Ditched the Home Hub

We're all pretty obsessed with our broadband speed on this forum. I was recently lucky enough that BT plonked a VDSL cabinet in front of my house so at long last got the speeds that I've been craving! However this lead me to discover that some of the issues that I was putting down to my slow internet connection where really down to poor quality consumer grade kit in my home. I took the plunge and upgraded to Enterprise ("Prosumer") grade kit. Now instead of a home hub and wifi extenders I've dusted down a Huawei EchoLife HG612, hooked it to an Ubiquity Edge Router Lite, put in a quality 24 port unmanaged switch and hard wired 3 Unifi AC lite access points powered via POE around my home. Yes it was a days work putting in a couple of cable runs and watching youtube videos to get the set up right for the router (super-easy once you know how). My only regret is not doing this all sooner, everything now "just works" - seamlessly. I'd recommend to everyone regardless of connection speed to ditch the combo modem-router-switch-wifi box and get kit in fit for purpose.

I'm with you on the principles here.

Are you running a controller to help roaming between the Unifi access points?

That sounds like a result. I'm glad you've got it all working well. I'm a great fan of Unifi equipment. I've not used the edge router yet but their access points are really solid.

In reply to a post by plankton:

... seamlessly. I'd recommend to everyone regardless of connection speed to ditch the combo modem-router-switch-wifi box and get kit in fit for purpose.

One reason that ISPs have moved to "all-in-one" is that they are cheaper to produce and supply than two or three dedicated units. And as some many demand everything as cheap as possible, it is one way costs can be cut.

For years I have said use a separate modem and router.

In reply to a post by plankton:

I'd recommend to everyone regardless of connection speed to ditch the combo modem-router-switch-wifi box and get kit in fit for purpose.

Couple of problems - you're no longer transmitting BTWifi, and if you have a fault you'll have to replace the homehub or the engineer will just blame your setup

I'd question if the HG612 is any longer suitable for anyone obsessed with speed.

As for saying "everyone" should ditch combo kit, why? You may choose to, many others here we know also do so, but thousands of others I warrant are perfectly happy with their combo kit. Though many of them may have switched from or declined the ISP-supplied box.

Your arrangement looks to me as highly geeky. As for a 24-port switch, how many ports will you ever use, given the possibly justifiable wifi setup and the three that your router had before you added the switch?

In fact, by how much has your "internet connection speed" changed, and in which direction? (Edit - probably not at all, given the location of your cabinet. But the Max Attainable would be just as indicative).

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 28-Jan-17 11:41:25)

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

In reply to a post by plankton:

I'd recommend to everyone regardless of connection speed to ditch the combo modem-router-switch-wifi box and get kit in fit for purpose.

Couple of problems - you're no longer transmitting BTWifi, and if you have a fault you'll have to replace the homehub or the engineer will just blame your setup

I think BTWifi is still a bit niche and I'd be interested to see how many people buy BT broadband for BTWifi.

I've had a couple of engineers out and having the HG612 modem there as made no issues at all, considering the HG612 is/was a BT product.

My HH5 broke when it kept disconnecting for no reason a year ago. Luckily I was already thinking of changing to the HG612+router setup. Interestingly if I want another HH they will charge me. So I'm holding out for the G.fast modems when they come out.

Yes I'll confess it's a little geeky! I would say though since I set it up I've never had the phone call from home saying the "internet has broken" and then having to talk through how to switch the hub on and off etc etc. Once the setup was done that was it though (It really wasn't that hard). My house is a little geeky (and with 4 teenagers very techie!) in that I've ethernet cables to all rooms and any device that can be wired is. With Xboxes, Sky boxes x3, Smart TVs x3, NAS x3, PCx4, bluray player, Steam Boxes, Printer x2 ... I've managed to use every port of the 24 port switch and have some desktop switches too! ..... And yes the switch was in place before I ditched the hub. as for Wifi 6 smart phones, ipads, kindles, laptops, Alexas (Should that be Alexi ?) and that's not including the hords of yoof that hook onto the guest network!!!! As for speed increase .... very very marginal increase c. 400 kbps download and 150 kbps upload with about a 8% reduction in ping times to most services (Which my COD playing boys tell me is the difference between life and death! ......... but that's my point...... Browsers hanging, iplayer just stopping, Sky download stopping, netflix bugging out, skype calls falling apart where happening post speed upgrade and I'd previously blamed these occurrences on connecting bandwidth. And yes kept the BT hub for any issues that might come along...... I do want to ditch the HG612, but I haven't had time to research a replacement as yet (recommendations pls). Its a good thing that the likes of BT, Sky and Talktalk have the buying power to dish out hubs cheaply as this helps people get on the net at a sensible cost, but it's probably true that BT give Hauwei £15-£20 odd for a Hub. That doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room from quality software and components....................

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

I'm with you on the principles here.

Are you running a controller to help roaming between the Unifi access points?

Yes running unifi controller. Everything works well and roams between points. On a windows laptop I can move between AP's for skype calls but I can't on an iphone, that's about the only limitation that I've found.

Thinking of using a Cloud Key so that I can tweak the system from anywhere.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I'd question if the HG612 is any longer suitable for anyone obsessed with speed.

Any particular reason? I thought it was still well regarded as a modem.

I'm still on separates (using an HG612 as modem) but recently replaced my router with a Billion 8800. I thought about retiring the HG612 but eventually decided not to mess with it. I also like the fact I can reboot or even power cycle my router as often as I want.

I didn't want to do anything that might trigger a DLM backlash and I'm not convinced I'd see much of a speed gain. I don't really need the speed I have (64Mb/s) anyway.

So I'm taking a watching brief. If the HG612 fails I can get the 8800 to take over the duty. But for now I'm happy with things as they are.

In reply to a post by plankton:

. I'd recommend to everyone regardless of connection speed to ditch the combo modem-router-switch-wifi box and get kit in fit for purpose.

Why? For the average user. They just want one box to plug & Play and no messing around. Which to the vast majority of users is more than fit for purpose.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I'd question if the HG612 is any longer suitable for anyone obsessed with speed.

Any particular reason? I thought it was still well regarded as a modem.

I'd be really interested too. If there is something more robust out there at a sensible price I'd go for it. I'm sold on the idea of separate boxes modem/router/wifi.

I have two of them. I have also had on my line a Vigor 130, a VMG1312-B10A, and now my Billion 8800NL R2.

It's a little hard to be definite, as my line is currently banded at 55000kbps, but the Huawei's are showing under 60000 max attainable where the other three show 66-67000.

Someone recently also confirmed that whatever they replaced their HG612 with gave 6-7Mbps higher sync.

They are simply outdated I think. Plus some of them are beginning to fail - a couple of reports of that in the last month. I agree that up till now they have been reliable work-horses, but things move on.

The OP of this thread is presumably on the full 79999kbps sync, so unless we hear about the attainable before and after we can't tell anything about the modem. I'm fairly sure his 400kbps or so is nothing to do with that.

I prefer the separate box setup to some extent, but for only one reason. That you can reboot the separate router without upsetting the sync/DLM.

But how often other than when experimenting do you need to reboot the router? If frequently, then there is something wrong which needs resolving. (Though on FTTC that could result in DLM screwing you up for months).

I find most reboots are of the modem, either standalone or as that component of the combo.

Having said all that, I can quite understand and accept what you are doing with your setup. A setup that to me suggests the two-box modem+router is a good idea. But your usage description has to be wayyyyy out of ordinary .

Leaving my two points. For the vast majority a single-box solution is fine, adding a WAP to it possibly needed a fair bit of the time. With the second point that the single box provided by ISPs, (and - note! P & P charged for even if the box is "free"), is normally rather basic. In ADSLx days modem/routers such as the Netgear DG834 series were pretty good things to have.

I agree that the majority of folks just want plug and play. There is a but though, they also want reliable internet/wifi ..... chatting to my neighbour who's more into driving steam engines than IT he was expressing how his WiFi didn't work most of the time etc etc and general dissatisfaction with the service he got from Talk-Talk. Looking at his set up, I'd say his issues are caused by lack of faceplate filter and his extension wiring, stone walls and a cheap Wirless Router. He's got a nice Desktop Mac, Smart Phone and tablet gizmo. So he's forking over £40 a month for broadband and phone, he's spent the thick end of £2500 on tech, he access the net via FTTC that cost £37,000 of tax payer money to install and he uses billion dollar data centres for email and web etc But between him and the net he's got a box that cost's £10 and was built by folks on £1.50 an hour and has software that was cobbled together for the lowest possible cost in the shortest time. His disappointment with his home internet experience is down to the way it's deployed in his home, not TalkTalk or BTOR. I suspect many household are in the same position. So I'll stand by my remarks, with the caveat of if you've the money and a modicum of tec skills/willingness to learn, get some reasonable kit in to make your home internet experience great.

Don't get the full sync, although only 100m odd of line I'm a a few Kbps down from the max, the lines aren't in the best condition around here, replacing the HG612 although it would be nice get full sync it would be more about replacing kit for something less elderly and less likely to fail. My marginal speed increase that I gave was real world rather than sync speed. I suspect that the router I'm using has very slightly better through put than my HH5.

Huawei or ECI cabinet? Possibly the Vigor 130 for ECI, and the cheaper Billion 8800NL R2 I have, in bridge mode, for Huawei. As I read the specs Billion has a Gigabit port that could future-proof (within reason) the link to your router.

The Vigor and my Huawei cabinet did not get on well. DLM got very upset in the space of two days. On ECI I believe it is fine.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Huawei or ECI cabinet?

Huawei all in one. I like the idea of the 1gb.

Thanks for the info.

Sean

Check out the 1Gig port though before buying. Remember I'm using it in combo modem/router mode with only one 100Mbps ethernet wired connection. Plus a few wireless ones. I'm not sure which port, maybe the WAN one.

I understand your point.

But most people do not want to spend time, effort and money to get something that works out of the box. To get a small gain that probably won't make any difference to their experience

Over the years I have spent Thousands on kit and now run on these boxes (sky box now) as they work and give me want I need So I can spend my time on the important things in life.

Your example is not a issue with the kit. It is a issue with the environment that they live in. So in that case YES it would help. But in your average new house it is not a issue.

I have actually moved to 3 devices

pfsense as the firewall
asus ac68 as the WAP
billion 8800nl as the modem

Picking stuff that reigns supreme in individual roles instead of a jack of all trades.