Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => Broadband Hardware => Topic started by: Tacitus on November 26, 2015, 06:46:31 PM
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Anybody here know anything about this?
http://www.cerberusnetworks.co.uk/index.php/support-pages/guides-a-manuals/fttc-installation-q4-2015 (http://www.cerberusnetworks.co.uk/index.php/support-pages/guides-a-manuals/fttc-installation-q4-2015)
The gist of the article is that BT will need to specifically approve any modem that is to be connected to their network. On the face of it this sounds little more than is probably done for ADSL kit, but has anyone any idea of how this might affect end users and their existing kit?
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It's not particularly new:
Openreach CPE Enablement (https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/super-fastfibreaccess/cpeenablement/cpeenablement.do)
Devices supplied by ISPs are required to have passed the testing.
I have not heard of anything happening to end users who connect other equipment. In some cases, the other equipment might not work very well, like the Asus DSL-N66U or AC68U models, which initially had some stability problems, or currently Fritzbox 7390 devices ending up with very low upload speeds (https://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,145977.0.html).
I'm not sure that that page from Cerberus Networks is as clear as it could be, e.g. the customer of Openreach is the ISP or perhaps BTWholesale (for "the customer must supply the device that connects to the BT phone socket").
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Devices supplied by ISPs are required to have passed the testing.
Thanks for the link. I did think it was most likely more or less what was already happening and I imagine the bulk of the kit supplied by most of the mainstream manufacturers will probably be OK.
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Can that really be the authoritative list of approved equipment at that time, or is it just the list of approved kit available from that particular ISP? I notice the BT Homehub isn't listed as approved, and aren't some of Openreach's own modems missing?
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The only list I've seen is from the ISP forum slides publicly available on the BTWholesale website ("Go to market" section, then "See past events and resources"). The most recent is from September, and yes, the list is quite short, and does not include devices specific to a particular ISP nor the Openreach modems. Many manufacturers don't seem to bother putting their devices through the testing process. The list from BTWholesale will only include things tested via BTWholesale, some things might have been tested by Openreach directly.
While devices supplied by ISPs are required to have passed the testing, things sold to the general public probably won't have been, manufacturers won't probably bother unless it affects sales. And the list of approved devices isn't even publicly available, people would have to rely on manufacturers like Zyxel advertising that their devices have passed.
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Can that really be the authoritative list of approved equipment at that time, or is it just the list of approved kit available from that particular ISP?
A good question and I believe the latter is correct. It is not a definitive list from Openreach.
Edited to add that Kitz has deduced the origin of that list; see below.
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The list from Cerberus Networks is mostly the same as the one from the earlier BTWholesale ISP forum slides, the Technicolor 588v2 is new and the 589vac moved from conditionally to fully approved.
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The list appears to be up to date. However what that document doesn't make quite clear is that most of that is taken direct from BT docs and "the customer" is the person buying from BTw - ie the ISP.
Ive always found it strange that the BTr modems arent listed. I believe the Billion 8800NL is also up for testing this month. Its not gone un-noticed by me at least that the ones passing mostly all have BCM63168 chipsets.
Thanks for that link. I'll update the info BT modem conformance (http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,16097.msg299736.html#msg299736) thread.
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Its not gone un-noticed by me at least that the ones passing mostly all have BCM63168 chipsets.
I noticed that and having tried both a Zyxel (Broadcom) and a Draytek (Lantiq), it's clear the Broadcom is giving significantly higher sync speeds on the Broadcom based Huawei cabinet near me. For stability there was nothing to choose between them.
One other point, is any of this likely to affect people who use custom firmware like Open WRT?
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There is no support for Broadcom DSL in OpenWRT, the drivers are not open source so it's unlikely to ever be supported. Lantiq DSL drivers are open source, it would be down to the person building the firmware image, or the end user, to configure it appropriately to meet all the requirements for BT FTTC.