New router...

[AvengerUK]

Hey all,

Now that my pings are sorted, im looking for a router that allows a Target SNR to be set. The router will need:

- Firewall
- IP QoS Preferably
- Online configeration
- DMZ And port forwarding capabilitys
- One that loves long lines!

A price not above £80 aswell!

Thanks

[AvengerUK]

*bump  *

Really its between the ZyXcel 660H or the Speedtouch 546

[jimc]

Hi
Avenger

well I am still happy with the zyxel 660H as reported in our previous thread,
I still get the occaisonal disconnection, but nowhere near as much as before.

[AvengerUK]

Hi
Avenger

well I am still happy with the zyxel 660H as reported in our previous thread,
I still get the occaisonal disconnection, but nowhere near as much as before.

I would go for the Zyxel...just the DMT compatability of the speedtouch range (ie, can set a target SNR) stops me from pressing buy! - i really cant decide which one will offer the best option, i.e. the speedtouch can be tweaked for a higher SNR = less disconnects, but the Zyxel might do that for me anyway!

[jimc]

well the zyxel has the extended reach capability, no idea how or if this works it does seem to have made my connection more stable though,
flip a coin its only a router, you can always exchange it if it doesnt live up to the hype.

Jim

[AvengerUK]

depends though, when you say "Exchange" do you mean "Flog it" or send it back? (basically if send it back...is there any particular retailer to buy from!?)

[jimc]

I have used broadbandbuyer before with no problems, I am sure as with most retailers there are reasonable return policies , ie if its unsuitable or does not work as described return it.

[AvengerUK]

Ok, ill give the Zyxel a go then! **reads return policy's first**

Thanks for your help

[Jeff]

I`m a Netgear fanboy as you well know, can`t really recommend any others as I`m chuffed with what I have and wouldn`t change a good thing

[equk]

I was looking at the zyxel with the free usb wifi dongle

Seems like  quite good value for money, also I've seen people on other forums saying you can 'tweak' the SNR for maxdsl Not sure if it's something in a new firmware or something tho as I seem to remember there being a link to new firmware.

The other router I was looking at was the netgear DG834G/DG834 or DG834GT. But as I don't really need a wifi AP (as I already have one with iptables firewall etc) both would be a bit overkill.

Tonight I ordered a wireless VoIP router with the same chipset as the netgear DG834G for £10 incl postage lol, hope it works tho haha 

*random*hmm this is my first post here on camino on mac osx

[Jeff]

Can`t complain at a tenner equk, who cares if it`s s***e for that sort of money

[equk]

Can`t complain at a tenner equk, who cares if it`s s***e for that sort of money

That's what I was thinking hehe

My conn seems ok atm so I'm sure my current router is fine but as Simon and peeps said about different chipsets might make a difference, it's worth a try for £10 

[Jeff]

fwiw, I`m still using the ancient DG632 ... gives me a 6.5 Mbit sync on a 2½ km line and can even sustain sync when snr is zero ... or below

[AvengerUK]

Bought the Zyxel, i just hope it puts the safecom in its place! - If not broadband buyer seem to have a very reasonable return policy!

[AvengerUK]

Looking around it seems you can set target snr with the zyxel with this command via errr telnet or w/e its called:

you can also slightly tweak the target snr margin to connect a lower rate and increase stability. With adslmax it only seems to work when increasing the snr.

wan adsl targetnoise X

where X is between 0xfa (-6) and 0x06 (+6) where each point is .5db of snr, so..

0xfa reduces the target by 3db,
0xfc reduces the target by 2db,
0x00 does nothing,
0x02 increases the target by 1db,

etc

jimc any ideas if this is possible with the router we have?




(and how do you use telnet )

[Scott]

I used to use PuTTY to get onto my IPCop box and tinker a few years back - windows interface and a bit more user-friendly

[AvengerUK]

Thanks for that scott! - would've taken me years to find!

Looks like this is possible with the 660H - its better than i thought

[equk]

Windows has telnet built in tho 

PuTTY is good for SSH

for telnet just do command prompt - telnet "ip"
or even easier in webbrowser put in telnet://ip.address

[AvengerUK]

Arrived today! Just put it on, and i must say BRILLIENT! - highest sync ever, and so far its kept it. Nice user interface & features...all be it confusing to me atm

[Simon_idnet]

Several customer have reported marked improvements recently but installing up-to-date routers. We're not sure yet whether the newest chips sets and/or firware are helping or if it is just a case of finding a router that suits your particular line characteristcs.

My own router at started dropping connections frequently after a thunderstorm earlier in the summer. Disabling the wireless capability on my router has fixed this for me.

Simon

[AvengerUK]

Thats also when my last router started to resync alot, after a thunderstorm! - Currently my new router is keeping sync better than the old one, although still througout today theres been the tell-tale packetloss that is usually assiociated with storms - i just hope i dont have a line issue cropped up! 

Note to people: I now have 3 spare modems, 2 of which i cant sell due them having slight issues/being generally old - if anyone fancies taking them off my hands for free let me know!

[Bill]

I now have 3 spare modems

Ditto... but one stays here (56k USR Courier), the other two are genuine Hayes- one goes to 2400 baud, the other to 9600.

When does Antiques Roadshow come round my way I wonder? 

[equk]

got my £10 router today

seems a cool little box it runs linux aswell  8) one good thing it seems to be doing is stopping the double NAT problem I had with the origo

not sure if it's made much difference yet tho as I've only just installed it will see in the morning I guess.

I had the connection timeout totally earlier for over an hour tho pinging the gateway at high ping times again (on my origo)

seems to have bluetooth/wifi/usb storage/voip/iptables lol and I've disabled most of it and have it on DMZ 

[AvengerUK]

Hmmmm,

SLight weird non-idnet (i think) related issue....basically on traces my second hop thats not my router times out on the first try - all other trys are fine. It also seem to trace fine after the first tracert / some use of the internet!

Any ideas?

[wolverene]

Just which Zyxcel have you bought.I`ve seen them listed as 660H, 660HW,Prestige 660 H61. Dont want to order the wrong one.
Cheers

[karvala]

got my £10 router today

seems a cool little box it runs linux aswell  8) one good thing it seems to be doing is stopping the double NAT problem I had with the origo

not sure if it's made much difference yet tho as I've only just installed it will see in the morning I guess.

I had the connection timeout totally earlier for over an hour tho pinging the gateway at high ping times again (on my origo)

seems to have bluetooth/wifi/usb storage/voip/iptables lol and I've disabled most of it and have it on DMZ 

What router is it, and where did you get it?  Also, did I recall you mentioning that it's really a Netgear DG834  underneath?

[AvengerUK]

its the P-660H

[Jeff]

When does Antiques Roadshow come round my way I wonder?

Aye, you could get them to price yourself up m8y! 

j/k

*Runs*

[equk]

What router is it, and where did you get it?  Also, did I recall you mentioning that it's really a Netgear DG834  underneath?

Well ....

I posted the spec on my website

CPU: Broadcom BCM6348 256 MHz
RAM: 16MB
FLASH: 4MB
WIFI: 802.11g
WAN: Embedded ADSL Modem
LAN: 2x100MB Switch
BLUETOOTH: v1.2 @ 723 Kbps
EXPANSION: Cardbus & USB
VoIP: Wireless via Bluetooth
OS: Linux

# cat /proc/cpuinfo
system type :
processor : 0
cpu model : BCM6348 V0.7
BogoMIPS : 254.77
wait instruction : no
microsecond timers : yes
tlb_entries : 32
extra interrupt vector : no
hardware watchpoint : no
VCED exceptions : not available
VCEI exceptions : not available

Spec is very similar to my firewall hehe , I'm sure someone will figure out what it is from the spec tho.
But it is the same chipset as the Netgear DG834GT is based on has lots of possibilities atm. It's also the only router I've seen that has a bluetooth chip onboard.
Also it needed a reflash and some hacking  think I've said too much now tho 

bargain at £10 incl delivery 

[equk]

I'm just playing with a few commands seems you can set the SNR like on the DG834GT altho I don't think I need it as I'm on a fixed 2mb service 

here's the adsl info I got:

Code Select Expand

Status: Showtime  Channel: FAST, Upstream rate = 288 Kbps, Downstream rate = 2272 Kbps
Mode:                   G.DMT
Channel:                Fast
Trellis:                ON
Line Status:            No Defect
Training Status:        Showtime
                Down            Up
SNR (dB):       15.1            24.0
Attn(dB):       53.0            29.5
Pwr(dBm):       11.6            18.9
Max(Kbps):      5600            1024
Rate (Kbps):    2272            288
not sure what

Max(Kbps):      5600            1024

is ? my exchange supposedly is rated at 5mb tho so maybe it's reading that from there somehow? the chipset supports ADSL2/2+ so I'm sure it's not the limits of the router.

[equk]

omg!!!

found a well cool program that connects thru telnet and gets the stats of the router.

http://tmp.mhilfe.de/dmt8.png

Supported:
Speedport 500V/W500V, Siemens SLI-5300-I/SL2-141-I, Speedtouch 716g, Belkin 7633,
T-Sinus 1054, BT Voyager 2091/2100/2110, Linksys WAG54GS, USRobotics 9107/9108,
Netgear DG834GT/DG834PNB, (BCM6348 adslctl)

rar!

download from here
see sig for partial screenshot in english

[AvengerUK]

How do you know if your router supports it? (and how the hell do u connect to ur router etc)

[equk]

How do you know if your router supports it? (and how the hell do u connect to ur router etc)

It uses the linux adslctl command to get information and set the SNR, the same as the netgear DG834GT does

I think on most of the supported routers you need to have a custom firmware with telnet support.

I'm not sure it would work on the zyxel, altho there are some cool programs for zyxel routers aswell not really sure what the os is on the zyxel, says on the site it is "ZyNOS" or something. I guess it's not linux as they don't have any GPL sourcecode on their website.

*edit* I was going to post some links to the zyxel apps I found but I can't find them

[AvengerUK]

:/ - the zyxel os is completely custom...i think

"altho there are some cool programs for zyxel routers aswell"

like...?

[equk]

hmm having trouble finding the links. One program I've found that seems to support the zyxel is ADSLMonitor.

[AvengerUK]

Hmmm, i can get that program to connect...but thats it - cant work out how to set the password for telnet i.e. i know what the password is...but i dont know how to make the program know it!

[equk]

Hmmm, i can get that program to connect...but thats it - cant work out how to set the password for telnet i.e. i know what the password is...but i dont know how to make the program know it!

it seems to be set in the cfg file

192.168.1.1
1234^M24^M8^M
wan adsl line near^Mwan adsl line far^Mwan adsl chandata^Mwan adsl perfdata^M

IF SNRD < 1 THEN wan adsl close^Mwan adsl open^M
System name>
10000
C:\Program Files\ADSLMonitor\stats.csv
C:\Program Files\ADSLMonitor\matrix.csv

Password:

[AvengerUK]

Yeh, although if i put:

Password:XXXX or Password: XXXX it still doesent work :/

[equk]

Yeh, although if i put:

Password:XXXX or Password: XXXX it still doesent work :/

Not sure then, as I've never used that program before. The zyxel provides a lot of stuff itself tho doesn't it? like SNR tweaking etc.

The telnet interface/menu on zyxel seems pretty easy (altho possibly limited).

[AvengerUK]

Yeh, although if i put:

Password:XXXX or Password: XXXX it still doesent work :/

Not sure then, as I've never used that program before. The zyxel provides a lot of stuff itself tho doesn't it? like SNR tweaking etc.

The telnet interface/menu on zyxel seems pretty easy (altho possibly limited).

Yeh, the zyxel allows stuff like SNR tweaking itself, if only i understood how to do it
lol

[Scott]

omg!!!
found a well cool program that connects thru telnet and gets the stats of the router.
download from here
see sig for partial screenshot in english

Whoa mate...that's fookin' awesome ?!?!? Damn doesn't like my 3Com...bah !

[philco]

Very nice program. There is even a version that works with my now rather dated sar110.

[equk]

Very nice program. There is even a version that works with my now rather dated sar110.

The program works for any router that runs linux with the adslctl command and a telnet server.

I found a program called sar110-tools on sourceforge tho, seems to provide an interface for various tweaks/tasks. It is written in python aswell

[equk]

I forgot to post that there is a linux equivelant of the program above.

http://www.spida.net/projects/dmt-ux/

For anyone who wants to try it on linux/unix etc. There is a Gentoo ebuild there aswell.

[jimc]

hey AvengerUK

sorry never got back to you on your last post about the zyxel just noticed it

quote
"you can also slightly tweak the target snr margin to connect a lower rate and increase stability. With adslmax it only seems to work when increasing the snr.

wan adsl targetnoise X"

not sure about this as I have not found a need for it
though I can help you with this

192.168.1.1
1234^M24^M8^M
wan adsl line near^Mwan adsl line far^Mwan adsl chandata^Mwan adsl perfdata^M

IF SNRD < 1 THEN wan adsl close^Mwan adsl open^M
System name>
10000
C:\Program Files\ADSLMonitor\stats.csv
C:\Program Files\ADSLMonitor\matrix.csv

Password:

put your password in place of the 1234 on the second lime , that should connect you , ignore the end password field

worked for me.

hows the zyxel holding up?

[AvengerUK]

The zyxel is handling sync very well compaired to my old router - only loose sync 2 times a day on a bad day!

Only thing left for me to work i suppose is IGMP - actually emailed support for that!