UPC Routers - Thomson (Technicolor) vs. Linksys WRT610N

Chanquete

Hi

I'm seriously considering moving to the 100Mb UPC broadband package - I'm interested mostly on the higher cap (500Gb vs. 250Gb) rather than the speed. I'm continously going over the cap and being upgraded to the Extreme package (85eur) so the 100Mb package would be a much cheaper (65eur) option.

My main concern is the change of modem from Cisco to Thomson. I currently have the Cisco modem in bridge mode, connected to my Linksys WRT610N router, connected to a managed gigabit switch, all the house wired with CAT6A.

I am happy with the performance and features of the WRT610N - I have port forwarding setup, QoS for VoIP (using Blueface as my phone, with a SPA3102 box for analog phones), pre-assigned IPs for most equipment, etc.

I believe the new Thomson modem dosn't have a bridged mode, so I'm forced to use it as a router. Does it provide the same feature set, performance and quality as the WRT610N? Can anybody share their experiences? I don't want to upgrade and then regret it.

Thank you,
Chanquete

Tony

I'm continuing to use my existing router and set up with the Thompson modem.

Chanquete

Tony wrote: »

I'm continuing to use my existing router and set up with the Thompson modem.

How do you do that? Does it have a bridging mode?

Tony

Chanquete wrote: »

How do you do that? Does it have a bridging mode?

Just replaced the old modem with the new one and re booted the router.

Chanquete

Tony wrote: »

Just replaced the old modem with the new one and re booted the router.

I believe the problem with that is that you'd have two routers chained and double NATing, which can be a pain - for example, opening a port requires manually opening it on both routers, forwarding from the Thompson to the Linksys and from the Linksys to the device.

For basic internet access it would seem to work ok but once you start setting up VPNs, etc, I think it's far from ideal?

Tony

I'm sure your right, i'm no expert by any means

Chanquete wrote: »

I believe the problem with that is that you'd have two routers chained and double NATing, which can be a pain - for example, opening a port requires manually opening it on both routers, forwarding from the Thompson to the Linksys and from the Linksys to the device.

For basic internet access it would seem to work ok but once you start setting up VPNs, etc, I think it's far from ideal?

fionny

Chanquete wrote: »

How do you do that? Does it have a bridging mode?

You can put your own router into the DMZ on the Thomson and turn off the wireless. Job done.

Im considering using my Linksys e2000 stll (which i think im going to put DD-WRT on)

The Left Hand Of God

fionny wrote: »

You can put your own router into the DMZ on the Thomson and turn off the wireless. Job done.

Im considering using my Linksys e2000 stll (which i think im going to put DD-WRT on)

Hi,

Just finished installing my Thomson (white) and I was wondering how to do the DMZ thing. I have a WRT610N and I luv it (after I tweaked the settings a long time ago) and I will be using that as my router.

I have turned off the thomson wireless and can see the DMZ part but it is giving me 192.168.0.??? Me to fill in the ??? but when I pull up the admin panel on the WRT610N the IP is 192.168.1.1 [edit-I just looked at my setup on my cisco "network magic" and it show the WRT610N as IP =192.168.1.1 but Internet IP as 192.168.0.10 so should I use that one?)

The WRT610N has just the latest normal firmware on it.

Also so if someone could be so kind would they mind going to STATUS and the CONNECTION on their thompson and tell me what their downstream and up streams are?

Mine are 38dB average down and 42.7 dB up.

I'll explain later

Any help appreciate and thanks in advance!

Tony

Downstream Channels
Channel Lock Status Modulation Symbol rate Frequency Power SNR
1 Locked QAM256 2 5360537 8.3 dBmV 40.0 dB
2 Locked QAM256 1 5360537 8.1 dBmV 39.3 dB
3 Locked QAM256 3 5360537 8.7 dBmV 40.4 dB
4 Locked QAM256 4 5360537 8.5 dBmV 39.6 dB

Upstream Channels
Channel Lock Status Modulation Channel ID Symbol Rate Frequency Power
1 Locked QAM16 2 2560 Ksym/sec 40.4 dBmV

The Left Hand Of God wrote: »

Also so if someone could be so kind would they mind going to STATUS and the CONNECTION on their thompson and tell me what their downstream and up streams are?

Mine are 38dB average down and 42.7 dB up.

I'll explain later

Any help appreciate and thanks in advance!

The Left Hand Of God

Tony wrote: »

Downstream Channels
Channel Lock Status Modulation Symbol rate Frequency Power SNR
1 Locked QAM256 2 5360537 8.3 dBmV 40.0 dB
2 Locked QAM256 1 5360537 8.1 dBmV 39.3 dB
3 Locked QAM256 3 5360537 8.7 dBmV 40.4 dB
4 Locked QAM256 4 5360537 8.5 dBmV 39.6 dB

Upstream Channels
Channel Lock Status Modulation Channel ID Symbol Rate Frequency Power
1 Locked QAM16 2 2560 Ksym/sec 40.4 dBmV

From what I have learned this evening.... high download = good and high upstream = bad.

Lets put it this way after the call centre guy saw my upstream (don't know what he was seeing though) I could tell by his voice things were not good... so I have an engineer coming out next week to check my points and cables. They might have to do something with the cable into the house. his explanation was that basically the modem/system was working too hard on the upstream which was having a very bad effect on the downstream ability/read as having a very bad effect on reaching the download speeds I should be getting/pay for.

I used this http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/gnuwin.epfl.ch/iso/gnuwinII_November_30_2004.iso as my example of download speed on 30MB (speed averaged at 2.6MBs)

Tony

Thanks for the info , my problem is actually a slow(ish) upstream, the downstream is fine. I know the wiring is ok as I did it myself. At least you got a guy who discussed the issue , I got someone who told me windows XP was the problem, go figure ?

The Left Hand Of God wrote: »

From what I have learned this evening.... high download = good and high upstream = bad.

Sam the Sham

I haven't seen a clear answer to my question in this thread:

Is it possible to put the Thomson into bridge mode? I really want to keep my Airport Extreme Base Station and don't want two routers between me and the internet.

The Left Hand Of God

Sam the Sham wrote: »

I haven't seen a clear answer to my question in this thread:

Is it possible to put the Thomson into bridge mode? I really want to keep my Airport Extreme Base Station and don't want two routers between me and the internet.

Well in the thompson under wireless there is a menu Option "Bridging"

Bridging : This page allows configuration of WDS features.

Wireless Bridging DisabledEnabled
Remote Bridges

Sam the Sham

The Left Hand Of God wrote: »

Well in the thompson under wireless there is a menu Option "Bridging"

Bridging : This page allows configuration of WDS features.

Wireless Bridging DisabledEnabled
Remote Bridges

WDS/Wireless bridging is not really what I'm after.

Basically, I want the Thomson to be a modem and my router to be the router and to disable all of the router functions on the Thomson. It matters enough to me that I won't upgrade to 100Mb without this functionality.

The Left Hand Of God

Sam the Sham wrote: »

WDS/Wireless bridging is not really what I'm after.

Basically, I want the Thomson to be a modem and my router to be the router and to disable all of the router functions on the Thomson. It matters enough to me that I won't upgrade to 100Mb without this functionality.

Well I just hooked up the modem to my WRT610N and all the traffic is through the WRT610N

I turned off the wireless on the Thompson. I am not "bridging" anything.

EDIT I also did that DMZ thing.

Sam the Sham

The Left Hand Of God wrote: »

Well I just hooked up the modem to my WRT610N and all the traffic is through the WRT610N

I turned off the wireless on the Thompson. I am not "bridging" anything.

EDIT I also did that DMZ thing.

All traffic may well be through the WRT610N, but that does not mean that the Thomson isn't also performing as a router, which is what I want to know if I can avoid.