Billion 7800N -early thoughts

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We moved to a rural location in March and Broadband with a Belkin N router provided an unreliable 0.7Mbit. The BT 2700HGV and Netgear DG834GT were both supposed to be good on long lines so these were acquired.

In the meantime the bell wire was removed, a crackling on the line traced to an external fault (loose cover on a pole box), the screw terminals were replaced with gel crimps in the junction box and the ageing master socket swapped for a NTE200 with filtered faceplate.

With either router this gave a sync of around 2.2 to 2.6 meg but still with drop outs. Overall I preferred the Netgear only because it gave so much information to programs like Routerstats or Tone. I did try the DGteam firmware but went back.

The reliability was a little frustrating so I started to consider the Billion which arrived yesterday

It was very quick and easy to setup. The wireless range is excellent.

The initial sync was 200k lower than the Netgear - the attenuation went up to 63db from 57db. However I then dropped the SNR to 9db with a sync of 2720 and it has remained rock solid since.

I have also enabled the Phyre option and there are less errors

Configuration to a local webserver requires a firewall rule and a port forwarding rule (not obvious)

Why do you have to look up a bizarre value in a table to adjust the target SNR ?

Stats on the web interface are very poor it just says Errs - which are 0. The ADSL info --stats command on the telnet interfaces gives all the usual suspects in detail

Like the Netgear which gets silly hot the Billion has been raised to allow air underneath - why do manufacturers put those sill little feet on ?

The Billion works with RouterstatsLite and am seeing if I can persuade Routerstats to work.

So at the moment I have a very good sync speed which seems very reliable

I will adjust it slightly to get just over 2848 because those silly silly people at BT give you an extra 0.5M.

I'll post some thoughts in a week
 
7800N has

Gigabit LAN ports
EWAN port
IPv6 Support
Better firmware
Better QoS
Detachable antennas
Third antenna
Different Wireless Chipset
7800N has Ralink wireless, whereas the 7700N has Broadcom.
Bigger NAT table
VPN & other features
 
Generally better all round then :p
Cheers mate - is your connection still going strong? Can I ask what the gui is like in comparision to say, netgear or linksys?

It's very early days but all is good. I'm not messing around too much at the moment - you know what it's like - one bad sync and it will be modem speeds!

The gui is very straightforward can't say it's anything to get excited over - compared to the Netgear I have no preference and it does the job
 
Ok well it hasn't been a week but I am confident enough to give an update

Firstly the router has been very stable without a single unscheduled drop. I tweaked the SNR to get me into the 2.5Mb IP profile which is a great result

SNR is virtually flat

~5ms better pings

Non existent bitswapping on downstream

RS corrected is just over 2%. High RS Uncorrected and/or RS Corrected errors is an indication of line issues. Can I be bothered to ring India ? Not if I value my sanity

It does not affect speedtest results adversely but I am pushing near the limit of what the line can handle



RS uncorrected and CRC are very low

By way of background:
"Reed Solomon is a forward error correction scheme (FEC) used on the dsl line coding.

On the physical level your dsl modem takes the bits from your PC and prior to transmission puts them in chunks called RS codewords. Each codeword also has some redundant bits attached to it. If due to noise on the line, the receiving modem cant make out part of the "codeword" it tries to use the redundant bits to re-create the codeword. If it is successful you get a corrected RS error.....If not successful you get an uncorrected RS error. From this you can see corrected RS errors do you no harm (but lets you know you are living on the edge) but uncorrected RS errors require retransmission of the data and makes you slow."


Routerstats I have made a lot of progress

For the router search text:

Use this URL for the stats page (or whatever ip address for the router)
http://192.168.1.254/status/adslstatus.html

Tick Use source A, get the page and mark the stats that you want

Telnet:

login set to admin and password - cannot see an option to use a different password ?

Change telnet prompt to >

Change chipset, command set to adsl info --stats

Most of the telnet stats and Bits/Tone work except for Up/down connection rate and max rate - displays just 1 or 2 figures

Update version 6.6e work fully now - tick alternative data format on the Telnet tab

billionbitstone.png

billionstats.png


This is one of the best IT purchases I have made and an outstanding router for a long/difficult line
 
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^^^ cheers for the info, just a thought on you're attenuation going up when you installed this router, have you tried turning OFF ALL the ADSL2 options ?,.... be well worth trying.

Received my 7700N today, turned off all adsl2, my sync is .5 db higher than my DG834DG
Have to Telnet in to change my SNR on it though.

Yes ADSL2 options were off from the start

For the SNR on the 7700N does this work ? (use your router's ip)

http://192.168.1.254/snr.cgi
 
David are you on an MER connection with sky? I just want to make sure this router is compat with that type of connection as thats what they seem to be rolling out for new customers like myself instead of the pppoa connection

No just ADSL with Zen

It does support MPoA with LLC encapsulation
 
Wow! I can't wait to get my hands on one of these routers ;)

My snr is currently 8db on a 1mb sync, my attenuation is 54db - what sort of target snr should I be looking at and *realistically" what kind of new sync do you think I may achieve?

That's a very low sync for 54db
 
Sam

I think there is something bad happening on your line

Which exchange and how far?
What master socket do you have?
Any internal extensions?
Picture of junction box and above would be useful
 
Does anyone else have issues with reconnecting to the internet after the 7800N has been idle for a short period of time? I've got my connection set to always on but whenever I connect with my laptop, phone or desktop it takes ~40secs for the 7800N to respond, in the meantime everything just times out. I can ping the router just fine during this period though.

No, what firmware are you running ?
 
You can put it any way since the slots are in a cross configuration

Sorry I should have been more explicit - you lose that SNR tweak on reboot
 
@Zarf

Can you post your full line stats ?

You will not see a sudden increase in sync as standard. What the 7800N offers is stability (for me) and then tweaking.
 
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