Most recommended modem/router or router people use?

Ok I've decided on an ISP, Plusnet, so now I'm wondering what modem and router or modem/router combo's people recommend?

Currently I'm using dg384gt for my ADSL2+ setup, which is a modem/router combo. But I'm figuring that I have to buy a VDSL capable modem? Or is that the openreach modem?

What setup do people have? What's your recommendations?

Also do any of these devices have special firmwares and that kinda thing.

Thanks for any advice.

In reply to a post by bowdon:

Currently I'm using dg384gt for my ADSL2+ setup, which is a modem/router combo. But I'm figuring that I have to buy a VDSL capable modem? Or is that the openreach modem?

The ISP can choose, I believe PlusNet are still requesting Openreach to install the openreach white modem. To this you attach a router. There are quite a few capable routers available, Plusnet offer a Technicolor router that is stable but low set of features I believe.

For more features there is a TP-Link with dual band N wifi (450mbps) or there are the Asus RT-N66U or the RT-AC66U if you need the brand new AC (faster than N but only at 5 GHz) standard.

If you go for an ASUS, then Merlin's updated firmware is very much recommended over the Asus standard. Its based on the Asus firmware with improvements and nice tweaks. Its deliberately not radical.
http://www.lostrealm.ca/tower/node/79
http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=7846

If you go with the Huawei HG612 modem, which is one of the options supplied when the ISP uses a two box solution then they are very easy to unlock and there are a couple of programs you can use to monitor your connection. The other modem they give out is the ECI modem, which is difficult to unlock. The HG612 can be picked up cheap off EBay, then you just need a suitable router to go with it. A suitable router is one that has a WAN port, often referred to as a cable router, so there is plenty of choice depending on your needs.

For monitoring you have DSL Stats and HG612 Modem Stats.

Ok so after looking around at various sites to get some information about plusnet the opinion seems to be divided. Especially about traffic management. I know it's been said that it doesnt happen between 2 users. That they are shaping a customers own streams so all will work well.. But to be honest, if i want that I can do it myself either via router controls or manually setting different speeds on different computer programs.

So now I'm wondering.. What modem/router setup do BT Infinity have? I'm thinking the answer will be the same as the plusnet one.. But just making sure.

Thanks for any who reply.

The 2 people I know who went with BT Infinity got a home hub 5 which is an all in 1, so no need for seperate modem.
That being said one of them is having major issues in that their HH5 keeps rebooting itself at least twice a day, this issue seems to be quite a common problem with the HH5.

BT Infinity currently supply the Home Hub 5 using its integral VDSL modem, with a dangly filter or two.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 25-Feb-14 23:02:51)

Hey,

Just thought I'd add my opinion on PN's bandwidth management.

In my experience, it is very good. With my old ISP, on a connection that was above average speed (30 mbps ish) I always had the issue of one download hogging all the bandwidth, which made browsing sluggish at best and use of the network on other devices painful. I would have to manually throttle the download which was time consuming and inefficient, as it would then often run slower than the available bandwidth at any given moment.

On Plusnet, the bandwidth allocation helps make my home network run smoother. I can leave everything running without having to worry about a TV downstairs buffering on iPlayer or something.

Just my two cents as they say

Edited by deleted (Tue 25-Feb-14 23:25:28)

In reply to a post by bowdon:

Ok so after looking around at various sites to get some information about plusnet the opinion seems to be divided. Especially about traffic management. I know it's been said that it doesnt happen between 2 users.

Who said that? This isn't strictly true.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

BT Infinity currently supply the Home Hub 5 using its integral VDSL modem, with a dangly filter or two.

Dangly filters only come with self-install.

Errr - yes. I knew that .

That appears now to be the Infinity default for both 40/10 & 80/20.

Openreach have four options for ISPs to choose from.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 26-Feb-14 01:51:12)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Errr - yes. I knew that .

That appears now to be the Infinity default for both 40/10 & 80/20.

Openreach have four options for ISPs to choose from.

Self-install for Infinity 80/20? Really?

We had one a few days ago I think. Say 70% sure.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

We had one a few days ago I think. Say 70% sure.

I'm 100% sure an engineer install is the default with Infinity 80/20. No dangly filters come with this order. http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/products/broad...

Plusnet claimed that in a long thread last year some time.

I am not totally sold on the "only prioritise within the end users traffic" concept myself but I dont have plusnet.

I am definitely not convinced that PlusNet actually understood what it was that they were asked though.

In reply to a post by greenglide:

I am not totally sold on the "only prioritise within the end users traffic" concept myself but I dont have plusnet.

Plusnet don't claim that.

The prioritisation occurs at network level as well as at customer line level. Quite logical and sensible really.

What gets me is that people can't see the difference between old-style heavy-handed protocol throttling, which they all seem to think is being used, and prioritisation of packets that use a tiny fraction of the bandwidth so causing no noticeable degradation to bandwidth-intense traffic.

It just stops the time-critical traffic getting held up. The full capacity of the line and network interfaces is available at all times. With throttling, on most systems the bandwidth hungry ones get a massively low hard cap applied, thus underutilising the resources.

In reply to a post by bowdon:

Ok I've decided on an ISP, Plusnet, so now I'm wondering what modem and router or modem/router combo's people recommend?

I'm using a Billion 6300.

http://www.billion.uk.com/product/4G-LTE/BiPAC6300NX...

It's reliable and supports IPv6 (a rare combination). Plusnet don't currently offer IPv6 but at least I'm ready when they do (it worked with my last ISP). My only complaint is that you have to disable the SPI firewall if you're using port forwarding.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

It just stops the time-critical traffic getting held up. The full capacity of the line and network interfaces is available at all times. With throttling, on most systems the bandwidth hungry ones get a massively low hard cap applied, thus underutilising the resources.

What I've noticed with Plusnet is an increase in average latency during peak hours:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-thumb/2b6ab...

Raw speed seems unaffected:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results.html...

(That speed test is the spike on the TBB graph). I suspect all it's showing is selective traffic management correctly deciding that pings are unimportant.

I'm not a heavy user but so far I have to say that Plusnet is providing me with a rock solid service.

Edited by Andrue (Wed 26-Feb-14 19:11:16)

In reply to a post by Andrue:

What I've noticed with Plusnet is an increase in average latency during peak hours:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share-thumb/2b6ab...

See my BQM in my sig. Nothing to do with me. However, if you look at the graphs on this page you will see there are many without it.

Whether it is a problem with particular gateways, or the individual router or what, I don't know. For months mine was like this, then for months it stayed flat unless I did speed tests or similar, and now it's doing it again.

I could imagine the PN routers passing ping requests through on bronze. Sensible from the system point of view, poor from the PR point of view.

I've better things to do at the moment than worry about it.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

It's reliable and supports IPv6 (a rare combination). Plusnet don't currently offer IPv6 but at least I'm ready when they do (it worked with my last ISP). My only complaint is that you have to disable the SPI firewall if you're using port forwarding.

I'm now realising why so many people are with PN, its the only real choice for a decent connection and technical features (e.g. static IP), without paying silly money, and around £10/m cheaper than my existing BT or even Zen or even Sky, which surprised me. If it wasn't for the 12 month contract for all FTTC services, I'd have moved somewhere by now

ahh when did you move?

check my ipv6 graph for peak time latency much worse than ipv4.

yet on ipv6 tcp traffic I dont notice jitter.

for ipv4 plusnet seemed to have an improvement but seems since 2014 started they regressing a bit again on peak time latency on tbb graphs. However I havent noticed performance issues.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

ahh when did you move?

A week ago. Had a bit of a narrow squeak with the usage allowance from IDNet when someone decided my IP address was hosting a DNS server. It stopped eventually but I decided enough was enough. I feel happier on an unlimited package even if it means it slows down a bit sometimes. Then again I've seen no evidence of it slowing down so far.

Thanks for the suggestions and replies everyone.

What I don't understand is why is there a need for traffic management at all on a fibre connection? I can understand it with slower speed connections, dialup, adsl and 'maybe' on adsl2+ but the faster the speed there should be less and less need for it.

If they offered a router that has that functionality in then anyone who wanted to do that could manage it. I haven't used torrenting for years but I remember a client I used I could set the download and upload speed rates.

People should be able to max out their connection. If the connection gets saturated as its hit the max speed available then its down to self management.

Or is it again a network capacity issue and they are really regulating it for the sake of the isp network?

In reply to a post by bowdon:

People should be able to max out their connection.

That's what you aren't realising . It only comes into play when they are maxing out their connection, to make sure the time-critical stuff doesn't get messed up.

It never reduces the speed of the connection.

In reply to a post by bowdon:

What I don't understand is why is there a need for traffic management at all on a fibre connection? I can understand it with slower speed connections, dialup, adsl and 'maybe' on adsl2+ but the faster the speed there should be less and less need for it.

You misunderstand what the traffic management is for (possibly because Plusnet and others in this thread have talked about it protecting their streaming from other things they are doing). That isn't what traffic management is about.

The purpose of traffic management is to control data flow across the ISP's network and possibly their interconnects with other ISPs. The only reason consumers can afford personal internet connections is because ISPs oversell their capacity. That is - they don't have enough bandwidth for everyone to run their connection flat out at the same time. Same with any service there is something called 'contention'. Now most of the time for most users it works well because most of us don't run our connections flat out for long - while mine is idle yours is active and vice versa.

Unfortunately there's a number of users who run their connections flat out for long periods of time. This causes the ISPs problems because their profit depends on how much they can oversell their capacity. An ISP can buy more bandwidth but that eats into their profit and is arguably unfair to the other users (usually the far larger majority) who are effectively subsidising the heavy users. Plusnet have instead chosen to implement traffic controls that give priority to certain types of traffic - a bit like a bus lane. Anything that is time critical passes across their network at top speed. Things that are less time critical get slowed down if needed to ensure this.

Since this problem is all about bandwidth consumption by users a faster connection has more potential to be a pain than a slower connection. Think of it like a restaurant selling pies. The bigger everyone's plate the more pie they expect

It is worth noting though that it's not the raw speed (called burst speed) that matters. What matters is the average. So it's perfectly possible for someone on a [censored] 1Mb/s ADSL connection to be more of a problem user than someone on an 80Mb/s FTTC connection. If the former runs their connection flat out all day and the FTTC user just browses a bit. It also matters when the activity takes place. Networks have peak hours just like roads so downloading a 50GB file at 8pm is a problem whereas 50GB at 3am is probably a good thing - using capacity that would otherwise go unused.

Edited by Andrue (Fri 28-Feb-14 08:19:43)

Yes, unfortunately a lot of people see it as a bad thing, but it's not, it's a very good thing. Here's a very good explanation.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

Yes, unfortunately a lot of people see it as a bad thing, but it's not, it's a very good thing. Here's a very good explanation.

Hmmm. But that still tries to imply that it's there to manage the limitations of your own connection which I would dispute.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

Yes, unfortunately a lot of people see it as a bad thing, but it's not, it's a very good thing.

It can be a good thing if it is important to keep costs down.

If performance is a higher priority then it's not.

It's simply another example of the old rule, you get what you pay for.

So you think its a good thing that when kids are swamping the connection with torrents that others in the house have their browsing or iplayer experience unusable because there is no traffic management?

Your second statement only applies if you are thinking of yourself, which far to many people do these days!

Plusnets traffic management works at all levels from the connection to your home to the connections out from Plusnet to the wider world.

Edited by R0NSKI (Fri 28-Feb-14 10:14:34)

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

So you think its a good thing that when kids are swamping the connection with torrents that others in the house have their browsing or iplayer experience unusable because there is no traffic management?

That's not what I said�

Plusnet's traffic management works at all levels from the connection to your home to the connections out from Plusnet to the wider world.

I know how Plusnet's traffic management works, and to get a usable connection for everybody at their prices it's a good thing.

But if it's not torrents but important downloads then it may well not be the best solution. And the better solution will probably cost more, which is what I said.

People you have wandered well off the original topic, and if the debate needs to continue it should be in the PlusNet section.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

Yes, unfortunately a lot of people see it as a bad thing, but it's not, it's a very good thing. Here's a very good explanation.

Hmmm. But that still tries to imply that it's there to manage the limitations of your own connection which I would dispute.

I stand corrected. Anyway as we've digressed that'll be my last word here.

However, Plusnet provision is scaled to allow Bronze traffic, (the lowest priority), to run at full speed through the network in normal running.

At that it should only come into play during major events. At the individual consumer level it may never come into play except for extreme use, where it can only be beneficial. It doesn't capacity-slice! It prioritises packets. The customer line continues to run at its full throughput potential.

My apologies Andrew. I posted before I got as far as your post.

Edited by deleted (Thu 29-May-14 16:12:05)