Hmm, I don’t have any smarthome stuff by now.. finally it’s a plus!
(British Telecom Home Hub 5 Type A) It's a bit of a hassle to get it outside of Britain, and another bit of a hassle to install OpenWrt on.
On eBay, you can get it for a reasonable price already reflashed to OpenWRT. I do agree that reflashing from the stock firmware is a lot of a hassle (it's required to open the case and connect a serial cable), but I do not agree that getting it outside of Britain is a problem. Or at least, it was not a problem before the corona virus.
Full disclosure: I have this device, and I did the reflashing myself.
I see you’ve edited your post. Now the whole situation is more interesting for me. So, if I have luck with my connection and say, a speedlink 1113 modem will do, I could chose of many routers which support the current OpenWRT version. At this point my question is how does the number of CPU Cores have an effect at all, because it is limiting my possible choice pretty much.
And if somebody could make a statement about Beamforming and MU-MIMO I would be glad, because I want to know if it’s a big upgrade to models without.
When I was the CEO of an ISP, sourcing modems and routers for customers was a nightmare. They are built to a price and are not best of breed.
FWIW I would never use a combined unit for WiFi - the modem bit is OK but the router will often cause problems. The BT unit suggested above is not too bad but far and away the best modem that I've used (and own) is the Draytek Vigor 130. Then you choose the router that has the features that you need.
HTH
1 Like
You were right. I talked like 50 minutes with 5 or 6 different people of my ISP, 3 of the „technical department“ with the result: VDSL50. Well.. they couldn’t handle the question... „We would recommend our homebox or fritzbox“ was the answer.. I think I need to test it for myself with another cheap VDSL device.
Not trying to discard your experience, but they are both running on exactly the same Lantiq VRX268 SoC and VRX208 modem chipset. Hardware-wise they are identical, it's the firmware that makes the difference.
1 Like
Thanks. I just need a simple and cheap way to figure out what connection I have to chose the right parts.
And I read something that currently MU-MIMO is not a big thing, so I can look for simpler devices.
That is easy. Again, if your current Fritz!Box 7490 is currently running the line, it cannot be super-vectoring. The Fritz!Box 7490 would not be able to do super-vectoring, so it can't be a super-vectoring line. It is either a regular VDSL2 or, less likely, a "vectoring" line, but not super-vectoring.
1 Like
Also, since you're prepared to use an external modem anyway, you could just keep your Fritz!Box 7490 and put it into "bridge mode" (or "PPPoE Passthrough") and use it as a modem. Problem solved.
2 Likes
At this point I'd venture that vectoring lines might actually be more common than non-vectoring lines, at least where DTAG owns the lines. Since 2016/ 2017 they've invested massively (albeit misguided so) into outdoor DSLAM installations[0] - and those are generally mandating vectoring. Only the remaining lines that go directly to the 'former post offices' tend not to require vectoring.
--
[0] and at least around here, they seem to go to the next stage of now deploying super-vectoring in the near future as well, after they've lost over 45% of households to a competing ftth ISP.
I agree 100%. On my 80/20 service the BT hub gives me 67/13 and the Draytek Vigor 130 gives me 78/18. Draytek's software has always been superior IMHO.
Same experience here, though from experience you likely get the best sync if you match the modem to your local DSLAM's vendor.
The local DSLAM we're connected to is for example using Lantiq Hardware.
| Model | Modem Vendor | Down (Mbit/s) | Up (Mbit/s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| FRITZ!Box 7390 | Ikanos | 58 | 9 |
| Vigor 130 | Broadcom | 63 | 13 |
| Vigor 165 | Lantiq | 71 | 14 |
I was previously spoiled by strangely good-natured lines but I recently came around to the fact that the modem firmware matters. A lot. If you use the VRX202 modem chipset, and most modems/modem routers do*, the difference is the firmware it runs. And with OpenWrt you are free to try out different versions and find the one that works best for you.
*) certainly all the OpenWrt supported VDSL modem routers -- but the Vigor 165 runs a VRX518 modem chipset, that's another beast entirely.
P.S.: I'm currently reliably synching 101/43 out of 111/49 on a 100/40 vectoring line and actually getting full line speed using my Fritz!Box 3370 running OpenWrt (19.07.1, software flow offload enabled, but no SQM since I really don't need it). So I'm not entirely on board with blanket statements that the Lantiq routers are a bottleneck. They are just about able to manage a 100 mbit downstream.
As mentioned earlier in this thread, the Draytek Vigor 130 is not Broadcom based, but uses a Lantiq XWay VRX288 chipset.
1 Like
Hi, I just found out about the Xiaomi 3g router. What do you think about it? Could find one for 30€ish
Avoid it, these days you won't get the mir3g v1 anymore, but just the v2 - which has done away with the USB 3.0 ports and doesn't allow easy flashing (unsoldering or using a PPPoE based exploit is necessary).
But I found v1 as a used one.
As a newbie to routers, I don't quite understand pppoe's advantage.
I am in a similar situation to the thread owner. My idea for a solution is to use a cheap Fritzbox 7412 as a modem, router and telephone system and to put an OpenWrt router behind it.
I would then have two networks, a FritzBox network, which I can also use as a guest network or DMZ, and an Openwrt network.
Do I have a mistake?
Yes, this setup would be a mistake. For SQM on OpenWRT to work, i.e. for acceptable latency in games, there must be absolutely nothing else that can send traffic through the link. This means that the guest network also has to be configured on OpenWRT. Also, by configuring everything on OpenWRT (including the pppoe session), you will be able to leverage a public IP that your ISP gives you - e.g. for port forwarding.
Unfortunately I insisted to order the Xiaomi router, bc it’s very cheap and looks good, and has a good Performance, but that was a Xiaomi router 3G v2 and came today (very fast delivery somehow). Well, got it for 28€, but I will try to send it back bc of false description. I got a serial usb device(just bc of curiosity) if I try soldering. The v2 has only half the ram, 16MB ROM instead of 128MB, no usb port(which I don’t need) and the MT7621 instead of MT7621A? Do I need these stuff or the better question would be will I feel those specs? The only stuff I would use would be sqm and adblocker(maybe), or would you recommend more stuff?.
Oh, and I bought the vigor 130 as a modem for 35€ used.