Change from the official Sky router ?

I have a Netgear DG834GT router spare and I was wondering whether it would offer a more stable connection with Sky broadband than using it's own router as I am plagued with disconnections and not only in the evenings (when the SNR margin drops) but through the day as well.

I know I have a long line (54 dB) but when I was with O2 (before migrating to Sky) I never had any trouble using the Netgear router and I was able to get a higher sync both upstream and downstream back then.

Any advice would be most welcome.

p.s. I have 2 Sky routers as I rang them up and complained about my router dropping all the time and so they sent me a slightly older model.

It doesn't matter whether I use the router with the 2012 or the 2011 firmware, it still drops

Have you got your username and password?

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

Have you got your username and password?

Yeah I can get into the router stats page.

I know the cause of the problem, my downstream SNR margin drops to around 3 dB and the connection drops.

This hardly used to happen before.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

Have you got your username and password?

Just thought, I am using the default 'Sky' and 'admin' passwords

Should I change them for enhanced security ?

I changed mine when I discovered my router admin page was available on the web, but I had been messing about and switched the firewall off

Think they mean the username and password for the connection not the router interface. There are websites that will generate it for most but I am not sure if they work for 100% of connections.

In reply to a post by ian72:

Think they mean the username and password for the connection not the router interface. There are websites that will generate it for most but I am not sure if they work for 100% of connections.

They work for any line that still works with PPPoA but not with any line that is MER only - although I read that MER is being reserved for fibre users, most ADSL users are on PPPoA now.

http://www.cm9.net/skypass/

The Asus 55u router I have for review had profiles for Sky, but both failed to work.

Then looked at settings in the Sky modem and it was just pppoa 0/38 VCMux, but did need to clone the WAN MAC address too.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

The Asus 55u router I have for review had profiles for Sky, but both failed to work.

Then looked at settings in the Sky modem and it was just pppoa 0/38 VCMux, but did need to clone the WAN MAC address too.

Interesting. To use PPPoA you just need your ID/password extracted/generated from a sky router and feed those into any router with 0/38 VCmux set.

To use MER you need a special modified DHCP client which issues the userid & password request in the client-ID field (DHCP option 61) which the majority of routers don't have support for in their user interface. You set the router into IPoA mode (RFC something) similar to O2/BE. Some netgears can be telnetted in and issue the dhcp command manually.

SkyUser forum has more on this - and its how Billion and Draytek have issued beta firmware's for Sky users on MER.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by ian72:

Think they mean the username and password for the connection not the router interface. There are websites that will generate it for most but I am not sure if they work for 100% of connections.

They work for any line that still works with PPPoA but not with any line that is MER only - although I read that MER is being reserved for fibre users, most ADSL users are on PPPoA now.

http://www.cm9.net/skypass/

Sky are gradually switching to MER for all customers. I was on MER for months before I switched to fibre.

BTW the website will work with any supported Sky router because the username/password are actually based on the routers LAN MAC address (well the Sagem ones are).

In reply to a post by simon194:

Sky are gradually switching to MER for all customers. I was on MER for months before I switched to fibre.

The SkyUser forum is full of people on Sky ADSL services who have been switched BACK to PPPoA and the fibre people are on MER. The complete guess is that MER is slightly more efficient so makes the fibre look better, and its technically easier to support MER with the Openreach VDSL modem.

BTW the website will work with any supported Sky router because the username/password are actually based on the routers LAN MAC address (well the Sagem ones are).

And the two Netgear ones. It DOESN'T yet work with the new Sky router (as in the news story on the main site).

Edited by jchamier (Wed 17-Oct-12 18:53:37)

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by simon194:

Sky are gradually switching to MER for all customers. I was on MER for months before I switched to fibre.

The SkyUser forum is full of people on Sky ADSL services who have been switched BACK to PPPoA and the fibre people are on MER. The complete guess is that MER is slightly more efficient so makes the fibre look better, and its technically easier to support MER with the Openreach VDSL modem.

As far as I'm aware the idea behind switching to MER was part of Sky move towards an IP based network because it's easier and cheaper to maintain than the old ATM based one.

Edited by simon194 (Tue 23-Oct-12 00:54:19)

In reply to a post by simon194:

As far as I'm aware the idea behind switching to MER was part of Sky move towards an IP based network because it's easier and cheaper to maintain than the old ATM based one.

That would make sense - removing the PPP from the network means no RAS I suspect - and they have no requirement to carry other companies traffic.

Except Easynet traffic

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

Except Easynet traffic

Doh! Yeah, I'd forgotten about them.

Maybe they use the same approach O2 Wholesale do and select by the DSLAM port.