adslmax,

I was simply wondering how you'd identified that EMI coming from the Billion's power-supply brick was the problem. Did you, for example, draw your conclusion based on a test using an AM radio, as briefly described by a contributor earlier in this topic?

As someone who's now planning to get an 8800NL and switch from ADSL to FTTC, you've left me in a bit of a quandary. Normally, you wouldn't expect an experienced manufacturer like Billion to be knocking out power-supply bricks that produce troublesome amounts of EMI, but on the other hand it does appear that the 8800NL has been built down to a price and so a few corners in respect of its power supply may have been cut. That said, nobody else writing about the 8800NL in these forums has been complaining about EMI coming from the brick, or their setup showing constant retransmissions due to excessive line errors.

One possibility is that yours was merely faulty - a one-off manufacturing fault. I take your point, though, that it'll be up to me - and anyone else - to assess their 8800NL brick on an individual basis. But perhaps in the meantime it might be an idea for you to return your Billion brick to the retailer and ask for a replacement Billion brick (maybe put a small identifying mark on the returned one, to ensure the retailer doesn't erroneously send the same one back to you). If you find that the replacement also gives trouble, then you can be more sure that the brick is indeed a source of unwarranted EMI.

Incidentally, I don't understand what your quoted ES figures are all about. Is this some measure of line error rates, or what? Are you using some sort of special software application to measure EMI from the brick? The way the professionals would do this would be to use a spectrum analyser.

How is the wireless range on the 7490? I had a 7390 and it was appalling (I sent it back and bought a Asus router that was superb).

House is 1890s, Brick with timber floors and thick plaster ceilings.
Fritz!Box 7390, on first floor, since 2010.
Not done serious Wi-Fi tests - it just works - for laptops and smart phones.
Fixed kit is all wired - CAT 5, RJ45 & 100baseT switch.
The Thinkbroadband speed test is ok in various rooms downstairs.
In the back kitchen - through an additional 13" brick wall upload drops from 15.5 to 14.5Mbps.
Haven't tried a 7490.

ES is one of the types of errors which you can monitor through the interface of a VDSL modem, and stands for "error seconds", that is, the number of seconds during which an uncorrected error occurred.

In reply to a post by simon194:

Billion alway recommend updating the firmware using the factory settings option just in case the internal configuration tables have changed which could bork the router if there are any of the previous settings end up with invalid data in them.

I only used an option that they provided in the interface. If they aren't confident that it works, wouldn't they take it out?
Maybe on the next update, they will, but it worked perfectly for me