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Author Topic: My ZyXel VMG8324-B10A - my first impressions  (Read 33101 times)

broadstairs

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My ZyXel VMG8324-B10A - my first impressions
« on: August 29, 2014, 10:09:52 AM »

I received yesterday one of these from Dermot and now have it set up on ADSL2+ with TalkTalk and so far all is good. I've not yet fully tested the wireless for range in my house but so far wireless does work with my ASUS laptop and my Sony Android phone. Settings seemed reasonably straight forward although I do notice it takes a little longer to connect to TalkTalk than the HG622. I also have DSLStats running on it and last night showed pretty much the same stats as the HG622 as far as error rates etc, actual connected speed negotiated is slightly higher for the same SNRM maybe a couple of hundred kbps or so. One feature I do like is that you can schedule the LEDs to turn off, simple I know but useful when the router is upstairs in a bedroom. Time will tell if the wireless will work well downstairs, the HG622 was pretty bad all round for wireless hence my other APs, at least one of which will probably become redundant now.

Stuart
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dmcdonnell

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Re: My ZyXel VMG8324-B10A - my first impressions
« Reply #1 on: August 29, 2014, 05:26:16 PM »

Best of luck. Hope Fibre comes your way soon :)

£5 donated to Kitz.
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broadstairs

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Re: My ZyXel VMG8324-B10A - my first impressions
« Reply #2 on: August 29, 2014, 06:44:16 PM »

Thanks Dermot. Fibre is available here just that I have not (yet) taken the plunge....

One further observation, I find that neither of my wireless access points appear on the main status screen. They both work perfectly though, so it is not a problem.

I have tried the wireless downstairs from my phone and it does work OK, obviously the signal strength is lower. I suspect the problem with a router upstairs may well be the aerial does not radiate downwards very well but moving it at present is not an option because the main box originally installed by BT is upstairs and running cat5e/6 downstairs is not possible at present.

Next will be to force a re-sync and see what happens to the port forwarding settings, I might try that in the morning as now will get me reduced sppeds!

Stuart
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dmcdonnell

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Re: My ZyXel VMG8324-B10A - my first impressions
« Reply #3 on: August 29, 2014, 09:21:13 PM »

Expect only connected clients to appear on the router status screen. A wireless scan should show every radio. Does the ZyXel do that? I can't recall.

If downstairs is important, try lying the router on it's face and rotate it for maximum signal strength below. The MIMO 2x2 antennae array is on the PCB surface, and thus a "barn door"  target. The antennae are on opposite corners of the pcb, roughly. Always worth testing device orientation and how it impacts signal quality, little things sometimes go a long way.

The hacked F1000 is of interest mainly to those folk on long Fibre lines to the cabinet, from the evidence here on Kitz and elsewhere. It appears to give those folk a (much) better sync rate, I do not (yet) find it exceptional in any other way. It is good to hear that on ADSL2 it provides a couple of hundred kbps extra, always a bonus but minor compared to Fibre gains.

Wireless signal strength in my (very basic) tests are better, ~20%, than in the Huawei HG658c (Vodafone standard Fibre box here in Ireland) despite separate MIMO 2x2 antennae in the latter. orientated perpendicular to the pcb board. It's all 2.4Ghz, of course, nothing with 5Ghz about here.
« Last Edit: August 29, 2014, 09:32:52 PM by dmcdonnell »
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kitz

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Re: My ZyXel VMG8324-B10A - my first impressions
« Reply #4 on: August 29, 2014, 10:09:17 PM »

Quote
I do notice it takes a little longer to connect to TalkTalk than the HG622

Yes this is something Ive noticed too, but saying that another all-in-one unit I have with a lantiq chipset is the same, so I'd thought it may be a quirk of all in one units on vdsl, but if youve noticed it on adsl2+, then I guess not.
« Last Edit: September 05, 2014, 10:37:42 AM by kitz »
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broadstairs

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Re: My ZyXel VMG8324-B10A - my first impressions
« Reply #5 on: September 05, 2014, 09:53:20 AM »

Just an update to say that I have been impressed by how well this router holds the ADSL2+ sync overnight when SNRM drops. At one point it did not re-sync even when the SNRM dropped to zero, this was when I had tweaked the sync slightly to get just under 9000kbps downstream, with my normal sync at 8737kbps it goes down to about 2db at the lowest. Upstream sync has always been at 1020kbps which is slightly better than the HG622 I was using.

Stuart
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kitz

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Re: My ZyXel VMG8324-B10A - my first impressions
« Reply #6 on: September 05, 2014, 10:42:56 AM »

Thats excellent news, a higher sync speed and holding on to the line better  :thumbs:

Thanks for all your feedback
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broadstairs

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Re: My ZyXel VMG8324-B10A - my first impressions
« Reply #7 on: September 05, 2014, 12:03:22 PM »

One more point, I have tested it for any open ports using GRC ShieldsUp and it comes back as completely in stealth mode with no ports responding the way I have it set up. I also tested telnet from my mobile phone (not on the lan) and that did not connect, which is good as at least one of the telnet commands will display the wi-fi connection password in clear.

Stuart
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Ronski

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Re: My ZyXel VMG8324-B10A - my first impressions
« Reply #8 on: September 21, 2014, 08:46:03 PM »

I received my ZyXel from dmcdonnell a few days ago and I now have it all set up and working.

Connection.

I have found that my DS attainable has increased from around 48Mbps to 54Mbps, whilst sync has only slightly increased, but I am currently interleaved. However my US has decreased, yesterday it was synced at 7239kbps (Attainable7603kbps), and now it's 6682kbps (6853kbps).  My SNR Margin increased to 7.1. Bitswaps have all but disappeared. We'll have to wait and see if the DLM relents and actual sync improves.

Configuration.

I found the ZyXel somewhat complicated to configure (so many options), but I guess it's just getting used to a different manufactures terms and settings. One thing I have found is that setting up port forwarding did not work the first time, I had to edit the settings and re-save them, it then started working and that was without actually changing anything, just saving again. I've also found that my server reports that UPNP is turned off, but according to the router it is turned on, it can't even detect the router, but this may possibly be because I haven't rebooted my server since swapping routers.

Wireless.

I don't use the wireless on my router, as my previous one's wireless was pretty poor I have an access point in the loft which covers the whole house pretty well. However the wireless does seem better than my previous Netgear router.
« Last Edit: September 21, 2014, 08:49:21 PM by Ronski »
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kitz

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Re: My ZyXel VMG8324-B10A - my first impressions
« Reply #9 on: September 21, 2014, 10:04:03 PM »

Glad its giving you a better speed - lets hope the DLM notices soon :)

Quote
I found the ZyXel somewhat complicated to configure (so many options), but I guess it's just getting used to a different
lol I think I did warn in my review that its very feature rich with lots of settings and configurations more aimed at the techie users which could overwhelm :D
Theres a massive several hundred page manual you can download.

Quote
One thing I have found is that setting up port forwarding did not work the first time, I had to edit the settings and re-save them, it then started working and that was without actually changing anything, just saving again.

Do you use firefox?  If so I think you may have fallen prey to one of the bugs I mention in the guide whereby the save button doesnt always work - I think its some sort of CSS issue

Quote from: kitz
** Note: the Save function doesn't work properly in Firefox or Safari. **
 Try using Chrome.

 
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Ronski

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Re: My ZyXel VMG8324-B10A - my first impressions
« Reply #10 on: September 22, 2014, 06:26:45 AM »

Hi Kitz,  I intentionally used IE when I initially set everything up with it connected to my laptop. Then once setup swapped it into my live network. This is where I discovered some of my port forwarding rules were not working. I then edited them using Firefox and they then worked. I've already downloaded that manual, it's certainly big.
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broadstairs

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Re: My ZyXel VMG8324-B10A - my first impressions
« Reply #11 on: September 22, 2014, 07:39:18 AM »

For reasons I'll explain elsewhere I am now using the wireless on this router and so far it is working well across the whole house which certainly was not the case with the HG622, so for me at least the wireless seems very good.

As to port forwarding set up I do seem to remember I had to do it twice as well when initially setting up the router and I was using Firefox to do it. Like Ronski I was using a laptop to do it which in my case runs Linux so no IE and I had not installed Chrome at that time either. I had not seen the bit repoted by Kitz and Firefox at the time.

Stuart
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kitz

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Re: My ZyXel VMG8324-B10A - my first impressions
« Reply #12 on: September 22, 2014, 05:37:16 PM »

eke. :(
I must admit Ive not actually tried it with IE as I only really use Firefox, Chrome and Safari...  although saying that Ive made changes recently using Firefox which saved perfectly fine  ???
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AArdvark

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Re: My ZyXel VMG8324-B10A - my first impressions
« Reply #13 on: September 22, 2014, 09:50:07 PM »

eke. :(
I must admit Ive not actually tried it with IE as I only really use Firefox, Chrome and Safari...  although saying that Ive made changes recently using Firefox which saved perfectly fine  ???

I have been investigating the issue with Firefox and the Zyxel modem as in my case the response from the gui has been sometimes very slow/partial screen updates or even hanging (or so it seemed).

I have reached the conclusion that Firefox is NOT the problem but my Anti-Virus Software (Avast free).

After a process of elimination removing various pieces of software running on my PC I found that disabling the 'Shields' in Avast meant that firefox worked perfectly with the Zyxel modem.
If I left the anti-virus 'shields' running I got the effect(s) as reported by kitz and worse.

I have now removed Avast completely and have installed selected parts of the Mcafee software suite as supplied by Plusnet and all is working as it should.
(Unfortunately Mcafee is aimed at an audience who prefer a 'blackbox' approach to security software and it does a lot of 'automatic' things that are not clearly reported in logs etc)
It is a great pity as I have used avast for 3+ years and it has been a good balance between functionality/usuability and minimal Interference with other software i run.

I would suggest looking at the anti-virus and/or anti-malware software you may be running as it could be interfering with firefox when accessing the Zyxel.
I do run multiple anti-virus and/or anti-malware software progs to catch as much as possible.
This could be an effect only I am seeing but I am not convinced this is the case.

I do know from past experience that you can often assume to know the general cause of a software issue only to find out later it is some s/w you least suspected to be at fault.
(Software 'side-effects' are everywhere, just not all are visible. Hence crashes and hangs still happen after all this time. Even in the world of IOS  :D ;) )
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Ronski

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Re: My ZyXel VMG8324-B10A - my first impressions
« Reply #14 on: September 22, 2014, 10:13:19 PM »

I'm also running Avast free edition,  on both my laptop and PC. No time at the moment to test anything though.
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