BrightBox Experience

After my whinges about the Netgear DGN1000 firmware I was contected by a member of staff at Orange with an offer to send me a BrightBox.

I took up the offer and here are my notes on the experience.
I am very happy with the BrightBox.

Positive

• Very well put together piece of kit.
• My wife's vista laptop had no trouble connecting to it.
• Signal is better my HTC Desire connects over the whole house with no NOT spots.

Negative

• Power brick could have done with wires coming out of the bottom, my multi way extension lead sits against the wall under the desk, it now has to be spaced away from the wall. (Minor)
• MTU maximum is 1492, I thought that we should all be using 1500 as this is the BT standard, whom Orange use for their network AFAIK. Using ping to determine the largest packet size which did not fragment (search for "MTU Ping Test") I set it to 1488.
• Can't set up a static IP Address for a device unless it is connected. Not very green or good for equipment to be fired up just to set it's IP Address. Also you can't change the device name ok for PCs but my PS3 shows up as "unknown".
• Maximum number of static addresses is 8. In our house we have 6 PCs, 3 games consoles and 3 smart phones. I like to give each a fixed IP Address so that I can get better network performance by editing the hosts file. (Static IP Address is more or less compulsary for some brands of Wireless printer, becuase of poorly written drivers).
• Can't send the logs via email (nightly).
• Can't set up remote access to the router (maybe for the best as this opens up a security risk if admin password not changed)

To Do

• Try out the USB sharing.
• Try to set up MAC Address filtering. Does it apply to all connections or just wireless. If all connections then this can be a real pain in the preverbial as it is very easy to "lock your self out" requiring a restore to defaults.
• Try to setup Multiple SSIDs This feature looks very interesting, need to investigate further. I currently have an old linksys cable router running dd-wrt to generate my "Guest" WiFi network, hopefully I should be able to retire this.
• Investigate effects of Traffic Shaping by Orange.

Well done Orange for taking note of what your customers are saying.

Is there any benefit using the Orange Bright box over the DG834G?

Most definately.

From a wired (Ethernet) PC

With the DG834G V2 my download speed was limited to 8mbps, even though it synced at nearly 20mbps.

With the BrightBox my download speed is 20mbps.

Yes, it looks mostly good, but ...

Find that wireless strength is very variable over time. From upstairs it varies from 1 to 4 bars within secs. Never experienced this with DG834GT which was steady 3 to 4 bars.

It is bad that they hardcoded MTU max to 1492. It clashes with my XP setting of 1500 which was tuned to my DG834GT in conjunction with the BT WBC connection.

Further Negative: Can't tweak NM unlike DG834Gv4 & DG834GT.

Fancy continuing to use the DG834G V2 all this time! It is an ADSL1 only router. No wonder your download speed was limited to 8 Meg. Of course that is no competition for the BrightBox, but the DG834Gv4 & DG834GT most certainly are.

Ok. Was just considering if it was worth trying to get Orange to replace the DGN1000. Don't think its worth the hassle in my case as my line is adsl max and the DGN834G v3 works very well.

You & OP ought to swap your DGN834G's . Yours does have an ADSL2+ modem!

haha

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

Fancy continuing to use the DG834G V2 all this time! It is an ADSL1 only router. No wonder your download speed was limited to 8 Meg. Of course that is no competition for the BrightBox, but the DG834Gv4 & DG834GT most certainly are.

Only migrated from Demon at the end of January, with them I was still on ADSLMax so no need for and ADSL2+ modem.

But invalid to compare a V2 with a BrightBox, viz:

In reply to a post by Mike_Williams:

Most definately.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

But invalid to compare a V2 with a BrightBox, viz:

In reply to a post by Mike_Williams:

Most definately.

Agreed it is not a fair comparison from the speed perspective.
But all the other factors are relevant.