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[mtlathome]

Hi there looking for some help I have a nighthawk xr300 router. I want to use it on my bt connection the router doesn't have a DSL port on the back it's just a stand-alone router. what would I need to do in order for me to use the nighthawk router with my bt connection? I don't think using the home hub is an option as I would be double nat. I'm unsure about modems to buy. I get 78MB download and 30MB upload. could someone point me in the right direction?

[Alex Atkin UK]

Is that a typo?  BT VDSL is 80/20Mbit max.

[tubaman]

Standalone VDSL modems are expensive and there's also very little choice, so most people on here use a modem/router in bridge mode.
Zyxel units are well liked but make sure you get one with a Broadcom chipset as they do unfortunately make some nasty Mediatek based ones as well now.
The model number tells you which chipset it has, so a VMG8924-B10A is Broadcom based but a VMG3625-T20A will be Mediatek.
Ebay is a great source if you don't mind secondhand, but many will be ISP supplied units that will need unlocking. Lots of info on here about how to do that so I'd suggest looking at some of that to see if you are comfortable with it.
 

[gt94sss2]

They are getting on now but you can also get unlocked HG612s or unlock them yourself using the guide on this site.

[Weaver]

Secondhand ZyXEL VMG 1312-B10A and the like are available on ebay for next to nothing, seen one recently for less than £30. They all can be configured to be straight modems, not DSL routers. I use these devices in modem-only mode, and we can help you configure them. The above model and other ZyXEL units can if you wish be configured with our own member Johnson’s custom firmware which provides many enhancements, including an IP MTU of 1500 bytes. That’s not the only such ZyXEL model.

[RealAleMadrid]

@mtlathome  I suggest the trusty Huawei HG612-3B  which was the best VDSL2 modem that Openreach supplied when they installed FTTC connections some time ago. Other posters will probably say they are too old, don't have the latest chip set but I have used one with no problems for over 5 years on both ADSL and VDSL2 lines. They are still available on the usual auction site. You may get a better deal on an auction rather than buy it now. Don't pay more for unlocked ones, this can be done simply by loading a different firmware and gives you full modem stats if you want them.

The Zyxel routers mentioned in earlier posts are also worth considering but they are not new devices either.

[Weaver]

@RealAleMadrid is quite correct, that particular ZyXEL modem-router is quite old. I think some of the other good ZyXEL devices are a bit more recent, perhaps? I forget which device Kitz uses. Burakkucat uses the same ZyXEL modem-router as me and it was from his recommendation and help that I chose the VMG 1312-B10A devices (times 3). Custom firmware for other ZyXEL models is also available at that Johnson release page - see link I gave out earlier.

[Alex Atkin UK]

They may be old, but in bridge mode it shouldn't matter too much - except perhaps aging re my ECI unit that I replace the capacitors.

Speaking of, I do still have my HG612 and the ECI so could send one of them, already promised the Zyxels to Weaver.

[mtlathome]

Thank you for the recommendations, it's opened my eyes up to what I need to do in order to hook my router up. I've been a long-time user of cable so moving to bt I was unsure about what I can use to reconnect my router, would have been nice if the home hub had modem mode as cable does. I do have some questions about buying a modem, do you get more errors in the logs with some models than others, are they stable in terms of holding bandwidth correctly, and will they affect ping times? also, what is the difference between the ones listed in this post say a 200quid Vigor 130?

[Alex Atkin UK]

It can make a difference, sometimes the ECI modem works better on an ECI cabinet, sometimes it doesn't.  For me personally it allowed me to tweak the settings to get full speed (I had to use a hacked HomeHub 5a for this to use the newer software) whereas the default was slightly slower.

Can't comment on the Vigor 130, but the others were just models we've found to work well and allow us to nosey at the statistics when there is a problem or to tweak things a little.  They don't in general make a difference to latency, except in the odd case where tweaking the settings to make the line slower can trick the network into removing interleaving, a form of error correction that typically adds 6ms to the latency.

There's plenty of discussion about these things on the forum if you want to get a headache.

[Iain]

Before going any further, it would be worth answering that first question.

No good getting any of the modems mentioned if you are on G Fast.

[mtlathome]

It can make a difference, sometimes the ECI modem works better on an ECI cabinet, sometimes it doesn't.

  So ECI means chipset related? how do you find this out? I know my cabinet just doesn't know what chipset it runs on.

They don't in general make a difference to latency, except in the odd case where tweaking the settings to make the line slower can trick the network into removing interleaving, a form of error correction that typically adds 6ms to the latency.

Yes, I remember you used to be able to ask for this to be turned off with your isp.

[RealAleMadrid]

@mtlathome  I would steer clear of the Openreach ECI modem, never had a good reputation, sometimes works well if connected to an ECI cabinet.

I am not keen on the Vigor 130 either, certainly not at that price, the stats shown on its user interface are screwed up and vey confusing. I don't think it has the best chipset match for Huawei FTTC cabinets.

Your opening post says you get speeds of 78MB down and 30MB up, I guess that should be 78Mbps down and 20Mbps up so almost full speed for a VDSL2 connection so probably a fairly short line to the cabinet.

As no line is the same I can't really say with any conviction how the error rates vary for different modems.
All I can say is I am happy with the performance of the HG612 on my line which I reckon to be around 450 metres to the cabinet, here are some stats...

# xdslcmd info --stats
xdslcmd: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: Showtime
Retrain Reason: 0
Last initialization procedure status:   0
Max:    Upstream rate = 26832 Kbps, Downstream rate = 78700 Kbps
Bearer: 0, Upstream rate = 20000 Kbps, Downstream rate = 79999 Kbps
Bearer: 1, Upstream rate = 0 Kbps, Downstream rate = 0 Kbps
Link Power State:       L0
Mode:                   VDSL2 Annex B
VDSL2 Profile:          Profile 17a
TPS-TC:                 PTM Mode(0x0)
Trellis:                U:ON /D:ON
Line Status:            No Defect
Training Status:        Showtime
                Down            Up
SNR (dB):        1.9             8.2
Attn(dB):        15.8            0.0
Pwr(dBm):        13.1            6.7

Here are the error counts since the last power cut

Since Link time = 16 days 4 hours 14 min 47 sec
FEC:            111429604               0
CRC:            0               1593
ES:             0               1335
SES:            0               1
UAS:            0               0
LOS:            0               0
LOF:            0               0
LOM:            0               0

FEC is forward error correction so are corrected errors

As for the others they are all zero on downstream, there is no G.Inp on upstream so a few errors happen. My line will run like this for weeks or months until the next power outage. errors, what are they?

To find your cabinet type, the BT checker will tell your exchange and cabinet number then look on the Codelook website for your exchange and the info for your cabinet, I suspect it will be a Huawei with the speeds you are getting.

[Weaver]

I have tried out a Vigor 130, not as fast on my ultra-long ADSL line as other modems I have been using. I liked the fact that it ‘just works’. I haven’t tested it on VDSL2 though, so I can’t comment usefully. (I’ve never even seen VDSL2, quite literally.)

My exchange chipset is Broadcom, so there’s the very important question of synergy here. The Broadcom-based ZyXEL modems that I use have PhyR, Broadcom’s L2 ReTx error correction protocol (like G.INP, but proprietary and for ADSL2) and this gives a decent speed improvement and an even bigger reliability improvement, allowing me to use 3dB downstream target SNRM rather than 6dB, something that would be infeasible without L2 ReTx. Can only do this with ADSL2 if there’s Broadcom software at both ends.

I think the Vigor is a Lantiq chipset ?

[Alex Atkin UK]

@mtlathome  I would steer clear of the Openreach ECI modem, never had a good reputation, sometimes works well if connected to an ECI cabinet.

I'd think the bigger problem is their capacitors failing, other than that it worked well on my line with OpenWRT, I only switched to the HomeHub because it was easier to put newer OpenWRT on that which has the SNRm tweak in the web UI.