set the eth0 and vlan2 interfaces to 1508 mtu's inside ssh on the router. (pppoe has 8bytes overhead).

Then I started up the ppp session and watched. The shibby gui reported 1492 bytes of mtu which wasnt good, but the router was still offline so I didnt immediatly click what was going on, eventually I decided and hoped it was a just a gui thing and recconected the router back to the wan cable.

The result was the gui still reports 1492 but this I now know is not real, inside the router the ppp interface has a 1500 byte mtu and the values I set on eth0 and vlan2 were not overuled by the scripts and vlan1 was also set to 1508 mtu. I tested on speedguide.net's analyzer and non fragemented pings (after I set pc to 1500 mtu) which confirms 1500 bytes is working over the internet.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

ok this is a cutback version. I am quoting myself.

Great, something to try when I'm on hols in a couple of weeks.

shibby firmware is Tomato Firmware 1.28.0000 MIPSR2-112 K26 USB AIO
so 112 build.

Also I tested on my 2nd pc, with mtu on default auto detect and that has 1500 bytes also.

I dont know if other variants of tomato such as toastman can do this, I believe merlin asuswrt cannot do this. I also suspect jumbo frames isnt needed on the pc, only on the router. But not tested this.

Hi Chrysalis,

Just for interest and as I'm using the same firmware on my RT-N66U I thought I'd give it a go.

My ISP is Plusnet and I got it working using your guide. Works very nicely. Thanks.

C:\Users\Tim>ping google.com -f -l 1472

Pinging google.com [173.194.66.113] with 1472 bytes of data:
Reply from 173.194.66.113: bytes=64 (sent 1472) time=16ms TTL=47
Reply from 173.194.66.113: bytes=64 (sent 1472) time=16ms TTL=47
Reply from 173.194.66.113: bytes=64 (sent 1472) time=17ms TTL=47
Reply from 173.194.66.113: bytes=64 (sent 1472) time=16ms TTL=47

Thanks
Tim

good to see

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Great, something to try when I'm on hols in a couple of weeks.

I found a tip on the SmallNetBuilder forum under the Merlin software for the RT-N66U, which was simply to telnet or SSH into the router and issue these commands:

ifconfig eth0 mtu 1508
ifconfig vlan2 mtu 1508
ifconfig ppp0 mtu 1500

which works!

a ping test before:

C:\>ping google.com -f -l 1472

Pinging google.com [173.194.41.68] with 1472 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.40.1: Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set.

and a ping test after

C:\>ping google.com -f -l 1472

Pinging google.com [173.194.41.68] with 1472 bytes of data:
Reply from 173.194.41.68: bytes=1472 time=20ms TTL=52
Reply from 173.194.41.68: bytes=1472 time=21ms TTL=52

Now just to see if I can put these commands in some startup script

ok so confirmed working on merlin, and you didnt need to reestablish ppp right?

the startup thing problem is they likely to execute before the network is up but merlin allows to set scripts to run when certian events happens if I am right you can add the script to run when the network is started, or better after the network is started.

Edited by Chrysalis (Sat 31-Aug-13 22:28:42)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

ok so confirmed working on merlin, and you didnt need to reestablish ppp right?

Yep.

the startup thing problem is they likely to execute before the network is up but merlin allows to set scripts to run when certian events happens if I am right you can add the script to run when the network is started, or better after the network is started.

I think I've got to enable the jffs filesystem and I can put a custom script there.

However I found two websites that I use that wouldn't respond after the change, so I've backed out for now until I can work out what I've done wrong

my router self rebooted yesterday, I ran the ifconfig commands but when I changed the mtu size of eth2 it caused ppp to drop and recconect at the higher mtu. so in my case if ppp is already up it forces it it drop to change the setting.

of course my router rebooting itself is the bigger problem, I have just enabled jffs myself to get some persistent logging.

what are the 2 websites? I can test. PM me if private.