Recommend Me a Router

Trev said:
Pardon my ignorance, but what is the point/advantage/use of being able to telnet into a router? ...(I myself can do it)...
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Not being an owner of a router, my guess would be to take control. Don't you like to be able to control your equipment? I prefer my equipment to do what I want, not what somebody else thinks I want. (Eh?)
(There appears to be some crosstalk with AvP - "I myself" - really!)
 
Trev said:
Pardon my ignorance, but what is the point/advantage/use of being able to telnet into a router?
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One might ask what's the point/advantage/use of being able to telnet in to a Freeview PVR.
In my modem's case: Control, monitoring and learning what it's doing internally.
 
Black Hole said:
Whenever my MiFi fell back from 3G to HSDPA, I knew there was no point trying to do anything!
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My MiFi device behaves the opposite way to yours, 3G is next to useless, but the much faster HSDPA is quite acceptable for general web browsing.
 
I've just done a test and got a download speed of 1.97Mb/s and upload of 0.71Mb/s. On very rare occasions I've seen speeds above 2.5Mb/s.
These are reasonable for most uses. Not very good for viewing video - so on the rare occasions I want to, I try and find a way to download rather than stream.
I thought HSDPA was better than 3G so I'm not sure about: "Whenever my MiFi fell back from 3G to HSDPA, I knew there was no point trying to do anything!" I find the reverse. HSDPA is reasonable for downloading. If it falls back to 3G (which it will do whilst I'm typing this) - I could fetch the bytes quicker by hand!
 
Here's something to ponder: it seems that my HDRs have been crashing a lot less lately. Not zero crashes, but many fewer crashes.

My postulate is that by improving the reliability of my network (each HDR has a Devolo behind it), there are fewer opportunities for the under-tested and buggy Humax code to hit an unhandled exception.
 
(Edit: Some) People are claiming online, and particularly on Amazon, that they are getting dropouts on broadband, and are reporting it to bt, who send out an engineer. The engineer reports the line is ok up to the property, but notices they have a CPR call blocker and their apparatus reports a loop back on the line until this is removed.

Being as it is not Openreach's responsibility, the customers are charged for the visit.

CPR say yes, the way their blockers work, they will cause a "fault" on the engineer's apparatus, but it is not really a fault, just a side effect, and not a cause of losing broadband.

The really worrying thing then emerges. Some users are claiming that some master sockets are incorrectly wired. There are only two wires. Reversing them causes the problem to disappear.

I don't know enough about this to be able to comment, but is it a possibility? There is, of course, the possibility of extensions being incorrectly wired. I know for a fact that there are two ways at least to wire an extension.

  1. Plug in an extension lead. Not very neat.
  2. Wire directly into the socket, as there are extension terminals already there.
So what do you make of this?
 
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1. It sounds like CPR are not adhering to PSTN standards;

2. Nothing south of a microfilter should affect the ADSL;

3. If everyone with a CPR blocker reports a broadband problem there must be something in it.

It does matter how the incoming line to the master socket is wired; reversing it reverses the 48V DC bias on the line which might affect some equipment particularly if it draws operational power from the line.

The extension terminals in a master socket are only wired to a plug that works just the same as plugging in the extension, it's just that the plug is in the form of a face plate.
 
Not everyone is reporting the problem, and reversing the wires clears the problem. The call blocker does take power from the line, though. Your info about the dc bias is what I didn't have, thanks.

As for extensions, you have to dig deeper. There is a socket inside the bt master terminal, but there are two other ways to wire an extension. The incoming wires go to two terminals, screw connectors in my case, and you can wire your extension directly to those. That is how I did mine, then straight out the wall again. This allows you to move everything to another location, phone and broadband, with a new master socket. There are also idc connectors inside that you use a pushdown tool to wire to an extension.

https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/ho...wtoguides/downloads/NTE5C_Instructions_CP.pdf
 
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Mike0001 said:
The incoming wires go to two terminals, screw connectors in my case, and you can wire your extension directly to those.
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You're not supposed to do that. Wired extension connections are only supposed to go to the faceplate terminals. This is so that faults can be isolated to the incoming line by removing all connections except the master socket.
 
I know. However, I had two master sockets wired together in exactly this way and wished to remove one. They were adjacent to one another and I was damned if I would pay openreach prices to disconnect two wires.
 
The correct terminology is linebox not master socket. A linebox has a split faceplate with a plug to go into the internal socket.
A master socket is an old style box, similar to an extension socket but with the extra components.
Calling a linebox a master socket or vice-versa is wrong, and confusing.
 
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