Vodafone Wifi Router Replacement

[DaveEyes]

I have just moved to Vodafone from TalkTalk - the speed of connection seems fine but I am a little dismayed at the functionality of the router management interface.   Its extremely slow to respond and lacks many features that the talk talk router had - such as being able to easily see what devices are on the network and to easilly set up static ip addresses.

I would be interested to know if there is a recommended 3rd party router that I could buy ...?

Thanks

Dave

[Smartie91]

Hi I only have my pc plugged into the router ATM. And it's still hanging this really is a bag of ##~## router. 

[Jayach]

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@Smartie91 wrote:

Hi I only have my pc plugged into the router ATM. And it's still hanging this really is a bag of ##~## router. 

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Sorry, but that simply isn't true about the THG3000 generally, but of course yours may be faulty.

As you can see from my earlier post, setting up static IP addresses takes a few seconds each.

Have you tried a factory reset of the router and what is your firmware?

Why would you need to setup more than a few static IPs

[Smartie91]

Thanks for you reply I need static ip as I run home assistant and my devices work with static also a unraid server and adguard so they all need static IPs router is on firmware 19.4.0551_3261103

Thanks 

[CrimsonLiar]

If you need to use the router to assign Static IP addresses for every single Home Assistant device, then depending on how many devices you have, you could run into problems.  Even using my Asus router, if I needed to set up every Smart with a Static IP, then I'd need to use an alternative to the routers built-in DHCP.

In a nutshell:  I think you'll have problems with the VF router in combination with Home Assistant!

*Is it possible to turn off the VF router DHCP and use one of your servers as the DHCP server instead (I can certainly do this from Pi-Hole to a degree, or from a Linux server)?

[Jayach]

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@Smartie91 wrote:

Thanks for you reply I need static ip as I run home assistant and my devices work with static also a unraid server and adguard so they all need static IPs router is on firmware 19.4.0551_3261103

That is the latest firmware, as far as I know, so no problem there.

I am not familiar with home assistant, but the THG3000 issues very sticky IP addresses, it doesn't take them from the pool sequentially, but seems to use an algorithm (presumably based on the MAC address), such that devices always seem to get the same I.P. (even on a different THG3000)

The THG3000 is very much supposed to be a simple home router and, from comments on here, doesn't seem to like running too many devices, so may struggle with a fully smart home.

Good luck with it though.

[Smartie91]

I have another router which can handle 120 devices so it says. I turned of DHCP on the vf router but then had issues where the new router didn't get a IP address so how could I connect another router please.  I would also like to use the WiFi on the new router.  I did once remove the vf router and use the new one using PPPoE but I had to SSH into the network config and add a vlan 911. It worked to a fashion but if rebooted it wouldn't connect again. So I removed it again 

Thanks for your help 

[CrimsonLiar]

The problem you have with using a second router - is that it's a router and not a switch, which probably means that you had some level of "double NAT".  Double NAT isn't always an issue, just quite often an issue!  Put the second router into AP mode and unless you dive deep into running scripts on the router (if that's even possible) you'd not be able to use it as a DHCP server.  I'd be really surprised if you couldn't run a DHCP server on your AdGuard Home or Unraid server using DNSmasq or similar.

*Or even simply switch to Pi-Hole with its built-in DHCP server ability.  I'm fully aware Pi-hole is not as all-encompassing as AdGuard Home, but in an odd way, that's one of its strengths!

[Jayach]

You didn't say you were on FTTP. You would be better off dumping the Vodafone router completely (but you will lose the telephone facility)

What is the other router? There may be other ways of expressing the VLAN.

[DaveEyes]

Morning all... It was interesting to see this thread come to life again and to read the latest comments.

I actually replaced my vodafone router with a tplink router and have been very happy with it. 

I have almost 100 devices on the local network and have no problems with that now. 

Cheers 

Dave (original poster) 

[Smartie91]

Morning Dave. Sorry to hijack your post last night. 

Please could you let me know what model router you brought please.