I think its more so they can fob off complaints easier, when someone is ringing up armed with error counts, snrm figures, sync speed figures etc. its harder for a support rep to deal with, now much simpler BT side when all people have is a speedtest result and maybe a ip profile.

That's the sort of things I am talking about. If my isp tells me one thing, I can then check my own modem/router stats and go armed back to my isp and argue my case.

At the moment it's not really possible and most likely how they want it to stay.

The vast majority of users couldn't care about extracting technical information from their DSL modem or router as they neither frequent forums such as this one nor have the expertise to interpret the data themselves.

While I see what your saying, having router/modem stats available is very important and needed. Many do come on here for help and even if they don't know anything about the stats, someone like roberto, would ask for your stats to help with diagnosing any issues.

Isp's don't have time or will not always be honest, to sit going through your router/modem stats and say why you may have slow speed or poor throughput.

So just because most don't use them, don't me we should all suffer by not having them available .

Edited by deleted (Thu 10-Jan-13 12:52:54)

Everyone seems to have forgotten about vectoring which BT are looking at providing on VDSL2 lines.

If all the modems on lines in a particular are not "vectoring friendly" then vectoring "does not work". This makes control over the devices connected and there configuation of some importance.

If you can get at the administration pages on the modem (not dificult) it is possible to turn of the remote configuration facility which will prevent firmware upgrades which "could" prevent the effective implementation of vectoring (we do not know whether the present modems supplied by OR are vectoring friendly).

How many people ask for the ability to manage their own: fast/normal/stable profiles or noise margins? Quite a lot and when ISPs offer a choice they are inundated with requests. The profiles are controlled in the DSLAM - so it has already been demanded but never permitted.

yeah this wires only thing allowing 3rd party modems coming soon actually can play havoc on any future vectoring. I hope this new policy doesnt mean openreach have abandoned the idea of vectoring.

you think the BE policy of allowing direct control is a bad one?

ukonline also wasnt far off by tech support setting whatever the customer requested, I remember actually feeding manual settings to dan at easynet to get SRA working

Also there is a difference between allowing full admin access or just allowed to access stats, eg. virgin media modem's allow people to check their connection status, but they dont allow people admin access to the devices.

Edited by Chrysalis (Thu 10-Jan-13 19:02:39)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

yeah this wires only thing allowing 3rd party modems coming soon actually can play havoc on any future vectoring. I hope this new policy doesnt mean openreach have abandoned the idea of vectoring.

Seeing as the specification given to CPs/ISPs for the kit they are allowed to fit/supply says it must be vectoring-capable ....

Quite what can be done about users who substitute their own unchecked kit is another question.

Superspeed,

A good third party one here http://www.billion.com/product/vdsl2/BiPAC8200N-wire...

Yeh, for quite some time I've wondered whether the Billion 8200N was a viable router-modem for VDSL2. Broadbandbuyer.co.uk (BBB) insist on calling it a router, though, not a combined router-modem. This left me confused about it. BBB say that, in VDSL2 operation, the 8200N is a router and must be connected to the BT Infinity modem. That seems to contradict both a comment from a customer review of it at BBB, as well as the experiences of one or two users writing about it on the Billion UK forums.

The 8200N appears to be a one-box solution to VDSL2 connectivity, but I see that Billion has also recently brought out a modem-only VDSL2 product - the 8200M. This suggests that if you already own, say, a 7800N, you could connect it via EWAN to an 8200M and happily run VDSL2. This would be useful for some sort of future "two-wire" Openreach option.

Under a two-wire option you could also use just an 8200N, as you've stated. Indeed, it seems that some users of VDSL2 who are dissatisfied with various aspects of the Openreach modem are not prepared to hang around and are already using the 8200N in its place, as a one-box setup.

As yet, none of these users have said whether, with the 8200N or the 8200M, they're able to get a full set of line stats from the modem. I've presumed also that tweaking of the VDSL line will be prevented in these and any other VDSL2 products that eventually come on to the market - which I suppose is sensible.

is this a HR fault?

had a long call and the vdsl dropped.

Plugged in the HG again to get live stats and I see the stats are down a couple mbit so now 69mbit sync.

But here is what I suspect the HR with, I lift up the reciever on the phone and watch the modem stats, the downstream and upstream snrm start dropping at a gradual pace with the upstream faster. when the upstream got down to 4.5db I hung up the phone and it jumped back up to 7db.

The Billion 8200N is a "full feature" VDSL Modem/router so does provide a "one box" solution for FTTC lines.

However it appears to only have 100BaseT wired ethernet rather than gigabit ethernet.

The routing throughput may be an issue - the 7800n "just" manages to handle the 80Mb/s of a current FTTC line when connected to the BT OR modem.