HOW TO: Use a third party router on Vodafone VDSL

[jonnywombat]

On Firday afternoon Vodafone UK sent a corporate email telling their support team that they can now give out Broadband username and passwords.

I have now set up my own router, and here's what i did.

Step 1 Ring VF on 08080034515 and get your username and password. The support team member then emailed me my Log in info.

Step 2 Swap your router. Keep your VF router in case you ever get an issue and need tech support as they will not support your 3rd party device

Step 3 In your routers web interface access the WAN settings. Set connection type to PPPoE, enter username and password and leave all settings as default EXCEPT enable 802.1Q and set Vlan tag to 101.

Step 4 Save settings and apply. Your router should now connect to VF. Mine took a couple of minutes to get a connection and another couple from the router showing it was connected to actually being able to access the net

Step 5 After a few minutes the connection dropped, and it would not connect again. After investigation I was told this is to do with VF registering your router on there network. Hard reset your router. Power it down remove the power cord for 30 seconds and power back on.

Step 6 Enjoy

This is just based on my experience of setting up my router ASUS DSL-AC68U, YMMV. However the ASUS is syncd at 73.6meg, when the VF router syncd at 72.1 and I have noticed a marked improvment in performance.

HTH someone

Jonny

[UnPotat]

@Bunn

Hey, 

As I've said before the FEC errors won't really affect the line speed, not offence to the Archer modem, but those 'lists' etc of modems are usually just plain bad, if its performing similarly to the Vodafone one it is probably just not very good.

Using my unlocked Home Hub 5 I got up to 14 billion FEC corrections without having the line drop and it slowly increased the speed to what I was promised, it has even now switched from interleved to fast path which I did not think possible, but its been active for a week straight now without a single disconnect.

I would get one of these off eBay and sell that Archer one, as it does not appear to be very good, at least compared to the Vodafone one anyway, they only cost ~25 and going by my experience its sure to be better than the vodafone one. Don't expect line speeds to go up straight away, you would have to leave it plugged in, then every few days worth of uptime on the line it will increase the speed to the point it feels it will become unsable at any higher.

Quite frankly the only thing you'd get moving to another supplier is a different stock router, which with BT or PlusNet basiclly means a HomeHub, otherwise the experience will be the same, Vodafone just buys the service from Openreach as do the other providers.

Everything to me just points to both modems/routers being bad or at least as bad as each other, moving from the Vodafone router/modem for me was night and day, stable from the time it was plugged in and only ever dropped the line to increase speeds until I reached this point, after which It moved me onto fast path which halved my ping.

[UnPotat]

Tried editing but it didn't add it, just wanted to add that 50mbps is probably around what you'll get, but it should not have problems holding that speed, as a comparison of my connection using that test.

VDSL Range B (Impacted)

34.8

16.9

7.3

3.7

Compared to -

Data Rate: 34.956 Mb/s / 5.993 Mb/s

Connected: 6d 8h 49m 57s

Bear in mind the just under 7 days uptime is only because it switched to Fast Path, but im not complaning as it halved my ping.

[Bunn]

Hi UnPotat

Looking at a graph on the internet of street box distance to property it indicates a speed of around 50 too. I am around 600 metres from the box. Will try the unlocked bt hub 5 to see if it improves. Thanks for the help mate9

BUNN

[UnPotat]

Ahh no problem, I'll be here if you need a hand setting anything up but they're powerful as anything running OpenWRT/Lede, I'd highly reccomend you put SQM/QoS on it after the line settles on its final speed, it can work wonders if you're in a busy household.

At the price people have been selling them for though I'd imagine you'd make money selling the old one on afterwards, you can even do it yourself to one of them if you have an old one around, let me know how it goes, I'll be surprised if you don't see a difference, the reason I wen't for one as being a BT/Openreach(at the time) product theres no way it can be blamed if issues occur.

[Bunn]

Will keep in touch and let you know how things go. Thanks again for taking the time to help. Bunn

[Bunn]

Hi UnPotat

I took your advice and have ordered a BT HH5 unlocked as you said. Will be delivered at the end of this week and I'll have a crack at setting it all up on VF.

I did it ok with the Archer VR2800 so don't anticipate having any problem setting the BT device up either.

I will keep you in the loop and any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Andy

[UnPotat]

Awesome, hopefully all goes well and youll start to see the speed go up after a few days of uptime. The basics of setting it up are just that you go into the network tab under interfaces, then there should be a WAN interface you can edit and set to pppoe and enter your details into. To set the Vlan ID to 101 you simply go under physical settings in the wan interface and choose custom and enter ptm0.101. Where ptm0 should be the name of the modem as it is on mine, and adding .101 for some reason sets the Vlan ID. You can then save & apply the settings and press connect if need be.

Otherwise it all just works, theres a bit more stuff for setting up advanced features but everythings out there and well documented.

As a side note you'll most likley have to manually enable the Wifi on it, but on the plus side it gives you access to many more 5ghz channels than you normally get, its definatly a nerds dream in terms of settings

[Bunn]

Thank you for this. As a matter of fact my unlocked hh5 just appeared this morning from ebay. Not had a chance to set it up as yet but your pist certainly helps. I set up the Archer ok once I had "decoded" the VF details so should be ok from now on. I will let you know. Openreach appeared again but just checked the line and said it was all ok. Line has now synqd at 39 down and just under 20 up so not bad. They still want to change me to fibre38 at no extra cost. Lol! Ive been paying for fibre76 so thats a jome. I am sti kinv with 76 to see if hh5 increases speed. I'll again let you know. Thanks again. Keep in touch.

Andy

[selbyftw]

Not sure if anyone is still around, wondering if anyone has any advice, I picked a LEDE/openwrt flashed BT home hub 5 on ebay replace my stock vodaphone one, plugged it in directly to power and socked, I have two blue lights one broadband and one wifi light on there which is a good sign, I've logged into it using 192.168.1.1. I have gone to the interfaces menu and edited 'wan' with my ppoe username and password that vodaphone provided, I have then gone to physical settings and added a custom interface of ptm0.101 and reset the router. I have made sure wifi is enabled and the passwords are all ok, I have also chekced that it's the right annex,tone and dsl line mode but still can't seem to connect to the internet. My 'wan' does not give me 'uptime' or a mac address like it should do, any ideas?

dsl says 'up' on the overview page but don't know where I've gone wrong.

[machare]

Is your connection user name in a format like:

dsl000123456&broadband.vodafone.co.uk

where & is an 'at' sign and only the numbers 123456 being different?