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[ptf]

Has anyone tried OpenWrt with a fairly new VDSL firmware blob?

I successfully installed OpenWrt (git head as of 18/06/2015) on my BT ECI VDSL modem and it appears to be working fairly well.

However there are a couple of small issues one of which is sync speed.

My line is fairly long - about 600m and sync has settled about 37mbps - its been pretty stable at that for a couple of years.

Using the vdsl firmware extracted from the OpenReach GPL source package I get sync but loose about 3.5mbps to wind up about 33.5mbps.

Before I upgraded I extracted the vdsl firmware from the modem, however using that I don't get sync at all.

The version I have from the modem is:
 dsl_vr9_firmware_xdsl-05.06.07.05.01.06_05.06.02.03.00.01.bin
The version version from the Openreach source is:
 dsl_vr9_firmware_xdsl-05.04.07.09.01.06_05.04.04.04.01.01.bin
There is a further version on the web -
 dsl_vr9_firmware_xdsl-05.05.01.07.01.06_05.05.03.03.01.02.bin

The latter two work but the newest (and largest at 901136  bytes) does not want to sync; the line status is just repored as "DOWN [0xFF: idle request]" whether the line is plugged in or not. Using on of the two older firmware blobs the line status is "DOWN [0x200: silent]" with the line unplugged, then quickly runs up through handshake, init and showtime as expected.

As for the loss of sync speed - that might not be due to the different versions of vdsl.bin and I can't really tell without being able to use the "new" one in the modem. I have another spare on order so will probably try that running the standard BT firmware to see if I get the speed back.

However I would like to be able to try this copy of the firmware running in case there is some option that is now supported or handled differently (interleaving?, G.INP, probably not vectoring(yet)) which is giving me the better sync speed but I'm not sure where to start debugging - do any of the resident ECI gurus have thoughts on how to start to figure out what is different about the new firmware blob?

--
Paul

[ejs]

While experimenting with my TD-W8970 (VRX 268 chipset), I found that an older driver version just can't load a newer dsl_vr9_firmware .bin file. With the 8970, the dsl driver is a kernel module - dsl_drv_cpe_api.ko - and can be unloaded, so I tried loading a newer driver module (from the TP-Link 9980 firmware). But that didn't work, it seems you also need to update the Lantiq MEI driver.

I think the newer firmware images either just won't load, or may not work properly, unless you also update at least the lantiq dsl driver, mei driver, and control application. The trouble is the OpenReach GPL source code package is fairly old and doesn't seem to have ever been updated since it was first released.

What are the versions of the lantiq drivers in the latest OpenWrt?

Some newer lantiq sources have finally turned up on the Internet: https://github.com/xdarklight

[ptf]

What are the versions of the lantiq drivers in the latest OpenWrt?

There was some discussion of the versions in this post https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=50860, it looks as though the trunk has not yet been updated to the versions mentioned and has older versions i.e

drv_dsl_cpe_api_vrx-4.11.4
drv_mei_cpe-1.2.0
and
dsl_cpe_control_vrx-4.11.4

Some newer lantiq sources have finally turned up on the Internet: https://github.com/xdarklight

Yes, I'd come across xdarknight's repository yesterday.

Looks like I need to update the versions of the drivers before trying again.