07-05-2012, 01:00 AM
WARNING:
Using an unofficial modem on a Digital Region line IS against the terms and conditions. However I have been assured by Digital Region that while your ISP has to tell you NOT to do this (its in their contract), your line will NOT be ceased if you do.
You will however need to plug back in the supplied Cellpipe if you have any problems with your connection as Digital Region cannot check your line stats without their own equipment plugged in!
These instructions are for configuring the HG612 to replace the Cellpipe for people who ONLY have an ISP service on their Cellpipe.
If you have VoIP or IPTV which uses a different ethernet port on the Cellpipe to your normal Internet, it is not recommended to use the HG612 as you will lose access to the configurations, stats and GUI.
Unlocking the Openreach HG612 and configuring it for Digital Region:
If your HG612 is already unlocked, jump to step 3.
To be able to get into the HG612 GUI/telnet you either need to plug a PC into LAN2 or change the LAN IP address of the HG612 to the same as your network and then plug an ethernet cable from LAN2 on the HG612 into a port on your router/switch. Or if you have a flexible router that lets you specify a second IP address for its WAN port, you can follow the instructions at the very end of this post.
If it didn't work:
Firstly, double check your settings! If you are sure they are correct, do the following.
When I say to "run" something I mean type in the text and then press enter.
Telnet into the router (if you changed the IP address remember to use the new one you set it as) and run sh followed by ifconfig.
Look for ptm1.10 and check if its showing greater than 0 for RX packets and TX packets. If it is, it should working so double check your settings especially on your router.
If however it shows 0 packets for RX and TX then your VLAN ID may be different so we need to find out which it is.
Highlight the following text and copy/paste it into the telnet window:
You may need to press enter for it to execute. Once it has, run "ifconfig" again and look at the results. You need to find out which interface called "ptm1.#" where # is a number, is receiving packets.
It will look something like this but only have RX packets showing a positive number, TX packets will still be 0:
Note down which number is after the dot "ptm1." as you will need this next.
Now copy/paste the following:
press enter, then close telnet and go to your web browser.
What can I do now that I couldn't with the Cellpipe?
I want to see my sync speed and POTENTIAL max sync speed:
Click Status, WAN then xDSL.
Remember that attainable rate will ALWAYS be optimistic, it shows the speed you would sync at if the SNR margin was 0dB. In reality no line can run reliably at that setting and 6dB margin is to be expected. But if your current SNR margin is higher than 6dB it pretty much guarantees your line can sync faster than its current setting.
I want to see DETAILED line statistics:
Telnet into the router and run sh.
Now type xdslcmd info --show and you will see something like below:
Total Cells and Data Cells is known to be bugged, ignore it.
The interesting lines are D: which shows your interleaving level. INP which shows the Impulse Noise Protection level and delay which shows the lag in ms introduced by the current interleaving and INP settings (I think).
As you can see, I am losing 8ms for both uploads and downloads which means 16ms higher ping times in total.
I am still trying to find out what some of the other fields are.
There are MUCH more detailed line statistics you can view from the xdslcmd but mostly they are useful for graphing, not much fun to read in plain text. Consult the HG612 hacking site for more information about that sort of thing and to thank them for hacking the firmware of the HG612 so we can use it on Digital Region.
How to access the GUI/telnet using just a single ethernet cable:
This did not work as planned so its still in the "to look into" category.
I'm with Little Big One and I REALLY want to use their TV service with the HG612:
PLEASE DO NOT FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW YET, I AM GETTING THEM VERIFIED TO ENSURE I HAVEN'T MISSED ANYTHING!
This can be done, but you will lose access to all the goodies the HG612 provides so its not recommended. You would be better off trying to get a replacement from LBO, using a Cellpipe would work just as well as the HG612 in this case.
If this doesn't work, you have to revert to factory settings by holding the reset button in for 10 seconds in order to recover access to the GUI. You would then then have to configure the HG612 from scratch again, just skip the first step of unlocking the modem as it will already be unlocked.
[*]MAKE SURE THE INTERNET IS WORKING ON LAN1 BEFORE PROCEEDING.
[*]Login to the routers web interface at "http://192.168.1.1".
[*]Click on Basic and then WAN.
[*]Click on New.
[*]Tick port binding: LAN2.
[*]Change connection mode to BRIDGE.
[*]Tick WAN 802.1q and type 30 into the box.
[*]Click Submit.
Using an unofficial modem on a Digital Region line IS against the terms and conditions. However I have been assured by Digital Region that while your ISP has to tell you NOT to do this (its in their contract), your line will NOT be ceased if you do.
You will however need to plug back in the supplied Cellpipe if you have any problems with your connection as Digital Region cannot check your line stats without their own equipment plugged in!
These instructions are for configuring the HG612 to replace the Cellpipe for people who ONLY have an ISP service on their Cellpipe.
If you have VoIP or IPTV which uses a different ethernet port on the Cellpipe to your normal Internet, it is not recommended to use the HG612 as you will lose access to the configurations, stats and GUI.
Unlocking the Openreach HG612 and configuring it for Digital Region:
If your HG612 is already unlocked, jump to step 3.
- Download the unlocked SP10 firmware and extract it to somewhere you will remember on your PC.
- Open the hg612_unlock_instructions_v1-3.pdf you just extracted and follow the instructions until step 13, then come back here.
- Login to the routers web interface at "http://192.168.1.1".
- Click on Basic and then WAN.
- Look down the page for VLAN ID, change this to 10 and click Submit.
- Click on the line starting ptm1.301, make sure the VLAN ID shows 301 further down the page then click Remove and confirm the alert box.
- Click the Advanced section on the left then on QoS.
- Untick the "enable" tick box (oddly this is instant, there is no Submit or Save button to press).
- Remove the ethernet cable from the Cellpipe and put it into LAN1 on the HG612. (you can power down the HG612 at this point if you need to move it to do this)
- Surf the web.
To be able to get into the HG612 GUI/telnet you either need to plug a PC into LAN2 or change the LAN IP address of the HG612 to the same as your network and then plug an ethernet cable from LAN2 on the HG612 into a port on your router/switch. Or if you have a flexible router that lets you specify a second IP address for its WAN port, you can follow the instructions at the very end of this post.
If it didn't work:
Firstly, double check your settings! If you are sure they are correct, do the following.
When I say to "run" something I mean type in the text and then press enter.
Telnet into the router (if you changed the IP address remember to use the new one you set it as) and run sh followed by ifconfig.
Look for ptm1.10 and check if its showing greater than 0 for RX packets and TX packets. If it is, it should working so double check your settings especially on your router.
If however it shows 0 packets for RX and TX then your VLAN ID may be different so we need to find out which it is.
Highlight the following text and copy/paste it into the telnet window:
Code:
VLAN=2
while [ "$VLAN" -lt 50 ]
do
vconfig add ptm1 $VLAN
ifconfig ptm1.$VLAN up
VLAN=$((VLAN + 1))
done
It will look something like this but only have RX packets showing a positive number, TX packets will still be 0:
Code:
ptm1.10 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr ##:##:##:##:##:##
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:876522 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:451078 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:800843126 (763.7 MiB) TX bytes:66025873 (62.9 MiB)
Now copy/paste the following:
Code:
VLAN=2
while [ "$VLAN" -lt 50 ]
do
vconfig rem ptm1.$VLAN
VLAN=$((VLAN + 1))
done
What can I do now that I couldn't with the Cellpipe?
I want to see my sync speed and POTENTIAL max sync speed:
Click Status, WAN then xDSL.
Remember that attainable rate will ALWAYS be optimistic, it shows the speed you would sync at if the SNR margin was 0dB. In reality no line can run reliably at that setting and 6dB margin is to be expected. But if your current SNR margin is higher than 6dB it pretty much guarantees your line can sync faster than its current setting.
I want to see DETAILED line statistics:
Telnet into the router and run sh.
Now type xdslcmd info --show and you will see something like below:
Code:
xdslcmd: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: Showtime
Retrain Reason: 0
Max: Upstream rate = 22936 Kbps, Downstream rate = 123820 Kbps
Path: 0, Upstream rate = 10999 Kbps, Downstream rate = 43997 Kbps
Link Power State: L0
Mode: VDSL2 Annex B
VDSL2 Profile: Profile 17a
TPS-TC: PTM Mode
Trellis: U:OFF /D:ON
Line Status: No Defect
Training Status: Showtime
Down Up
SNR (dB): 30.9 17.3
Attn(dB): 0.0 0.0
Pwr(dBm): 10.7 -8.7
VDSL2 framing
Path 0
B: 111 106
M: 1 1
T: 32 45
R: 16 16
S: 0.0810 0.3090
L: 12648 3184
D: 397 100
I: 128 123
N: 128 123
Counters
Path 0
OHF: 49633475 1117260
OHFErr: 0 1
RS: 2058117496 110880
RSCorr: 2553 509743424
RSUnCorr: 0 0
Path 0
HEC: 0 0
OCD: 0 0
LCD: 0 0
Total Cells: 2324571547 0
Data Cells: 44246908 0
Drop Cells: 0
Bit Errors: 0 0
ES: 0 2
SES: 0 1
UAS: 72 72
AS: 129093
Path 0
INP: 2.00 2.00
PER: 2.59 10.43
delay: 8.00 8.00
OR: 98.81 36.81
Bitswap: 105 193
Total Cells and Data Cells is known to be bugged, ignore it.
The interesting lines are D: which shows your interleaving level. INP which shows the Impulse Noise Protection level and delay which shows the lag in ms introduced by the current interleaving and INP settings (I think).
As you can see, I am losing 8ms for both uploads and downloads which means 16ms higher ping times in total.
I am still trying to find out what some of the other fields are.
There are MUCH more detailed line statistics you can view from the xdslcmd but mostly they are useful for graphing, not much fun to read in plain text. Consult the HG612 hacking site for more information about that sort of thing and to thank them for hacking the firmware of the HG612 so we can use it on Digital Region.
How to access the GUI/telnet using just a single ethernet cable:
This did not work as planned so its still in the "to look into" category.
I'm with Little Big One and I REALLY want to use their TV service with the HG612:
PLEASE DO NOT FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW YET, I AM GETTING THEM VERIFIED TO ENSURE I HAVEN'T MISSED ANYTHING!
This can be done, but you will lose access to all the goodies the HG612 provides so its not recommended. You would be better off trying to get a replacement from LBO, using a Cellpipe would work just as well as the HG612 in this case.
If this doesn't work, you have to revert to factory settings by holding the reset button in for 10 seconds in order to recover access to the GUI. You would then then have to configure the HG612 from scratch again, just skip the first step of unlocking the modem as it will already be unlocked.
[*]MAKE SURE THE INTERNET IS WORKING ON LAN1 BEFORE PROCEEDING.
[*]Login to the routers web interface at "http://192.168.1.1".
[*]Click on Basic and then WAN.
[*]Click on New.
[*]Tick port binding: LAN2.
[*]Change connection mode to BRIDGE.
[*]Tick WAN 802.1q and type 30 into the box.
[*]Click Submit.