I have been experiencing problems with my internet, so I contacted Telekom Support. They informed me that my router (Speedport Smart 3) is too slow for my usage and that the CPU is maxing out 90% of the time. Unfortunately, the new router (Speedport Smart 4) is not a solution either.
I started looking into alternatives and realized that building my own router might be the best option. However, I found that there isn't a clear best solution, and most of the options available are geared towards the US market. Since I am located in Germany, I need something that I can buy here or at least have shipped here without any issues.
Can anyone recommend some hardware or solutions that would work well? The most important requirement is that I can keep my existing Mesh setup (3 Telekom Speed Home Wifi). Running custom firmware is not a problem, and I need to ensure that I can still use my home phone (Telekom Speedphone 10)over the internet (DECT/ Voice over iP/Cat-ip (tontet know what is the best) as I do now.
You need to define your requirements[1] - and where your current setup fails you[2].
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[1] VDSL, ftth, something else? at what WAN speed.
[2] what actually is "too slow", routing performance, wireless throughput, something else?
[*] depending on the above, there are many possibilities, but at the same time you will have to rethink your strategy and split functions between 'modem', VoIP/ SIP phone features, router, wireless distribution. As-is, this is way too vague to give advice in any form.
The WAN speed is currently 175 Mbps and will be upgraded to fiber within 1-3 years. While the LAN speed is satisfactory at 170 Mbps, the wireless speed is slow at 60 Mbps. Therefore, I understand that you suggest using the Speedport 3 as a modem and incorporating a new router to improve wireless performance.
You have vdsl with vectoring or fiber? Can You set up this existing modem in to the bridge mode and terminate pppoe session on normal router? My colleague bought some new fritzbox with ax radio and dect for ancient phones. If i remember it correctly frizbox have some ass saving sfp modules for vdsl but i'm not sure if this plugs works with this vectoring nonsense.
Mmmh, AVM uses on board DSL ports, SFP modules are only used for allowing exchangeable optics for FTTH (GPON-transceiver, Ethernet-transceiver, or XGS-PON-whatever*) for the on board maxlinear prx321 chip IIRC.
Fritzboxen do not have a convenient bridged-modem mode anymore (AVM sees themselves higher up in the food chain, with matching prices) so do not make the best bridged modems. That said second hand intel/maxlinear vrx518 based Fritzbox 7530/7520 models can be flashed to OpenWrt and can act quite well as bridged modem (with the whole enchilada of vectoring, G.INP retransmissions, and profile 35b).
As i am facing similar issues, i decided to leave the Telekom router to provide me the connection to their BRAS so i am getting telephony. Then i am attaching to a LAN interface of the Telekom router to my WAN interface of the OpenWRT. Then i am doing a new pppoe connection. Telekom supports pppoe passthrough and it works like charm. i have it more than 5 years in this setup. With the really cheap devices the provides give, i had similar issues. Now i do not face any performance issue, nor WIFI speeds.
Everything goes through my OpenWRT and Telekom's router is very low on CPU with this setup.
Give it a try
Puzzled, deutsche telekom (the supplier of the OP's speedport smart 3) only allows a single concurrent PPPoE connection and VoIP/SIP packets are transported in band...
I would like to use it solely as a modem to take advantage of all the benefits that OpenWrt has to offer. I also found a video on YouTube (unfortunately in German) that explains how to do this and outlines the advantages of using it in Kombination with pfSense.
I have VDSL at the moment and will upgrade to fiber in the next three years (when the cable is available).
Currently, the modem is integrated into the Speedport 3, so I am unable to answer that question as when i do this my wifi will reset to factory Settings.
I think you can configure speedports (at least a few selected one's) as bridged modems (with minimal diagnostics, but on a stable vdsl link diagnostics are not really needed). But you will need to find a solution for VoIP/SIP...
i have an atom motherboard and i added a NIC with extra ethernet ports. one eth has the pppoe and the other goes to the LAN.
Telekom supports pppoe passthrough. it is a functionality of the Internet provider's that need to be supported in their modem/router. It started with the need of the Playstation devices.
The passthrough capability is not the surprising part. What surprises is that according to your description you have two concurrent PPPoE sessions, one for VoIP/SIP from the speedport and one from your OpenWrt router. For normal private ends-users Deutsche Telekom only allowed one single pppoe session to be established. Not sure about business contracts and this might have changed since I tried around a decade ago.
That said, I am not doubting your words, I just want to point out that this is a bit of a surprise.
Yeah, that’s what I found on the internet, and I would like to use the Speedport only as a modem. The main question I still have is what hardware do I need to use and how to solve the Speedphone problem. The mesh problem is no longer an issue.
The cheapest solution would seem to get a second hand fritzbox and operate that behind your OpenWrt router as double NATed SIP base station (configured to use an ethernet port as wan). At least some speedphones can be connected with/operated with a fritzbox...
Sure there are other commercial SIP base stations available as well, but I have zero insight about their compatibility with speedphones.
My plan is to keep the Speedport for the phone and as a modem (it should be a low power consumer). I’ll build my own router to handle everything else. The question is, what hardware should I buy? Any tips?