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[burakkucat]

I think it is fairly well known that a TP-Link Archer VR900 has been used in The Cattery for nearly a year, having been sent one for beta-testing in late summer 2015.

The VR900's main plus point, for me, is the 5 GHz WiFi . . . I just can't use the 2.4 GHz WiFi band as it is far too cluttered with signals.

The VR900's main minus point, for me, is the lack of access to the BusyBox shell and the means to interrogate the Broadcom xDSL driver.

Over the last few months I have noticed positive comments, made in the forum, for the various ZyXEL VMGxxxx devices. About half an hour ago I read our leader's suggestion of a ZyXEL VMG1312 to member aesmith. A subsequent search on eBay turned up the availability of four new ZyXEL VMG1312-B10D devices at £35-99 each, with the option to "Click & Collect from your local Argos".

Now there are only three available . . . as I shall be collecting, from my local Argos store, a new play-thing, for The Cattery, next week. 

[sevenlayermuddle]

So far as I understand, 5Ghz is no better regulated than 2.4Ghz, both are legally usable by many other users and technologies, other than WiFi.   I personally prefer 2.4 owing to its better in-building propagation and longer range.  I also suspect, as 2.4 becomes more crowded, the 'crowds'  (radio controlled toys, baby alarms, etc) will simply migrate to 5, rendering it's advantages somewhat mute.

[burakkucat]

I realise that with the VMG1312-B10D I will only have access to the 2.4 GHz band . . . but I guess I will be able to cope.

The ability to interrogate the Broadcom driver, etc, was the main reason for adding to my growing collection of modem/routers.

[NewtronStar]

Have a nice link with technical specification for the BCM63381

www.amtel.co.il/uploads/attachments/1343%5Cdsl_225.pdf

[burakkucat]

Have a nice link with technical specification for the BCM63381

Thank you.

[kitz]

Hopefully the new toy should have arrived

I realise that with the VMG1312-B10D I will only have access to the 2.4 GHz band

I suppose you could continue to use the VR900 for wifi only.    I too was impressed with its wifi capabilities but at the end of the day I decided to stick with a one box solution.   My VMG8324 is only wireless N, but performs quite well and does all I need. but then again there isnt that much congestion with neighbours.

[burakkucat]

Due to medical matters and other appointments, the new toy will be collected this Thursday. 

[burakkucat]

The brand new, still in the box, device was collected last Thursday.

After a physical inspection, it was powered up in total isolation. The recessed "reset" button was pressed and held for 30 seconds. (An old multimeter probe has been kept especially for such tasks.) Once it had finished re-initialising, it was connected to a computer via an Ethernet patch lead. (The computer's Ethernet NIC was temporally configured as a DHCP client.) After logging in and going to the relevant GUI page, the firmware was updated to the latest version available. (Which is V5.11(AAXA.3)C0, as of the date of this posting.) With the firmware updated, the device was then configured appropriately for my LAN. As has been mentioned with regards to other ZyXEL devices, the GUI is somewhat slow in its action. There was one minor hiccup, which resulted in a bout of cat cursing and resetting the device back to its factory default configuration. The first two configuration changes made were to set the device's IPv4 address to 192.168.1.254 and to turn off its DHCP server . . .

On Friday, the configuration was re-checked and verified as appropriate for my usage. The modem/router was then connected to the xDSL circuit, synchronism with the exchanged based Huawei MSAN occurred and a PPPoA session was initiated. All is good, including usage of the 2.4 GHz WiFi band.

Having now used the device for two complete days, it was time to investigate what was available via a telnet connection. It was simple to establish and access to the Broadcom driver's utility for xDSL statistics was fully functional. (One observation is that the utility responds to an xdslctl invocation, although there is also a symbolic link from adsl available.) The sub-options to the xdslctl command of interest to myself are --

xdslctl info --state
xdslctl info --show
xdslctl info --stats
xdslctl info --SNR
xdslctl info --QLN
xdslctl info --Hlog
xdslctl info --Hlin
xdslctl info --HlinS
xdslctl info --Bits
xdslctl info --pbParams
xdslctl info --linediag
xdslctl info --linediag1
xdslctl info --vendor
xdslctl info --cfg
xdslctl info --webstats
xdslctl info --vectoring
xdslctl profile --show

Finally, the statistics for my G.992.3 circuit were harvested (the first attachment below) and the usual snapshot graphs were plotted (Bits-20160814-2227.png, Hlog-20160814-2227.png, line_stats-L-20160814-2227.png, line_stats-P-20160814-2227.png, profile-20160814-2227.png, QLN-20160814-2227.png & SNR-20160814-2227.png). As an example, the line_stats-P image is also attached.

Overall, I am very impressed with the device and would happily recommend the ZyXEL VMG1312-B10D modem/router. 

[Edited to attach a revised line_stats-P image.]

[kitz]

Glad its (eventually) gone well

I meant to bid on one today but forgot as I was out cutting hedges.  Bummed that I forgot about it and the watch email came through when I'd already gone outside, as I thought I may do a review on it at some point.

I cant recall if you previously had a HG612?  Is there any improvement in sync in comparison to your old modem?
Most people with a VMG8324/8934 have seen increases.

The modem should work with both DSLstats and HG612 modem stats if you want to do full time monitoring. 

[NewtronStar]

Any open ports reported on the router side ?

[burakkucat]

I meant to bid on one today but forgot as I was out cutting hedges.  Bummed that I forgot about it and the watch email came through when I'd already gone outside, as I thought I may do a review on it at some point.

Oops! 

I cant recall if you previously had a HG612?

Yes, quite a number if I recall correctly! Now who was it that wrote a proof of concept, statistics harvesting code and gave Bald_Eagle1 a good push off his perch to get him to fly with his HG612_stats utility? 

Is there any improvement in sync in comparison to your old modem?
Most people with a VMG8324/8934 have seen increases.

Unfortunately I don't have any data from the time when I was using a HG612 nor a HG610 nor, surprisingly, a HG622 with which to compare. 

The modem should work with both DSLstats and HG612 modem stats if you want to do full time monitoring.

Hmm . . . Unfortunately Eric's DSLstats no longer operates with RHEL6.8 and Baldy's HG612_stats has been built for M$ Doze. I guess I shall have to go back to my original code, revise it and then create ModemStats for Unix and similar operating systems.   

[burakkucat]

Any open ports reported on the router side ?

I guess that you are asking about the WAN side, the side that faces the public Internet. The answer is none whatsoever.

A TCP SYN scan --

# Nmap 7.12 scan initiated Fri Aug 12 10:31:50 2016 as: nmap -sS -Pn -T4 -oN bcat-nmap-log-1.txt W.X.Y.Z
Nmap scan report for W-X-Y-Z.dynamic.dsl.as9105.com (W.X.Y.Z)
Host is up.
All 1000 scanned ports on W-X-Y-Z.dynamic.dsl.as9105.com (W.X.Y.Z) are filtered

# Nmap done at Fri Aug 12 10:33:31 2016 -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 101.27 seconds

A UDP scan --

# Nmap 7.12 scan initiated Fri Aug 12 10:45:47 2016 as: nmap -sU -Pn -T4 -oN bcat-nmap-log-2.txt W.X.Y.Z
Nmap scan report for W-X-Y-Z.dynamic.dsl.as9105.com (W.X.Y.Z)
Host is up.
All 1000 scanned ports on W-X-Y-Z.dynamic.dsl.as9105.com (W.X.Y.Z) are open|filtered

# Nmap done at Fri Aug 12 10:47:28 2016 -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 101.16 seconds

[GigabitEthernet]

How does this compare to the Billion 8800NL?

[burakkucat]

How does this compare to the Billion 8800NL?

That is something I am unable to answer, as I have never tried one of those Billion devices on my circuit.

Am I right in assuming that the 8800NL is your current modem/router of choice?

[GigabitEthernet]

It is, yes.