Swap Vigor for Billion

sparkymark75 · 26 Aug 2017 at 20:49

New to how ADSL works having had Virgin cable for years. I currently have a Vigor 120 setup as a modem with Google wifi doing the router functions.

The Vigor 120 isn't very tweakable so I was going to swap it out for a Billion 7800N I have. I only want to use the Billion as a modem and want to keep using my Google Wifi. Is this possible? Is it just a matter of putting the Billion into Bridged mode?

Avalon · 27 Aug 2017 at 11:24

What exactly do you want to tweak that you can't with the Vigor? The Billion was good value in 2009 but it lacks FTTC support unlike the 120, is it adsl/2e you have?

sparkymark75 · 27 Aug 2017 at 14:13

Avalon said:
What exactly do you want to tweak that you can't with the Vigor? The Billion was good value in 2009 but it lacks FTTC support unlike the 120, is it adsl/2e you have?

Yeah ADSL I have, no FTTC and quite a bit from the Exchange so I'm looking to tweak things such as SNR to try an squeeze as much as I can out of my crappy connection. The Vigor whilst reliable, has zero configurability.

Avalon · 27 Aug 2017 at 16:32

sparkymark75 said:
Yeah ADSL I have, no FTTC and quite a bit from the Exchange so I'm looking to tweak things such as SNR to try an squeeze as much as I can out of my crappy connection. The Vigor whilst reliable, has zero configurability.

In that case the Billion is a decent shout, it was a favourite of those on longer lines as it enables SNR tweaking which can give a significant improvement.

sparkymark75 · 27 Aug 2017 at 22:58

Well got the Billion setup and running tonight. Downstream speed on the Vigor was around 1.7Mb. Once I tweaked a few settings on the Billion, I'm currently getting 3.5Mb. Will see how stable it is over the next few days.

Disco_P · 30 Aug 2017 at 02:18

I have the billion 7800n and tweak the SNR margin to be around 2-3db during the night (when SNR margin is lowest). ISP default was 15 to start with so download speed doubled. Just be aware that frequent tweaks can look like and unstable connection and DLM could kick in to massively throttle your speeds. Alternatively DLM can reduce your SNR margin cause it thinks the line is stable, the billion applies an offset putting it into the negatives causing instant repeating dropouts and massively throttling speeds. This happened when I was on holiday and I was stuck at 25KB/s for three days over the bank holiday.

sparkymark75 · 30 Aug 2017 at 07:44

Disco_P said:
I have the billion 7800n and tweak the SNR margin to be around 2-3db during the night (when SNR margin is lowest). ISP default was 15 to start with so download speed doubled. Just be aware that frequent tweaks can look like and unstable connection and DLM could kick in to massively throttle your speeds. Alternatively DLM can reduce your SNR margin cause it thinks the line is stable, the billion applies an offset putting it into the negatives causing instant repeating dropouts and massively throttling speeds. This happened when I was on holiday and I was stuck at 25KB/s for three days over the bank holiday.

Thanks, that's good to know. I did setup my SNR in an evening but that's usually when we use the internet the most. Not noticed any dropouts since I did it on Sunday but then I only really browse the internet or stream music.