Billion Routers?

pctech · Feb 09, 2011, 18:06:29

Was looking at this router http://www.billion.com/product/wireless/BiPAC7800NL-All-in-One-ADSL2-Router-Wireless-N.html as its networking stack includes support for IPv6 but just wondered if anyone had experience of kit manufactured by Billion?

Rik · Feb 09, 2011, 18:07:24

Not personally, Mitch, but most comments I've seen have been complimentary.

DorsetBoy · Feb 09, 2011, 18:16:34

My brush with Billion was a disaster and the support "tech" I spoke to was a complete prat. Others do like them it seems.

pctech · Feb 09, 2011, 18:20:01

I contacted Netgear once (I forget what for now) and their support was pretty dire too.

pctech · Feb 13, 2011, 14:44:57

I've just put in a preorder for a Broadcom based Comtrend one which is IPv6 capable that AAISP are currently taking preorders for and should be with me by the end of the month.

It was 50 quid as opposed to 117 for the billion.

Aaron · Feb 13, 2011, 15:27:57

Funnily I was looking into Billion Routers the other day, specifically 7800N (not NL). The general response is people are very happy with it and had increased their sync by some amount compared to their old routers. It has a Broadcom chipset.

I have been wanting to find a router as good as the 2700HGV (in terms of how well it syncs) so I can replace it, as I find the web interface of the 2700HGV to be a PITA to manage. But £115 is an awful lot to risk.

pctech · Feb 13, 2011, 15:38:04

Full review when I get it.

I anticipate being able to sell the DG834G v4 I have for roughly the amount I paid for it as they are still quite sought after so should cover the cost.

pctech · Feb 13, 2011, 15:39:30

I have to agree though the 2700 is a bit clunky, particularly as the specimen I have has v6 firmware.

stevenrw · Feb 28, 2011, 10:35:13

I've been using the Billion Bipac 7800N for a while now and I find it great. It does have far more features than I will ever use, and there is a regrettable omission of a USB connection for NAS, which ain't good for a £100+ price tag.
I found their support very helpful, and the support I got from Broadband Buyer was also excellent.
Wireless N coverage is much better and you have the option to change the frequency to avoid clashes.
I'd recommend it if you are prepared to spend that sort of money.

pctech · Feb 28, 2011, 12:01:19

Cheers.

Am still waiting to hear from A&A about the router I ordered, if it turns out to be a pile of err hrrrm when it arrives I will probably order thw Billion one.

Najarak · Apr 07, 2011, 20:44:59

I changed from a 2-Wire 2700 a couple of months ago to a Billion Bipac 7800N, easy to set up for ADSL and much faster wireless than the
2-Wire, coverage seems fine.

Having been upgraded today to fibre I simply could not figure out from the manuals how to change from the ADSL port to theEWAN port and change the settings to PPOE. I rang Billion's UK support line and the guy there talked me through it. Now working and how!

Glenn · Apr 07, 2011, 20:51:06

Glenn · Apr 07, 2011, 20:52:59

What was the estimate of your speed before the upgrade? My line is hopefully been upgraded from 2.3mb to an estimated 28mb on Monday.

stevenrw · Apr 07, 2011, 21:16:26

Glad you are also finding the 7800N a sound investment. Unfortunately my pockets are not deep enough for the FTTC service but its reassuring to know that the Bipac 7800N will do the biz speed-wise should I suddenly become flush!

Najarak · Apr 07, 2011, 21:28:19

Glenn,

They estimated 31Mb, the Openreach guy got 38Mb on his gadget, I have tried some of the Speedtest.net servers and get over 37Mb on some of those. I am about 450 metres from the new cabinet as the wire goes.

I could not connect whilst the installer was here, because Miriam had told me that the log in would be the same (@uk.idnet.dsl4) after he had gone I rang Support and they said that the domain had changed to "@idnet.gw6" - same user name.

I knew that I could connect the Cat5 cable to the iMac and that it should work, not with the wrong log in however!

Alls Well That Ends Well

Tacitus · Apr 08, 2011, 07:38:32

I believe one of the reasons people are going for the 7800N, is that is tweakable - you can play around with the target SNR. Looked at one myself but since the 2700 V6 I have seems to be working without problem, I'm inclined to leave well alone

stevenrw · Apr 08, 2011, 13:40:27

Having been using one for about a year now I can say its an excellent, stable piece of kit.
You should check on their website often however, they do seem to do firmware updates quite frequently.
Also I found changing the wireless "n" frequency made a difference of "good" to "excellent" on signal strength immediately.

pctech · Apr 08, 2011, 13:59:02

Think you'll find though the 21CN network kit ignores the tweaks.

I decided not to buy the comtrend router as more important things to spend money on at the min but may look at this one now.

Adrian · Apr 08, 2011, 20:17:46

I have just taken delivery of a Billion 7800N and a mighty fine router its is. I have installed the beta firmware which enables IPv6 and although I have clicked the relevant box and rebooted I still don't seem to have any IPv6 facilities. What am I not doing?

Simon · Apr 08, 2011, 20:26:57

Do IDNet use IPv6?

Adrian · Apr 08, 2011, 20:28:43

As far as I know they do:

"Bring on IPv6

Date: 30 March 2011 | Author: IDNet

We provide all customers with a delegated /48 of native IPv6 address space. This gives you 65,536 subnets, each subnet consisting of 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 native IPv6 addresses. That should keep you going for a while!!
"

Simon · Apr 08, 2011, 20:30:05

That's my theory blown out of the water then.

Adrian · Apr 08, 2011, 20:32:28

I'm just being geeky, but I suppose that at the age of 64 I should be content to just dribble into my Horlicks

Steve · Apr 08, 2011, 20:48:22

I don't whether you have to ask for an IPv6 address from support or not.

Adrian · Apr 08, 2011, 20:57:27

Sorted! When I updated the firmware I should have rebooted with the factory default settings then re-entered my configuration.

As usual, a case of RTFM, or not in my case

Steve · Apr 08, 2011, 21:05:19

So have you got a IPv6 wan IP address?

Adrian · Apr 08, 2011, 22:27:05

According to http://test-ipv6.com I have:

Your IPv4 address on the public internet appears to be 91.135.8.150

Your IPv6 address on the public internet appears to be 2a02:390:5ae6:0:217:f2ff:fe01:2f95

World IPv6 day is June 8th, 2011. No problems are anticipated for you with this browser, at this location.

Congratulations! You appear to have both IPv4 and IPv6 internet working. If a publisher publishes to IPv6, your browser will connect using IPv6. Your browser prefers IPv6 over IPv4 when given the choice (this is the expected outcome).

Your DNS server (possibly run by your ISP) appears to have IPv6 internet access.

Now listen carefully because I want you all to memorise the IPv6 address and I will be back later to ask you what it is. :

Steve · Apr 08, 2011, 22:29:53

Looks good thanks Adrian , which DNS are you using?

Adrian · Apr 08, 2011, 23:07:05

I assume I am using IDNet DNS but although I have the router set to automatically get the IPv6 IP and DNS nothing shows on the relevant router page. I am configured to use IDNet IPv4 DNS thoughIt is beta firmware so maybe the absence of this information is just a bug.

Rik · Apr 09, 2011, 10:38:18

Been there, wearing the T-shirt.

Steve · Apr 09, 2011, 22:04:21

There an example of the router GUI here. http://www.billion.com/edu/EWAN/7800N_GUI/

sparkler · Apr 10, 2011, 06:23:29

You don't have permission to access /edu/EWAN/7800N_GUI/restore_reboot.cgi.htm on this server.

Aaron · Apr 10, 2011, 13:14:56

Quote from: sparkler on Apr 10, 2011, 06:23:29
You don't have permission to access /edu/EWAN/7800N_GUI/restore_reboot.cgi.htm on this server.

Couldn't access the supposedly hidden snr.cgi page either

pctech · Apr 10, 2011, 13:16:20

Reboot functionality would have been disabled for obvious reasons.

Adrian · Apr 12, 2011, 22:46:40

I have had my 7800N working now for several days and apart from one issue, it is working very well and I love the host features of this device. However, I have encountered one problem that when configured to connect using PPPoA and VC/MUX I would get drops of the internet connection (Internet light out) but DSL light on. The worst thing was the router would not automatically reconnect so I would have to do it manually through the GUI. Reading round the web this seems to be quite a common issue with no fix from Billion.

However a Plusnet customer tried changing the router to PPPoE with LLC/Snap-Bridging so I thought I'd try this and my connection has been rock solid ever since. Billion support don't think the router is the problem, rather a BT/IDNet issue but I think they are wrong as there are so many reports of the same problem and my Speedtouch router rarely dropped a connection.

Overall though the 7800N seems like a nice piece of kit and I get excellent wireless speeds and good throughput on the GB ethernet ports.

Lance · Apr 12, 2011, 23:22:45

Thanks for that Adrian.

Najarak · Apr 13, 2011, 09:42:01

Adrian,

Maybe I was just lucky but until I switched to FTTC last week I used the Billion on ADSL since February and did not have the problem that you experienced despite a number of disconnections caused by power cuts.

Just a thought, but do you click on the "save config" link at the bottom of the Billion screen. When the support guy was talking me through the steps needed to change to PPPoE he told me to do this and I could not understand why. Perhaps one has to put the settings in flash memory in the 7800?

Adrian · Apr 13, 2011, 18:04:14

Clicking "Apply" just applies the change you make to the current settings wherever possible. These changes will remain in place until you reboot unless you click "Save Config" to put them in flash memory in which case they persist after a reboot.

Bill · Apr 14, 2011, 16:34:37

Quote from: Adrian on Apr 08, 2011, 20:57:27
Sorted! When I updated the firmware I should have rebooted with the factory default settings then re-entered my configuration.

I didn't... where you select the file for upgrading, there's an option to auto-restart with either factory default or current settings.

(I didn't know this thread was here, I've started one in "Help", but as it's more related to using it on IDNet's IPv6 rather than the router itself I think it's OK there

)

Steve · Apr 29, 2011, 09:10:21

Bipac 7800N adsl stats available via telnet >adsl info --stats

i.e

adsl: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: Showtime
Retrain Reason: 0
Max: Upstream rate = 1284 Kbps, Downstream rate = 10080 Kbps
Channel: FAST, Upstream rate = 832 Kbps, Downstream rate = 8128 Kbps

Link Power State: L0
Mode: G.DMT
TPS-TC: ATM Mode
Trellis: ON
Line Status: No Defect
Training Status: Showtime
Down Up
SNR (dB): 13.8 17.0
Attn(dB): 22.0 14.5
Pwr(dBm): 19.8 12.3
G.dmt framing
K: 255(0) 27
R: 0 0
S: 1 1
D: 1 1
Counters
SF: 24262982 24263829
SFErr: 105 0
RS: 0 0
RSCorr: 0 0
RSUnCorr: 0 0

etc etc

pctech · Apr 29, 2011, 12:15:02

Can anyone confirm where they bought their 7800N's from as seen one on Amazon for 120 but want to make sure it is in fzct the correct hardware.

Najarak · Apr 29, 2011, 12:52:39

I got mine from Amazon in February this year, at the time it was £2.05 cheaper than it is now.

pctech · Apr 29, 2011, 13:09:42

Right cheers

Steve · Apr 29, 2011, 13:46:20

Amazon for me as well. I see on TBB forum it's described as the new 585v6 and indeed it's seems to be getting some praise for performance on long lines.

pctech · Apr 29, 2011, 13:48:13

That'll do me

pctech · Apr 29, 2011, 16:57:27

Right ordered, should get it Tuesday.

Full report when I get it up and running.

Bill · May 31, 2011, 12:15:12

Quote from: Adrian on Apr 08, 2011, 22:27:05
According to http://test-ipv6.com I have:

There's another useful IPv6 test site here:

http://ipv6-test.com/

Apart from the usual info, it also has a combined v4/v6 speed test (used in my sig) and a sort of mini-BQM for reverse ping tests.

You'll need to open a path through the IPv6 firewall to use the ping test, it detects your host's IPv6 address not the router's.

Steve · Jun 08, 2011, 16:47:42

Anyone running 1.06d on a 7800N and having issues with IPv6 connectivity ? I've had to reboot the router twice to restore IPv6 connectivity ,perhaps support may be worth a call if anyone else is suffering likewise. IPv4 seems fine btw.

Najarak · Jun 08, 2011, 16:58:51

i've put the 1.06d firmware on today, however I do not get any IPv6 connectivity. I think it may be because I told it to restore existing settings after the change of firmware.

Would I be right in thinking that I will have to restart with factory default settings to allow IPv6 to work?

IPv4 is however working fine.

Steve · Jun 08, 2011, 17:02:15

Thats as I understand it , restart with default settings following firmware upgrade and then using the 'basic' menu config click enable IPv6 and click apply (it will restart again)

Status will then show both IPv4/IPv6 IP addresses and DNS

Bill · Jun 08, 2011, 17:48:10

No problem with connectivity, but it's laggy as hell... running the ping test from http://ipv6-test.com/pingtest/ usually gives me steady v4/v6 pings of 22ms/45ms, but it's been all over the place this afternoon.

I suspect that World IPv6 Day is showing that more work is needed!

Bill · Jun 08, 2011, 18:42:58

They've put a notice up on that site I linked to:

QuoteHi ! Due to the high amount of traffic on World IPv6 day, you may be experiencing some slowdowns. Please be patient as we're actively working to add more server capacity to the site.

Seems to be gradually getting back to normal.

Steve · Jun 08, 2011, 21:30:15

Thanks Bill.