If you're on the lookout for a new router

[john1]

Cheers so just out of interest http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/Sho...ctID=13686 is advertised as a fibre router ( Asus RT-N56U Black Diamond Simultaneous Dual-Band Wireless-N Fibre Broadband Router (600Mbps ) So would that still need the cellpipe?? I appreciate the slight model number differences or is it a marketing ploy.

TBH it doesn't bother me having the cellpipe I'm just trying to get my head round it a bit ( I could nearly be called a silver surfer.......only nearly though)

[mirdragon]

Any cable router will need the cell pipe - if want all-in-one then needs VDSL modem built-in

[alexatkin]

(26-05-2013 09:59 PM)john1 Wrote:  Cheers so just out of interest http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/Sho...ctID=13686 is advertised as a fibre router ( Asus RT-N56U Black Diamond Simultaneous Dual-Band Wireless-N Fibre Broadband Router (600Mbps ) So would that still need the cellpipe?? I appreciate the slight model number differences or is it a marketing ploy.

TBH it doesn't bother me having the cellpipe I'm just trying to get my head round it a bit ( I could nearly be called a silver surfer.......only nearly though)

Why are you looking at the Asus RT-N56U though when that is the one he said sucked?

[john1]

I wasn't looking it just came up, and then I was curious to know why it was being advertised in that advert as a "fibre router" and the n66 isn't advertised as such!
So I take it its a bit of a marketing ploy for thickos (like me ) to convince them thats all you need

[alexatkin]

To be fair its wrong to call them cable routers too but they have done for years to make it easier for end-users to know what they need to buy for sharing their cable broadband. The reason being that Cable has come with "just" the modem with an ethernet port in the back for so long. ADSL initially came with an ADSL to USB modem and then for a while no modem at all (expecting you to provide your own modem/router).

Technically a cable router should have a built-in cable modem (like the Virgin SuperHub), a fibre router would actually have a fibre transceiver (you know, REAL fibre), a router for Infinity/Digital Region would be a VDSL2 router (actually what the Cellpipe is but its configured to act as a Bridge so the end-user can choose their own router for sharing the Internet).

[mirdragon]

if anyone interested the uptime displayed when check system is for time since powered off and not for the uptime of your connection to the internet. Noticed this when applying various settings which required the connection to be restarted - the device showed the uptime as from yesterday, even though the connection was restarted 2 minutes ago

As i'm now on 5Ghz for most of my devices I shouldn't get swamped out by the person running a netgear that is swamping everyone out with a -30dBm Signal Strength

[mirdragon]

just another little update

for xbox live to work when using static ip, it seems you have to forward the ports manually as uPnP does not work on static ip addresses

if you use dhcp then you won't have a problem

noticed that there is another bug - current firmware is 3.0.0.4.260 and when choose check it reports it is the latest version, yet when go to RTN66U Downloads the latest firmware is 3.0.0.4.354

manually downloading at the moment so will see how it goes

[alexatkin]

Yeah I should probably mention, I ALWAYS forward the ports manually on Xbox Live as I built a huge distrust of uPnP due to how awfully unreliable it has been on routers. Generally if routers were crashing frequently you would almost always find disabling uPnP would fix it.

Then there is the obvious security issue as its far easier to hack into your PC if any trojan that might get installed can open ports at will, although less so today as its just as easy to proxy access to your PC via a server on the Internet.

That is actually one of the flaws with the PS3 as it operates like PC where every game implements its own ports so its near impossible to do manually. Fortunately I haven't found any PS3 games I wanted to play online yet.

[mirdragon]

I'm still currently monitoring the router to see how it performs, just got a few niggles with it, compared to other routers I've used

reserving ip's - unable to give the ip a name so can easily see which device it is (ie pc1, pc2, mobile1, mobile2) - can do this on other routers so bit of a let down on this router
dhcp lease time - maximum is around 11days and 40 minutes - would be good to set this for longer
connection time - only way to see this is to look through the log file as the uptime for the router is the time it's been switched on
on internet status - it shows Lease Time as renewing and Lease Expires as expired
wireless channels - even though I had set which channels to use, it has defaulted back to Auto
mac access control - can't just choose enable/disable a mac from the list you've assigned - must fully remove and apply which results in your internet connection being reset - if had option to just enable/disable a particular mac access it wouldn't need to reset the internet connection

I'll see how it goes as still got a few days left can test with

[john1]

Just ordered one from Dabs 10% off free delivery 98.97 now if its no good and not thicko proof god help you lot