BT Openreach FTTC Superfast Broadband Modems Break VPN Access

[Gary]

The Director of broadband ISP Andrews & Arnold (AAISP), Adrian Kennard, claims to have discovered a fault with the superfast broadband FTTC (VDSL) modems that BTOpenreach distributes to new subscribers, which can affect "almost anyone running any sort of VPN" (Virtual Private Network) Internet service.

The problem does not appear to show on modems that haven't recently had their firmware updated and those running custom (non-BT) firmware are also unaffected, which suggests that the issue might have been introduced by an automatic upgrade. (BT have been updating all Huawei and ECI cabs and updating HG612 Modem firmware. This is not for vectoring though, but just for band changes and apparently trying to lock people out of the Huawei modems too. ECI modems remain unaffected.

More here https://status.aa.net.uk/1854

[Steve]

Interesting I've not tried my VPN for a couple of months I wonder whether it will still work.

[Gary]

Interesting I've not tried my VPN for a couple of months I wonder whether it will still work.

Not the first firmware/software upgrade that has effected something important, but when its telecoms....well you would think more testing would be done, Steve.

[gyruss]

Checked the base of the router i had installed by the BT openreach engineer today, it is an ECI, so i presume i'll be ok to VPN to my company in the new year when i try then?

[Gary]

Checked the base of the router i had installed by the BT openreach engineer today, it is an ECI, so i presume i'll be ok to VPN to my company in the new year when i try then?

ECI Modems did not need the update so yes that should be fine. Mines an ECI and has no issue. It was only The Huwei HG612, they removed its GUI and updated the broadcom chipset to accept new tones, and a 30a profile which the ECI already supported.

[rmaciag]

OK, this thread was dead for quite a while but I decided to check whether these VPN related issues have been resolved since they had been reported here nearly a year ago.

I am still on ADSL2+ but I have just started exploring other options (FTTC), providers and deals ...
I have only now realised that FTTC technology requires some kind of VDSL modem which is not built into routers as standard (with some fairly rare exceptions) as it was common with ADSL2+.
Fair enough.
I understand that FTTC installation requires BT engineer's visit to install that VDSL modem somewhere on the premises.
I use VPN if I have to work from home for whatever reasons so it is important to me that VPN is going to work with IDNet's FTTC.
Actually years ago it was provision of VPN that attracted me to IDNet as at that time at Orange (ex-Wanadoo / ex-Freeserve) they did not know what VPN was ...


Regards

[colirv]

VPN does work with FTTC. I've just tested the speed, however, and found that while ping and upload speed are not affected, connecting via the VPN dropped the download speed from 60+Mb to about 5Mb!