Suggested VDSL modem

Good morning all,

with a punter who is having problems with their TT FTTC service......

I suspect the router is the issue, so am suggesting he use a standalone VDSL modem and his Apple Time Capsule to do the rest. Huawei cab, what would you guys recommend please ?

TP-Link W9970 £34.65 and while its a basic full modem/router the bridge mode works well. Broadcom chipset

I'd recommend they get a new router from TT.

Fibre should be HG633 and HG635 which both hold sync very well, and do not have too many issues. I have had sync uptimes of 1000 hours on both.

2.4Ghz on hg633 isn't great but you can split the bands and use 5ghz on devices that support it.

I believe TT have a new router also, which is dlink and I cannot comment on that.

Certainly the TT routers are stable enough to provide a reliable service for most. What issues are you seeing?

Edited by ukhardy07 (Sat 04-Mar-17 09:58:43)

The TP Link W9970 is overkill as well as having lanky antennas which are difficult to chop off. The stats on the W9970 are also limited.

The Huawei HG612 openreach modem is your best bet, they can be bought for less than 30 notes from ebay, such as this one. The HG612 can easily be unlocked, just follow the instructions here.

The Netgear DM200 and Draytek 130 are other good standalone vdsl2 modems, they use a lantiq chipset but fully support G.INP.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Modems/NETGEAR-DM200-100E...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/DrayTek-Vigor-ADSL-Ethernet...

Edited by deleted (Sat 04-Mar-17 10:08:53)

As a negative, I suggest the HG612 is no longer the modem of choice, but may be a reliable fallback.

I say "may be" because many on eBay will now be knocking on a bit, with cheap components that could be on the way out. I'm also convinced modem technology for VDSL2 has moved on since they were introduced. Plus of course when Openreach first supplied them the profile in use was 8a, not 17a.

Late last year I tried three other pieces of kit, each of them reporting an Available speed about 10Mbps higher than either of my HG612s. I can't report the actual as the line was banded at the time.

The banding is no longer there and I have now been on 65258/14193Kbps since 18 February. My highest ever with an HG612 was 57700Kbps or so.

Available is showing between 66 and 67Mbps depending on the varying noise, with the noise margin moving between 6.1dB and 6.3dB. Recently the odd spike to 6.4dB.

I'm using a Billion 8800NL R2 in combo mode. A bit expensive for pure modem/bridge mode.

You don't mention any price range, so this may be a bit too expensive.
I've recently replaced my HG612 with a Draytek Vigor 2860 and so far have found it to be okay. I can't say I notice any real difference from the HG612.
It was bought to replace my older router, and has enabled me to reduce my "plug count" by one, as the Vigor has a built in VDSL Modem. I also am fortunate to have a VM circuit and this router works well with both.

Thanks for everyone's replies, hopefully the gent who's house I was at now has some pointers.

The observed fault was a pronounced 'lag' in web pages opening. The router has already been swapped out by TT. It was a long D side, 36db attenuation, but I saw synced at 11.5 meg, the TT router giving 15 meg.

Remote tests gave a 'potential HR detected' test result, but this disappeared when my JDSU was in sync.

Very common, the talktalk DNS is slow.

The TT routers stop loading anything after around 24 hours uptime if you change the DNS within the router so do not do this, the messy fix is to set googles DNS on each connected device e.g. iphone, laptop, ps4 etc.

I repeat don't set it at the router level with a tt supplied router. The firmware is buggy for that.

It then feels a lot snappier.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Sat 04-Mar-17 12:48:06)

Thank you UKHardy.

Any alternatives to the HG612 that will be better on a Huawei cab?