Thinking of moving to Be*, is my modem/router up to it?

Dup

Dup

Dup

Soldato
Joined
10 Mar 2006
Posts
11,417
Location
East Lancs
OK, I'm currently with Freeola (Enta) and I'm currently playing £25 a month for an 8MB 30GB Peak, 300GB off peak service.

Be* have an unlimited (and a beleive this is a true unlimited, right?) service for £18 a month for a 20MB service. I live, according to sam knows, 200 metres from our exchange (straight line) so we have a good chance of getting a very good speed and it will save me a little bit of money too. all in all, a very attractive offer.

I currently have a Netgear DG834G v3 (NOT GT) Modem/Router. I don't use the wireless at the moment and it's connected directly to the master socket and the PC is damned close to it and the other other device I use is my 360. Will this router suffice? I do want to upgrade to a newer router in the futurue however at the moment this is just a cost cutting exercise.

Also, I live on the damned internet like many others. How much downtime can I expect? Has anyone experienced migration with Freeola/Enta providers to a service such as Be/O2? This will be my first ever migration so it's all new to me at this stage. Also, do Be utilise traffic shaping as I do use torrents now and again.
 
I'd suggest you take a look at the unofficial Be forum, (there will probably be a link in one of the many other Be threads on here), to see about router compatibility but I don't have much trouble with the provided BeBox, especially if I don't have wireless enabled on it, (running it upside down did seem to improve the overheating issues).

As far as I know there are absolutely no caps at all, although I would not hit the cap your existing service has!). I also have seen no traffic shaping, (including with torrent downloads).

Down time when I migrated from my old ISP was only a few hours, (at most ... I wasn't paying that much attention).
 
I migrated over from adsl24(enta) & it was a week from start to finish going to 02(Be Network), on *** day of migration I was down for approximately 10 mins so thats good :D
 
Netgear DG834G v3 - YES, my friend recently joined bethere with that router, all work fine

traffic shaping - NO, i'm with bethere for over a year now, never had problem with bit torrent/usenet/ftp etc if you want more information, u can ask question directly to be staff at irc - http://webirc.orbixx.com/ (you'll need java installed)
 
Excellent. Be seem to have a big following with unofficial forums and IRC! This is pretty much a no-brainer then. Thanks for the prompt and useful responces guys. Im pretty chuffed now, to give it a try. Got to fill a form out and post it to Freeola to recieve my MAC code.

Be* IRC seems friendly too.

/me gets excited.
 
Quick bump.

These are my current (Enta/Freeola) line stats from the router:

Downstream
Connection Speed: 8128 kbps
Line Attenuation: 8 db
Noise Margin: 11 db

Upstream
Connection Speed: 448 kbps
Line Attenuation: 1.5 db
Noise Margin: 29 db

Is this good/bad, I'm not too wise about what I'm looking at so far.
 
Dup said:
Quick bump.

These are my current (Enta/Freeola) line stats from the router:

Downstream
Connection Speed: 8128 kbps
Line Attenuation: 8 db
Noise Margin: 11 db

Upstream
Connection Speed: 448 kbps
Line Attenuation: 1.5 db
Noise Margin: 29 db

Is this good/bad, I'm not too wise about what I'm looking at so far.
Click to expand...

Yes, these are very good.
 
Well, I signed up yesterday, scheduled to be activated next Thursday :D

One quick question. What is the benefit of a static IP and should I get one? I have a static IP with my current provider. I don't run any servers or anything like that.
 
Aekeron said:
IF those figures are actually accurate and not errored in some way, you'll surely get max speed from your ADSL2+ connection.
Click to expand...

1212094918.jpg


That's the stats screen. Looks good to me :D

Dynamic IP it is. Can't wait to get connected now :)

A lot of v3's use the AR7 chipset rather than the better broadcom one, these require a special setting and just aren't as good.
Click to expand...

Oh :(

I will have to see. I don't use the wireless so I can use the Be Box if I have any probs till I get a decent router.As long as im not left without a connection at all in the time being!
 
Last edited:
Just use the BeBox, it has never let me down, been with Be since pre-launch (actually, mine is a Speedtouch 576v5wl (something like that) and the ones they send out now are Speedtouch 580s iirc, so YMMV). I tried a number (~5) ADSL2+ routers initially with Be, and the BeBox always gave best line performance w.r.t. stability and line speed.
I don't use wifi (well, a tiny bit.. not enough to form an opinion) so can't comment on that, but never had any overheating problems. The router isnt exactly cold though :)

I dont think you will get the headline 24Mbit synch, but you are certainly good for 20+. For 24 Mbps, you need to live next to the exchange, if not flat-share with it.

Once you are connected with Be for 10 days (stay with your BeBox initially), check your detailed line stats @ http://192.168.1.254/cgi/b/dsl/dt/?ce=1&be=0&l0=1&l1=0 .

Check your FEC, CRC and HEC errors. If they are very low (highly likely with your line), then raise a ticket with Be, asking to be put on a Fast Path profile. Unlike with resold BT ADSL accounts, they actually process this damn quickly (normally under a day). This will reduce your ping times from (in London, other locations might take longer to traverse Be's network) 14 ms to about 8 ms. Highly worth it.
 
Forgot the most important thing! The best thing about the BeBox is that its supported by DMT, which is just awesome, as it allows you to dynamically play with your target SNR (Be default is 6 dB, I run mine (perfectly stable) at 3 dB). You can also have Be change your profile to a 3/6/9/12 dB target SNR by raising a ticket, but this allows you to play yourself - overclock that broadband :p

Download the appropriate file from http://dmt.mhilfe.de/ , run it (put it into english mode :)), go to 'Special' -> 'Misc Options' and tick 'Unlock experimental area', click Ok. Go back to the main screen, you should have 2 more tabs in the right pane. Open the 'modemoptions' tab, untick 'Default SNRM', slide the slider down, click 'apply/resync'. If the line drops quickly after doing this, raise the slider slightly. If you then click 'save', your change will persist across the modem losing power and restarting, otherwise it will last until the modem (properly) restarts. Line drops wont change it back to default.
 
You can use other routers with DMT Tool incl the the Netgears which are about a hundred times better than the Speedtouch routers and also have some nice custom firmwares. I used the 780WL they supplied, a 585v6 I had lying around and then for the past few months I've been using a Sky branded DG834GT - the difference is incredible. It's far smaller, runs much cooler and hasn't had a single issue.
 
Mmmm. Prewarning: I may be talking utter rollocks.

200 metres from exchange, DS line specs of 8 dB attenuation, 11 dB SNR when synched at 8 meg?

Shouldn't his SNR be slightly higher than that? ADSL2, which is ADSL1 but without the phony cap at 8 MBps, can go to 12 Mbps.

ADSL2+ effectively tries to pack double the data into the same frequencies, so with a low error rate line you get 200% (double) of your ADSL2 speed, with a high error line, you get 100-180% of your ADSL2 speed. ADSL2 speed can be roughly calculated as each additional meg of download synch, you lose 3dB of download SNR. Applying that to your figures would give 10 Meg at ~6 dB SNR, so 12-18 Mbps.

That doesn't sound at all right for your attenuation. Is your router plugged into the master socket, do you have any extensions etc before you get to your modem? If you have an NTE5 master socket, I'd thoroughly recommend an "NTE5 ADSL faceplate" (google it, I can't link to anyone, they might be competitors), to eliminate all possible noise from internal wiring.

Internal wiring can make all the difference to ADSL2+, it is very sensitive to interference - hence the huge range of 100-180% of ADSL1/2 speeds on ADSL2+ lines with noise. I've even seen people with 'normal' loop lengths (<3km) with worse connections on ADSL2+ than on ADSL1. It is nearly always the internal wiring, especially on a known good ADSL1 line.
 
The line comes straight to the wall down to the window and to the socket. I had to get the line put in when I moved in. The router is plugged straight in to that via a filter.

Thanks for the info MT-. Once I'm connected I'll use the BeBox till the line settles then I will see whats what with the routers etc :)
 
(I shouldn't hijack the poor guys thread, sorry!)

AbsenceJam said:
You can use other routers with DMT Tool incl the the Netgears which are about a hundred times better than the Speedtouch routers and also have some nice custom firmwares. I used the 780WL they supplied, a 585v6 I had lying around and then for the past few months I've been using a Sky branded DG834GT - the difference is incredible. It's far smaller, runs much cooler and hasn't had a single issue.
Click to expand...

Did you get the same synch speed? The DG834GT was one of the routers I tried with Be, it gave me synch speeds 2-3 Mbps lower than the BeBox. The advantage the BeBox has (or so I was told) is that it was specifically chosen to work well with Be's DSLAMs. That might be apocryphal.
 
MT- said:
Mmmm. Prewarning: I may be talking utter rollocks.
Click to expand...

You guessed it. :p

Shouldn't his SNR be slightly higher than that? ADSL2, which is ADSL1 but without the phony cap at 8 MBps, can go to 12 Mbps.
Click to expand...

They're not identical, and it's not just a "phony cap" that separates ADSL2 and ADSL. ADSL2 and ADSL2+ are more closely related.

ADSL2+ effectively tries to pack double the data into the same frequencies
Click to expand...

Double the frequency range, plus some efficiency improvements.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom