Anyone Using an Asus DSL-AC68U

bitsNbobs · 13 Jan 2015 at 02:02

Ixel said:
Yeah, as of tonight I will probably go back to connection settings specified by DLM at the moment - until the rollout is effective on my line (assuming G.INP will be enabled all of the time rather than when DLM sees fit - it would seem stupid if it's not enabled in the background all of the time).

Not sure who your ISP is, if it is BT the DLM system checks things daily, does not necessarily do anything though. If the Asus has a LOG or similar function and you go through that you will soon see as and when your ISPs DLM system snoops on you. BT and i think Plusnet use TR069. If the asus LOG has filter options to view things such as DHCP TR069 etc select TR069 and you will spot a pattern.

babis3g said:
I have good news

Apart the DSL part ... about end of March will be added ADAPTED QoS which has already the RT-AC87U / RT-AC68U

http://nw-dlcdnet.asus.com/AdaptiveQoS_Bandwidth_Monitor.asp
http://nw-dlcdnet.asus.com/QoS_EZQoS.asp

http://youtu.be/5fMIW6bFPxY?t=3m12s

A nice little bonus

chriscatt said:
If it is anything to go by the BT Wholesale test has my d/load at 31.9Mbps, my upload at 8.69Mbps and ping at 19.63ms.

Do a stat dump and it will be 100% clear if you are interleaved Not sure of the command for Telnet of this device to show INP and Delay figures though. (Babis and Ixel probably know)
However If that is a 40/10Mb service its only going to be light interleaving, at most. Id guess 8ms and possibly INP 01. Certainly be shocked if worse than that.

michty_me · 13 Jan 2015 at 07:13

Guys, Please excuse my ignorance of vectoring and issues that can cause a detrimental effect on fibre lines but in what way does cross talk on fibre cause issues.

Is it more down to the amount of people connected to a cab/using the same copper cable? Does the length of copper to the property come into play? Is there any issues with the length of fibre to the exchange? Is it all the above?

With regards to the DSL-AC68u I noticed a review left on broadbandbuyer stating all issues had been resolved and this unit is now working as it should. I thought I would come check for myself in here but it certainly doesn't look like it.

John40 · 13 Jan 2015 at 07:28

michty_me said:
With regards to the DSL-AC68u I noticed a review left on broadbandbuyer stating all issues had been resolved and this unit is now working as it should. I thought I would come check for myself in here but it certainly doesn't look like it.

I read that review the other day, it could be an in-house one put out by Broadbandbuyer to try and help shift some.

michty_me · 13 Jan 2015 at 07:32

John40 said:
I read that review the other day, it could be an in-house one put out by Broadbandbuyer to try and help shift some.

That was what I was wondering initially. That would be quite sneaky if that was the case.

Ixel · 13 Jan 2015 at 09:15

Yeah I'm betting that's an in-house review. The issue isn't resolved as you still need to kill 'spectrum' at the moment (via telnet) in order for the modem to be stable.

@bitsNbobs: I'm with Zen which uses BT's equipment for FTTC. Yes, DLM does monitor the connection's performance and makes changes based on thresholds and such. However, I'm not directly with BT so actual browsing isn't 'hijacked' and as such monitored or preventing me from going to certain websites which BT have blocked. Based on what I've been reading so far, I think it's likely that G.INP will be applied via a DLM profile change (when it sees fit to change it), so this means users may well not see G.INP until DLM sees it appropriate to enable it on the connection - rather than have G.INP running all of the time like with Eircom in Ireland. So, for good connections G.INP may not be enabled, while for connections which perform worse G.INP should be enabled. Whether it'll replace interleaved profiles I'm not sure, interleaved profiles might remain as a 'last resort' if G.INP isn't as effective for X connection at the time.

babis3g · 13 Jan 2015 at 09:47

bitsNbobs said:
Not sure who your ISP is, if it is BT the DLM system checks things daily, does not necessarily do anything though. If the Asus has a LOG or similar function and you go through that you will soon see as and when your ISPs DLM system snoops on you. BT and i think Plusnet use TR069. If the asus LOG has filter options to view things such as DHCP TR069 etc select TR069 and you will spot a pattern.

I have read in the BT Infinity forums (is been a while & not remember the post but the tread was named with dsl ac68u) a guy have disabled TR-69 but via telnet and disconnections stopped
Worth to try or can find the command to kill it ... as i am not in UK right now to test on this spot

Ixel · 13 Jan 2015 at 09:52

babis3g said:
I have read in the BT Infinity forums (is been a while & not remember the post but the tread was named with dsl ac68u) a guy have disabled TR-69 but via telnet and disconnections stopped
Worth to try or can find the command to kill it ... as i am not in UK right now to test on this spot

I'll look into it. Zen report changes in speed reported by BT's systems as 'TR-069', but whether disabling this on the ASUS will prevent BT's DLM from disconnecting someone to perform a profile change I don't know.

I think it's unlikely as the DLM must issue a command to the DSLAM to 'restart' the port, or even do something like this:
- Disable port
- Apply new profile to port
- Enable port

Scottland · 13 Jan 2015 at 10:05

Hi,

Is this router considered 'stable' now with recent firmware updates? I'm getting sky fibre switched on soon and would like to replace their awful router - should I get this or pick up an Openreach modem and standalone router?

Ixel · 13 Jan 2015 at 10:22

Scottland said:
Hi,

Is this router considered 'stable' now with recent firmware updates? I'm getting sky fibre switched on soon and would like to replace their awful router - should I get this or pick up an Openreach modem and standalone router?

Well, it's stable here. Most of the stability problems were caused by a process called 'spectrum', which if killed via telnet then the cause of the instability is gone. Until ASUS release a firmware update to 'fine tune' the spectrum process then people will need to kill it each time the router is rebooted.

simoncraddock · 13 Jan 2015 at 10:59

I've got one on loan for a couple of weeks and it's been rock solid with just one manual reboot to clear some odd stats over the weekend. Since then it's been fine with less errors recorded than with both the ZyXEL and Billion I have.

Depending on how it performs with G.INP that is rolling out I'm tempted to go buy one again as I previously returned mine in October.

Scottland · 13 Jan 2015 at 11:31

hmm, ok I might pick on up to try as one less box plugged in would be useful.

RedBull2k · 13 Jan 2015 at 12:29

Im with plusnet and in my plusnet control panel i can turn off TR-069 which i had done the day i had fibre off them. I still had problems with my dsl-ac68u.

bitsNbobs · 13 Jan 2015 at 14:28

michty_me said:
Guys, Please excuse my ignorance of vectoring and issues that can cause a detrimental effect on fibre lines but in what way does cross talk on fibre cause issues.

Is it more down to the amount of people connected to a cab/using the same copper cable? Does the length of copper to the property come into play? Is there any issues with the length of fibre to the exchange? Is it all the above?

With regards to the DSL-AC68u I noticed a review left on broadbandbuyer stating all issues had been resolved and this unit is now working as it should. I thought I would come check for myself in here but it certainly doesn't look like it.

Crosstalk is basically leakage of signal from other connections/wire pairs to yours. The more connections the more noise interferes with the xDSL frequencies in use. Nobody uses your copper per say. To the cabinet there is a big bundle off wires (think of it like a massive network cable) Each user has a set of those wires, the more that are in use the more crosstalk is generated. What makes the matter worse on VDSL is the high frequencies used compared to old dial up and even ADSL. Telephone wires were never designed for high frequencies. If you have ever used your mobile phone near other electronics and heard them (particularly non shielded speakers) make all types of weird clicky, tappy noises then that will give you an idea of what is happening when you shove hundreds of small telephone lines together and shove high frequencies down them.

As to copper length, crosstalk is less of an issue although it still affects long lines. Its less of a worry because the longer the copper line the resistance of the copper wire itself and other kinds of noise play a larger part in your speed being slow. For lines longer than around 1000M even vectoring wont help much if at all. The line has basically reached its limits with regards to electrical resistance and other external noise factors (electrical cables in the ground, such as street lighting, other radio signals it picks up on its way to you and more).

I tried to be accurate but keep things simple i hope that helped.

Ixel said:
Yeah I'm betting that's an in-house review. The issue isn't resolved as you still need to kill 'spectrum' at the moment (via telnet) in order for the modem to be stable.

@bitsNbobs: I'm with Zen which uses BT's equipment for FTTC. Yes, DLM does monitor the connection's performance and makes changes based on thresholds and such. However, I'm not directly with BT so actual browsing isn't 'hijacked' and as such monitored or preventing me from going to certain websites which BT have blocked. Based on what I've been reading so far, I think it's likely that G.INP will be applied via a DLM profile change (when it sees fit to change it), so this means users may well not see G.INP until DLM sees it appropriate to enable it on the connection - rather than have G.INP running all of the time like with Eircom in Ireland. So, for good connections G.INP may not be enabled, while for connections which perform worse G.INP should be enabled. Whether it'll replace interleaved profiles I'm not sure, interleaved profiles might remain as a 'last resort' if G.INP isn't as effective for X connection at the time.

No i was not referring to browser hijacking or site blocks or similar etc. Just DLM. If you look into your routers log (depending on how detailed it is) you will have a good idea as to when a change is made by the system. For general monitoring of the line it will just say something along the lines of "Check", "Periodic", "Update" or some similar term. For actual changes it will say something like "Value change" "Profile" or similar. (You will soon know when you look at the log as most mentions for TR069 will be just checks by DLM rather than changes). Ive no idea how often Zens system will do this but with other ISPs its normally daily or every other day. To implement G.INP a actual change will have to be made by the DLM systems, so if you spot an actual change in the log but no change to speed or interleaving then thats possibly an indication of when G.INP has been enabled

RedBull2k said:
Im with plusnet and in my plusnet control panel i can turn off TR-069 which i had done the day i had fibre off them. I still had problems with my dsl-ac68u.

If Plusnet have a setting to do that in their control panel then thats an absolute lie because...

1) If you ever have a connection issue and phone them ONE of the first things they are likely to do is perform a line check, to do that they use TR069, so while you may be able to turn it OFF you can NOT disable it (they will just turn it ON as needed).

2) Their DLM system is automated and uses TR069 DAILY, you only have to look at your routers logs and you will see a whole bunch of TR069 entries.

That disable TR069 setting is probably for so called "security" see nobody outside the network (IE plusnet) can access your connection via TR069. Also probably a cheap way for them to fix the raft of security issues many routers had with regards to TR069 in the last half of 2014, rather than fix it at kernal and firmware level. BT owned so the cheap bodge way is always the best way lol

cuke2u · 13 Jan 2015 at 16:03

bitsNbobs said:
Do a stat dump and it will be 100% clear if you are interleaved Not sure of the command for Telnet of this device to show INP and Delay figures though. (Babis and Ixel probably know)
However If that is a 40/10Mb service its only going to be light interleaving, at most. Id guess 8ms and possibly INP 01. Certainly be shocked if worse than that.

I have already done that and my InterleaveDepth=2313 so I think I'm I probably interleaved unless that one is lying too. The only stats that seems to agree with when my modem has had a disconnect is my dsl uptime and my general log that states the last wan disconnect was this: Dec 31 05:03:47 WAN Connection: Ethernet link down. My dsl uptime is over 13 days...
Dec 31 05:03:47 stop_nat_rules: apply the redirect_rules!
Dec 31 05:04:12 WAN Connection: Ethernet link up.

Or is this something else?

babis3g · 13 Jan 2015 at 17:07

bitsNbobs said:
If Plusnet have a setting to do that in their control panel then thats an absolute lie because...

1) If you ever have a connection issue and phone them ONE of the first things they are likely to do is perform a line check, to do that they use TR069, so while you may be able to turn it OFF you can NOT disable it (they will just turn it ON as needed).

2) Their DLM system is automated and uses TR069 DAILY, you only have to look at your routers logs and you will see a whole bunch of TR069 entries.

That disable TR069 setting is probably for so called "security" see nobody outside the network (IE plusnet) can access your connection via TR069. Also probably a cheap way for them to fix the raft of security issues many routers had with regards to TR069 in the last half of 2014, rather than fix it at kernal and firmware level. BT owned so the cheap bodge way is always the best way lol

So if totally TR069 killed by telnet (via menu some modems allow you to disable it but i guess still some process in the background) or lets say there is not (exist) a ΤR069 in the modem atol ... will they still able to check the modem & line? Thanks for your time

bitsNbobs · 14 Jan 2015 at 00:42

babis3g said:
So if totally TR069 killed by telnet (via menu some modems allow you to disable it but i guess still some process in the background) or lets say there is not (exist) a ΤR069 in the modem atol ... will they still able to check the modem & line? Thanks for your time

At you own end via router level you can kill it, as you say either via a telnet command, or even easier just blocking the ports TR069 uses. Id be highly dubious of any ISPs account/user pages allowing you to disable it though mainly because in the UK TR069 is what all the ISPs (at least all what i know off) to diagnose any issue with your connection, so it woul dnot make sense for them to encourage you in any way to turn it off. Thats also PARTLY why ISP gear in the UK is locked down and has no TR069 on/off options in it web interface, they do not want you to disable it.

Id also only block TR069 at router level if my connection had a decent (IE the best i know it can get) sync and attainable rate, and even then as DLM can alter settings on a port basis at the cabinet it probably would not stop your connection getting slowed or interleaved etc if DLM thought there was a need. So it would unlikely achieve anything to benefit connection, at best its a security hole closed by disabling it. I spose it could help on the Asus if the Asus is reporting dud information back to the DLM system, personally i would not bother trying, at least not for extended periods.

For anyone that wants to try first look for a TR069 option in the Asus web config and disable that, then check telnet for a kill/disable option for TR069 to make sure its disabled and then finally block port 7547 (commonly used TR069 port) in firewall options and that should be TR069 killed. I ADVISE UK USERS NOT TO DO THIS.

babis3g · 14 Jan 2015 at 09:23

very detailed ... Thanks for your time

RedBull2k · 14 Jan 2015 at 13:31

bitsNbobs said:
At you own end via router level you can kill it, as you say either via a telnet command, or even easier just blocking the ports TR069 uses. Id be highly dubious of any ISPs account/user pages allowing you to disable it though mainly because in the UK TR069 is what all the ISPs (at least all what i know off) to diagnose any issue with your connection, so it woul dnot make sense for them to encourage you in any way to turn it off. Thats also PARTLY why ISP gear in the UK is locked down and has no TR069 on/off options in it web interface, they do not want you to disable it.

with plusnet there is an option to enable/disable it

"Enable Automatic Hardware Setup, so that when you plug in your new broadband hardware (supplied by us), it will automatically be setup to use your broadband account. Just cick Enable Auto Setup to benefit from a faster, easier broadband setup.
How Automatic Hardware Setup works
This clever bit of automation is possible thanks to a system called TR69."

which is avaiable at this page when your logged into plusnet https://portal.plus.net/automatic_hardware_setup/index.php

bitsNbobs · 14 Jan 2015 at 18:45

RedBull2k said:
with plusnet there is an option to enable/disable it

"Enable Automatic Hardware Setup, so that when you plug in your new broadband hardware (supplied by us), it will automatically be setup to use your broadband account. Just cick Enable Auto Setup to benefit from a faster, easier broadband setup.
How Automatic Hardware Setup works
This clever bit of automation is possible thanks to a system called TR69."

which is avaiable at this page when your logged into plusnet https://portal.plus.net/automatic_hardware_setup/index.php

AS said the disable option will be for outside of the Plusnet network, logging into your account and telling TR069 to be disabled will not fully disable it. That would be stupid for numerous reasons including...
1) If you ever reset you router and could not get setup again then how are you going to use the Plusnet auto setup feature if you have previously disabled TR069 on your account pages? You could not log back in to your account to re-enable it as your router/modem would now not be connecting. Auto setups for various ISPs are typically built into the device and have nothing to do with TR069, I bet even the Asus has a auto setup feature where you select country and/or ISP, the Plusnet gear will work in a similar fashion just some script to fill in the settings.
2) TR069 is used by DLM daily, without it DLM would not be checking your connection daily. If there are entries in your routers log (i guarantee there is and probably under "system log") then it is not disabled. Look for anything relating to "TR069" "Profile" "Change" "Update" and similar terms if there is not a filter for TR069 entries.

I would be very shocked if just going to your user account with plusnet disables TR069 even more so if by default on the router it is enabled. I highly doubt Plusnet have a script clever enough to find the TR069 setting on every model of router and disable/enable it. Or would even want to. It in no way would benefit them.

RedBull2k · 14 Jan 2015 at 20:46

From my experiance with it disbaled, when resetting their tg582n to defaults, my username and password would need completing by myself in the router gui. it would not get my details.

To test to see if TR69 is available on dsl ac68u i will enable it on my plusnet account and see if my details are retrieved automatically.