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[guest]

This is a copy of a post I've just made to the Sky forums and relates to their "new" ADSL/VDSL router - the SR102.

Just putting this in here for reference, someone else may find it useful.

---start copy

The SR102 appears to block outbound DNS requests to any other DNS than the ones DHCP hands the router when it logs into ADSL/VDSL via the DSL connector. This causes various issues if you run your own caching DNS.

The issue is that the proxy daemon in the router is always active, regardless of whether content blocking is activated or not.

The "fix" is to specify the IP address of your caching DNS as the "Trusted IP Address" under the Security->Block Sites section. That will once again permit outbound DNS requests to servers other than Sky.

It may not be apparent to you that this has happened. I was half expecting it but all appeared OK initially until NoScript started throwing wobblies about DNS diversion and cross-scripting. Internet Explorer of course was blissfully unaware anything was wrong, which is why I don't use it

Further investigation showed the SR102 was not passing lookup requests to external (to Sky) DNS. Not very friendly when the proxy daemon should be off but I can understand why Sky has done it this way.

--end copy

The reason of course that they have started to divert/re-route DNS requests is the content filter (Sky Broadband Shield) they implemented recently. Not a lot of point in a "filter" that can be bypassed by changing local machine DNS settings really.

[guest]

Interestingly this required a reboot when fibre was installed to get the full upstream speed.

[BritBrat]

What happens if you use OpenDNS servers.

[guest]

On every machine or just one? If its just one then that's fine, more than one I don't know.

There's nothing much wrong with Sky's DNS at the moment, someone has done a decent job on sorting it out recently.

I just use a local DNS caching server on a WHS box as its more efficient. Also IME you notice when the ISP has a minor congestion problem as some things "stall" in browsers as lookups for new addresses get dropped while other cached addresses obviously don't need the lookup. Router can't cache as much as the WHS box.

Also you can extract username/passwords from a Sky router reasonably easily - wireshark and set the router to connect over ethernet rather than the DSL port. Plug it into PC and run wireshark while router tries to connect. Username/Password will be there.

That essentially means you can use what you like with your unlocked Openreach modem provided it supports (IIRC) DHCP Option61 - there's a few routers around, even Apple stuff apparently.

Still a PITA frankly.

[guest]

Oh now this is a surprise :

Ping statistics for 87.237.39.90:
    Packets: Sent = 1178, Received = 1178, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 9ms, Maximum = 74ms, Average = 11ms

That is with 2 netflix HD streams running, hence the "spikes" (can't really call them that).

Now I had around 25ms latency with ADSL, I was expecting to have +/-5ms on that with VDSL, likely more as it needs more error correction. 11ms average seems like quite a drop.

Probably just "first on the cabinet" stats....