MAC addresses (sky fibre)

Reading back through the posts on here, people say you don't need to clone your mac address, but I am wondering if something has changed recently, or is my local exhange is somehow different?

Some time ago I got Sky Fibre (March/April 2014), and one of their SR102 router things. It was ok, but didn't do as much as I wanted (reduced functionality from myDraytrek 2820 I was using on LLU), so I bought a HG612 and plugged it into WAN2 of my Draytek and after some tinkering all was well (took ages to connect - several hours, I think.... *mac address* maybe).

Anyway, I have a weird connectivity issue to do with XK for work (I've posted in the DSL hardware forum about). I tried reverting back to Sky default setup by using the SR102, but that just failed to connect (left it a good 30+ minutes and still nothing). Reverted back to the HG612 + Draytek and got an immediate connection. Over the weekend I then built a pfsense router on a space PC with 2 NICs, but that would not get a DHCP address from Sky until I cloned in the MAC of the Draytek unit into it.

Using pfsense didn't fix the issue (with XK), so I am thinking I really need to remove the HG612 from the loop (only thing I have't changed) and get back to the standard Sky setup. That leaves me with 2 options:
- turn everything off for n hours, and then try SR102
- remove RJ11 cable from HG612 to SR102 and leave powered on, hope it connects after n hours.

Any idea which approach might be better? and how long n hours might be

(I should say that the XK issue has only occurred in the last 6 months, before that it was fine. In that time, nothing had changed at home, so I am not sure it is even *my* fault, but I need to rule everything out, as work typically say it isn't them at fault).

Thanks,
Matt

Edited by mbames (Wed 06-May-15 17:44:22)

Which firmware is on the HG612, as there was a problem with VPN after one update a while ago?

Firmware is reporting as A2pv6C035m.d22g

software: V100R001C01B028SP10
hardware: VER.B
batch: BC1P10.028.A2pv6C030b.d22g

When I bought the HG612 from ebay back in March/April of last year (2014) I unlocked it and flashed on firmware (guide the instructions on huaweihg612hacking.wordpress.com), and I haven't touched it since.

Seem to have perfect operation up until about mid-december, and then XK (work VPN) started going a bit wonky....

I see that kitz.co.uk has this to say
"Update March 2015 - G.INP
If you have an unlocked Hg612 and g.inp has been applied to your line then you must upgrade to f/w version B030SP08",

although I have no idea if g.imp has been applied to the line. Any guidance would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Matt

[edit: extracted these stats - dunno if they help?!]

# xdslcmd profile --show

Modulations:
G.Dmt Enabled
G.lite Enabled
T1.413 Enabled
ADSL2 Enabled
AnnexL Enabled
ADSL2+ Enabled
AnnexM Disabled
VDSL2 Enabled
VDSL2 profiles:
8a Enabled
8b Enabled
8c Enabled
8d Enabled
12a Enabled
12b Enabled
17a Enabled
30a Enabled
US0 Enabled
Phone line pair:
Inner pair
Capability:
bitswap On
sra Off
trellis On
sesdrop Off
CoMinMgn Off
24k On
phyReXmt(Us/Ds) Off/On
TpsTc AvPvAa
monitorTone: On
dynamicD: On
dynamicF: On
SOS: On
Training Margin(Q4 in dB): -1(DEFAULT)



# xdslcmd info --pbParams
xdslcmd: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: Showtime
Retrain Reason: 0
Max: Upstream rate = 16442 Kbps, Downstream rate = 74960 Kbps
Path: 0, Upstream rate = 9995 Kbps, Downstream rate = 39998 Kbps

Discovery Phase (Initial) Band Plan
US: (0,95) (880,1195) (1984,2771)
DS: (32,859) (1216,1959) (2792,4083)
Medley Phase (Final) Band Plan
US: (0,95) (880,1195) (1984,2771)
DS: (32,859) (1216,1959) (2792,4083)
VDSL Port Details Upstream Downstream
Attainable Net Data Rate: 16442 kbps 74960 kbps
Actual Aggregate Tx Power: 5.9 dBm 11.6 dBm
============================================================================
VDSL Band Status U0 U1 U2 U3 D1 D2 D3
Line Attenuation(dB): 0.1 16.4 30.1 N/A 9.6 19.9 38.8
Signal Attenuation(dB): 0.1 16.5 30.2 N/A 9.6 19.9 38.8
SNR Margin(dB): 10.4 9.4 9.4 N/A 19.1 19.4 18.9
TX Power(dBm): -5.2 -25.3 5.4 N/A 8.4 7.4 4.0

Edited by mbames (Wed 06-May-15 22:51:13)

B028SP10 is rather old and might just be the troublesome firmware that AAISP discovered.

I'd upgrade to B030SP08, which is the version that works correctly with G.INP.

Many thanks. I've download the new firmware from https://mega.co.nz/#F!LdJFDIJL!e_E1twsIg2kTet8mPjrb4w

Will give it a whirl tomorrow, a bit late now. Hopefully I'll be reporting success this time tomorrow.

Cheers

Definitely worth upgrading the firmware.

I am due to be working at home on Friday, so I'll know by 10am if it has helped or not. Fingers crossed If not I'll be going back to the other plan of trying to the SR102 to play ball....

Well that seemed to be a bit of a non-starter. I recall that when I first got the HG612, it was rather a pig to get it to boot into the firmware mode (reset button, power on, release after 5 seconds, tried for 10, 15 and 60 seconds, no joy).

When ever I do that, it simply never seems to activate wan2, although if I just power up HG612 it works as expected (and can log into the web interface, etc).

If you can get into the web interface, does the upgrade option in Maintenance, Device, Firmware Upgrade tab work for you? I've never tried it personally, but it looks promising.

Doesn't work, it has to be the reset method.

Try a long reset first, then the procedure and make sure you've got the PC configured correctly with the IP address and anti-virus, firewall, etc disabled.

I tried an upgrade via the web interface, that doesn't work (it pretends to work, reboots & stays on the same firmware).

What is a "long reset"? I have tried the power off unit, hold down reset button, keep it held, power on unit, release reset button 5 seconds later (have tried waiting longer than 5 seconds - up to about 60 seconds)

Sadly when I do that the unit stops responding to me on LAN2 - it won't respond to a ping on 192.168.1.1 and the web interface doesn't open.

However if I boot the unit normally, then it happily responds via WAN2 on 192.168.1.1. I've given my PC a static address (192.168.1.100, as per the unlocking guide), it seems like the HG612 is getting its knickers in a twist when I try and get it to firmware upgrade mode...

Many thanks,
Matt

Found a long reset is power on, wait for unit to initialise and then hold down reset for 10seconds. That seems to cause a reset, but, when I try the "reset for 5 seconds" on power up in order to get into the firmware flash mode, I still can't connect. pings look like this:

Reply from 192.168.1.100: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.100: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.100: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.100: Destination host unreachable.
Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.1.100: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.100: Destination host unreachable.
Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.1.100: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.100: Destination host unreachable.
Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.1.100: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.100: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.100: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.1.100: Destination host unreachable.

However, if I just boot the unit normally, it responds as expected:
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64

I have just tried dropping a 10/100 switch between my PC and the HG612 incase there was a speed negotiation issue, but that has no affect.

Feel like a right dork, it was firewall related - on my laptop ESET was blocking it, and on my desktop (what ever comes with win 8). Both used to show the same odd combination of some timeouts, but not a total block.

Not really sure why the LAN2 worked perfectly if the HG612 was booted normally, but the firewall then went all wonky when I booted it into firmware mode. Anyway the end goal was achieved and HG612 has now been upgraded.

Thanks everyone for your help.

Cheers

Not a dork, but "learn something new everyday"

and finally work have accepted that something is not working properly at their end.... only taken 6 months!

Probably be another 18 months before they fix it, but at least they are heading in the correct direction.