New UPC 100mb Thomson TWG870UIR Router

Inquitus

I have searched this forum and seen alot of people have alot of grief with the Docsis 2.0 combined router / cable modem.

I am finding it impossible to get this docsis 3.0 version to play nice and just stay in its box and be a cable modem, and let my existing infrastructure do the rest. Is it possible? am I wasting my time? 100Mb is great and all but if you are forced to use an intransigent PoS cable modem router combo that's just being a bollox for the sake of being a bollox.

Atm my interwebs works fine throughout the house, but no port forwarding will work at all.

All help gladly received.

Sam the Sham

This was my fear. I'm afraid that if the Thomson can't be made to act as a simple modem, that's a dealbreaker for me.

Have you tried logging in as "admin" with a blank password?

Inquitus

Sam the Sham wrote: »

This was my fear. I'm afraid that if the Thomson can't be made to act as a simple modem, that's a dealbreaker for me.

Have you tried logging in as "admin" with a blank password?

I have logged in, am very tech savvy and can't for the life of me make it work as a cable modem alone.

Skittle

The Thomson doesn't have a bridge mode (ignore what the manual says about the Wireless Bridge functionality). The best you can do is to see what IP address that you current router gets when plugged into the Thomson and then add that IP address as the DMZ IP address on the Thomson and it should pass everything through.

There is no way you'll be able to get 50Mb or 100Mb broadband from UPC without using the Thomson.

Sam the Sham

Skittle wrote: »

There is no way you'll be able to get 50Mb or 100Mb broadband from UPC without using the Thomson.

I'll stick with 30Mb then. Does UPC not realise that a big part of the market for high-end broadband will be technically savvy people who will have their own routers they'd like to keep using? At the very least they should pick a router that can be used in bridge mode (or allow this one to be used in that way if it can).

The Left Hand Of God

Sam the Sham wrote: »

I'll stick with 30Mb then. Does UPC not realise that a big part of the market for high-end broadband will be technically savvy people who will have their own routers they'd like to keep using? At the very least they should pick a router that can be used in bridge mode (or allow this one to be used in that way if it can).

I intend to ask the engineer when here is in my gaff next week if there is a stand alone modem available, no wireless/router etc. That is what I always got before. Have you asked UPC if there is one?

So far though using that DMZ thing my port forwarding seems to be working fine for the like of uTorrent.

slave1

I got my 100mb installed on Thursday and have not touched any settings on it and utorrent is flying at up to 8mb/sec, think I'll leave as is if all working well

Sam the Sham

slave1 wrote: »

I got my 100mb installed on Thursday and have not touched any settings on it and utorrent is flying at up to 8mb/sec, think I'll leave as is if all working well

With all due respect, that's missing the point. There's no reason general internet use shouldn't be grand with the new modem/router even if you have your own router, since all it's adding is an extra hop. But for any actual routing (NAT or QoS setups), having two routers is not ideal. It complicates setup.

For example, I have an Airport Extreme router with several hard drives attached to it that function as NAS drives. I need to be able to get to mount these drives when I'm at work or abroad. With Back-to-my-mac, I can do that very reliably. If I have another router between the Airport Extreme and the internet, I have no confidence that this will still be possible or, if it is, reliable.

slave1

I was replying directly to The Left Hand Of God's utorrent comment, not a general comment;)

vibe666

i'm actually having the same issues. at first i thought i was doing okay as everything seemed to work fine, but i hadn't looked at the port forwards to my NAS etc. and they're not working since i got the thompson in.

i have my router in the dmz of the thompson, but they still aren't working at all.

i even tried a blanket port forward for everything directly to the dmz host, but that made no difference either.

if i have to manually replicate every port forward on both routers every time i want to set one up it's going to be a major PITA, even if it actually works.

Sam the Sham

One thing I'd like to see clarified:

Is it that the Thomson cannot be made to function as a mere modem (i.e., in bridge mode) or is it that UPC has disabled that capability?

Also, can someone explain why we can't buy our own docsis 3.0 modems?

Inquitus

How are people setting this up? Atm I have internet at all PCs, PS3s etc, but no ability to access stuff from the web as the port forwarding is FUBAR, and I can't stream from my PC to my PS3 using PS3 media server.

Do you have DHCP on on the Thompson?
What local IP etc do you assign to the Thompson?

Atm I have my netgear doing DHCP on a 192.168.1.2-xxxx range with its own ip as 192.168.1.1

The Thompson is on 192.168.11.7 set manually

If I try to put the Thompson in the 192.168.1.xxx range I get no internets and obv I can only set my netgear to be on the DMZ if they are both in the same ip range.

Doing my head in tbh.

Inq

roast

Heres a small tut that I wrote about this a few months ago. This should sort you out.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=71665694&postcount=452

-Mick.

AlmightyCushion

roast wrote: »

Heres a small tut that I wrote about this a few months ago. This should sort you out.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=71665694&postcount=452

-Mick.

Does doing that still let you use the phone service?

roast

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Does doing that still let you use the phone service?

I don't have the phone service myself, but from other reports, I believe that the phone service works fine.
I'll be getting a phone next week.... so I can confirm then.

AlmightyCushion

Please do. I might look into getting the 50Mb or 100Mb during the summer but I'd need the phone working and I spent a lot of money on my router so I don't want to get rid of it.

roast

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Please do. I might look into getting the 50Mb or 100Mb during the summer but I'd need the phone working and I spent a lot of money on my router so I don't want to get rid of it.

Will do.
While I can't say for definite, I don't see how the phone wouldn't work with the Thomson modem. DMZ mode is a very different type of config as opposed to the bridge mode on the previous Cisco EPC2425. It doesn't actually limit any functions on the Thomson - it merely allows port forwarding rules to be managed by another device (router). The phone should work fine.

I must also say, the Thomson router is pretty damn good. I've had little or no issues since the teething problems I had initially, a few months ago. the Cisco would always randomly reset itself.... throwing out all my config settings. The Thomson however, has never done that, and is happily plodding away with my TP-Link router managing all the traffic and forwarding rules. Happy days.

vibe666

Hi Mick.

that's pretty much exactly how i've got mine set up, but my port forwarding rules aren't working at all.

can you confirm that yours definitely are?

i.e. that you can browse to your external IP / dyndns hostname from any internet connection outside of your own and access stuff on your LAN behind your router via port forwards set up on that router alone, not on the thompson?

also if it helps, i can confirm 100% that the phone works fine with it set up like this.

roast

vibe666 wrote: »

Hi Mick.

that's pretty much exactly how i've got mine set up, but my port forwarding rules aren't working at all.

can you confirm that yours definitely are?

i.e. that you can browse to your external IP / dyndns hostname from any internet connection outside of your own and access stuff on your LAN behind your router via port forwards set up on that router alone, not on the thompson?

also if it helps, i can confirm 100% that the phone works fine with it set up like this.

Smashing info about the phone Vibe, good to know!

Yes indeed, all my forwarding rules are working perfectly fine.
I had a dyndns account which I used to set up a webpage running from my own PC here - which worked perfectly fine. The only reason its not running anymore is due to a fault with the server machine that it was set up on.
The other current forwarding rule which is always on, and always accessible is a simple Unreal Tournament game server - which is working perfectly, and viewable from Gamespys master list also. To confirm (if you have the game installed) feel free to PM me for the IP address of the server.

EDIT: What router are you using?

arden

Has anyone been able to log on remotely to this router via the wan? I've set it up, get the login prompt, but the login details I use when on the lan don't work, is there something I'm missing or another option needs to be set?

I ran UPC about this a while ago, needless to say they hadn't got a clue about what I was on about, I was promised a call back which never came!

vibe666

good to know, i think i'll take another look at my config then, maybe i missed something.

until recently (i.e. when i knew for sure when the 100mbps was actually coming out), i've been using a linksys wrt54gs (directly connected to a gigabit switch with ethernet running outside to the upstairs computer room where there is another gb switch) running the tomato firmware for the last couple of years, but although it's served me well, i knew it wouldn't be up to the task of fully utilising the 100mbps and as i didn't want to lose my bandwidth monitoring and other great features of tomato, i had to find something to take it's place that would fit the bill.

so i'm now running a linksys e3000 (full 2.4ghz & 5hz dual band + gigabit ethernet) with a modified version of tomato v1.28 with a few extra features and it's been great so far, until i had my port forwarding issues with the new router.

it meant i could remove one of the switches from the equation and still keep gigabit speeds throughout my LAN, although I'd be a lot happier with a nice dinky little standalone docsis3 modem rather than the ruddy great surfboard of a thing that the thompson router is. seriously, could it BE any bigger??? :eek:

thing is, when all is said and done, with the way it's set up now i was working from home via vpn all day (and night:() yesterday doing some quite intensive work and at the same time, another PC was torrenting at 30mbps and at one point my wife was on a skype video call to a friend in tenerife and you really couldn't tell that anything was going on on the network at all.

so it's a pretty minor issue that i have really.

roast

vibe666 wrote: »

good to know, i think i'll take another look at my config then, maybe i missed something.

until recently (i.e. when i knew for sure when the 100mbps was actually coming out), i've been using a linksys wrt54gs (directly connected to a gigabit switch with ethernet running outside to the upstairs computer room where there is another gb switch) running the tomato firmware for the last couple of years, but although it's served me well, i knew it wouldn't be up to the task of fully utilising the 100mbps and as i didn't want to lose my bandwidth monitoring and other great features of tomato, i had to find something to take it's place that would fit the bill.

so i'm now running a linksys e3000 (full 2.4ghz & 5hz dual band + gigabit ethernet) with a modified version of tomato v1.28 with a few extra features and it's been great so far, until i had my port forwarding issues with the new router.

it meant i could remove one of the switches from the equation and still keep gigabit speeds throughout my LAN, although I'd be a lot happier with a nice dinky little standalone docsis3 modem rather than the ruddy great surfboard of a thing that the thompson router is. seriously, could it BE any bigger??? :eek:

thing is, when all is said and done, with the way it's set up now i was working from home via vpn all day (and night:() yesterday doing some quite intensive work and at the same time, another PC was torrenting at 30mbps and at one point my wife was on a skype video call to a friend in tenerife and you really couldn't tell that anything was going on on the network at all.

so it's a pretty minor issue that i have really.

A fairly similar set up to my own actually! With the exception of the Tomato firmware. I'm planning on buying two (more) of the TP-Link router I have, and install Tomato on one, and DD-WRT on the other, and keep the original at stock. Just for testing and messing about with really. What modded version of v1.28 are you using?

Totally agree on the size of the modem - I didn't want it tbh. Cisco have some lovely dinky DOCSIS3 modems which have pretty much the same features as the thomson, but still the same size as the Cisco SA2203. UPC NL supply them to customers who don't require wireless, but UPC Ireland dont. Ah well. I'll have to get over it.

Check out your config again. Feel free to PM if ya need anything, but I'm sure you'll get it sorted.

Sam the Sham

roast wrote: »

UPC NL supply them to customers who don't require wireless, but UPC Ireland dont. Ah well. I'll have to get over it.

The question is: why don't they? There is clearly demand for it. Some people have invested quite a lot in their own LAN hardware and don't want UPC screwing it up with third-rate equipment that can't be configured properly.

In the past, UPC offered the Cisco (POS) combined modem/router but also a Scientific Atlanta modem only for those who wanted it. It's what I have on my line right now. I'd like to go to 100Mb, but I'm not prepared to put another router I don't need on my LAN.

Also, can someone explain why we can't buy our own modems and install them?

roast

Sam the Sham wrote: »

The question is: why don't they? There is clearly demand for it. Some people have invested quite a lot in their own LAN hardware and don't want UPC screwing it up with third-rate equipment that can't be configured properly.

In the past, UPC offered the Cisco (POS) combined modem/router but also a Scientific Atlanta modem only for those who wanted it. It's what I have on my line right now. I'd like to go to 100Mb, but I'm not prepared to put another router I don't need on my LAN.

Also, can someone explain why we can't buy our own modems and install them?

There is a very small demand for just ethernet modems, such as you and me. But most consumers wouldn't require them. Its extra cost for UPC to maintain more contracts to supply a small number of non-wifi modems.
Compare the number of people who don't want a Wifi modem to the number of subscribers that UPC have - its very small. And miniscule compared to UPC's network in the Netherlands, whose infrastructure is far greater - thus allowing extra options for modems.


UPC (normally*) don't allow customers to use their own modems due to issues with support. UPC don't want to have to deal with the extra hassle of denying support (or providing limited support) to customers who have issues with LAN configuration of their own devices - which I believe is fair enough.

Anyway - the Thomson works fine. Check my post above for further info on using your own router with the Thomson, by using the DMZ mode. Of course, its not ideal for some, but its not too much hassle to switch the settings, and is perfectly stable once done.


*Saying that, when I had issues with the EPC2425, I requested UPC to provision my own modem on the network, to bypass the hassle and cost involved with replacing my faulty modem. They did it, and I had no further issues.

Apologies if I'm not explaining my points very well. Haven't slept in about 2 days. I'll check back again later.

Sam the Sham

roast wrote: »

*Saying that, when I had issues with the EPC2425, I requested UPC to provision my own modem on the network, to bypass the hassle and cost involved with replacing my faulty modem. They did it, and I had no further issues.

I'd be interested to hear what magic words you said to them. Cable modems are relatively cheap. I'd sign up to their 100Mb service and an extra 12 months in a heartbeat if I could have my own modem on the line.

vibe666

roast wrote: »

What modded version of v1.28 are you using?

its the E3000 VPN build of tomatoUSB, there's some great features of it and once i pointed the new router to the bandwidth logs from my old router that i have saved on my NAS, it uses them as if it generated them itself, so i still have all my old usage logs going back to 2009.

beanian

has anyone tried to max out their 100mb connection using a usenet provider? I'm on astraweb and my speed varies from 40-55mb.
Astraweb claim they can max out a 100mb connection and I have seen this confirmed by users.
My speedtest always range from 100-124mb so it's not an issue with UPC.
I'm beginning to suspect it's something with the modem.
I was previously on a 30mb line and i got a solid 30mb from astraweb 24/7.

vibe666

beanian wrote: »

has anyone tried to max out their 100mb connection using a usenet provider? I'm on astraweb and my speed varies from 40-55mb.
Astraweb claim they can max out a 100mb connection and I have seen this confirmed by users.

i'd be happy to test it for you if you want to hand over your login details!

on the plus side, i just checked my dyndns url for my NAS & router and they both seem to be working now, so it appears to have sorted itself out. maybe it just took time to update the routing table or something like that.

all sorted anyway, so i can confirm that the instructions in roast's guide do indeed work (not sure why there was a delay with mine) to give you (more or less) the same results as the old bridge mode in the cisco epc2425, BUT that the phone ports still work.

losttheplot

I just signed up for the 100mb broadband but my laptop is only b/g. I cant confirm if the Thompson TWG870 comes with a wireless usb 'n' adapter or not. A page on the UPC site says UPC supply one

http://support.upc.ie/app/answers/detail/a_id/266/~/top-wireless-speeds-on-100mb

But the person I spoke to at UPC said I would have to purchase an adapter separately.

Can anyone confirm the situation? Thanks

beanian

I can confirm the router does come with a USB wireless N adapter

Inquitus

losttheplot wrote: »

I just signed up for the 100mb broadband but my laptop is only b/g. I cant confirm if the Thompson TWG870 comes with a wireless usb 'n' adapter or not. A page on the UPC site says UPC supply one

http://support.upc.ie/app/answers/detail/a_id/266/~/top-wireless-speeds-on-100mb

But the person I spoke to at UPC said I would have to purchase an adapter separately.

Can anyone confirm the situation? Thanks

The router is backwards compatible with a/b/g as well as n. It also comes with one USB dongle and driver CD.

Inq

losttheplot

beanian wrote: »

I can confirm the router does come with a USB wireless N adapter

Inquitus wrote: »

The router is backwards compatible with a/b/g as well as n. It also comes with one USB dongle and driver CD.

Inq

Thanks for the info - saves a trip to ebay or amazon

roast

vibe666 wrote: »

its the E3000 VPN build of tomatoUSB, there's some great features of it and once i pointed the new router to the bandwidth logs from my old router that i have saved on my NAS, it uses them as if it generated them itself, so i still have all my old usage logs going back to 2009.

Man, thats fairly tasty.... definitely going to have a go of that build, cheers!

Sam the Sham wrote: »

I'd be interested to hear what magic words you said to them. Cable modems are relatively cheap. I'd sign up to their 100Mb service and an extra 12 months in a heartbeat if I could have my own modem on the line.

No trickery involved.
I was having issues with the modem, advised them that the modem was constantly resetting itself. They came to the obvious conclusion that the modem was faulty and that they would have to send me a new one. I told them I had my own modem lying around, and would be willing to use that to save them the cost of sending a new modem out. They took the MAC address, and provisioned it on the network, and I was up and running within a half an hour. Happy days!

vibe666 wrote: »

i'd be happy to test it for you if you want to hand over your login details!

on the plus side, i just checked my dyndns url for my NAS & router and they both seem to be working now, so it appears to have sorted itself out. maybe it just took time to update the routing table or something like that.

all sorted anyway, so i can confirm that the instructions in roast's guide do indeed work (not sure why there was a delay with mine) to give you (more or less) the same results as the old bridge mode in the cisco epc2425, BUT that the phone ports still work.

I know nothing about USENET, so I can't really comment. :pac:

Good to hear your config is working again. Very strange about the delay. I'll see if the same thing happens me when I eventually get another router with Tomato. Good to hear the guide was helpful though, cheers.

-Mick.

Moriarty

Just got the new modem this evening..

It looks like the thomson actually has what we want, but UPC have opted to disable it.

Go to "Network" on the top bar, then "Portbase PassThrough" on the left menu.

This page allows the configuration of each Ethernet Port. Per default, each Ethernet port is routed. If you enable the Passthrough, the Ethernet Port will have a direct connection to the Network. Note that access to this web access can be denied by your Cable operator.

So what are the odds we can get someone in UPC to decide to change the router provisioning to allow access to this feature?

roast

Moriarty wrote: »

Just got the new modem this evening..

It looks like the thomson actually has what we want, but UPC have opted to disable it.

Go to "Network" on the top bar, then "Portbase PassThrough" on the left menu.



So what are the odds we can get someone in UPC to decide to change the router provisioning to allow access to this feature?

Slim to none I'm afraid! :pac:

Inquitus

Roast,

Thanks to your guide I got things sorted in a couple of mins. One thing is still bugging me. The Thomson has the UPC DNS of 89.101.160.4 hardcoded, does that take precedence over the DNS specified in my router?

Cheers,

Inq

Supercell

Can I plug a gigabit switch such as ZyXEL's GS-105B into one of these modems, the four ports that come with the Thompson are not enough for my needs?

Inquitus

Supercell wrote: »

Can I plug a gigabit switch such as ZyXEL's GS-105B into one of these modems, the four ports that come with the Thompson are not enough for my needs?

Yes

jimmycrackcorm

Inquitus wrote: »

Roast,

Thanks to your guide I got things sorted in a couple of mins. One thing is still bugging me. The Thomson has the UPC DNS of 89.101.160.4 hardcoded, does that take precedence over the DNS specified in my router?

Cheers,

Inq

DNS is allocated by whatever is handing out the DHCP. Presumably your router is doing so...

carbsy

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

DNS is allocated by whatever is handing out the DHCP. Presumably your router is doing so...

Yeah.. or just manually set your own external (i.e. Google or Open DNS) DNS server on each client.You can use 'nslookup' at command prompt to check your current active DNS server.

vibe666

beanian wrote: »

I can confirm the router does come with a USB wireless N adapter

they *sometimes* come with a wireless N usb adapter. mine didn't and some people on the main thread have also not had one in the box. i think it comes with them with the earlier boxes (leftover from the 100mbps pilot) and some of these may still be in circulation with the installers, but newer ones probably don't, so upc can make an extra few quid selling you one instead.

that's just guesswork on my part tho, but it seems odd that some people were getting them and others aren't, particularly if upc are trying to sell them on now.

still, hard to complain at that price and my work laptop is already wireless n (and dual band) so i just need one for the wife's netbook as everything else in the house is wired aside from my wife's mobile phone and she doesn't use that online at home anyway.

bk

vibe666 wrote: »

they *sometimes* come with a wireless N usb adapter. mine didn't and some people on the main thread have also not had one in the box. i think it comes with them with the earlier boxes (leftover from the 100mbps pilot) and some of these may still be in circulation with the installers, but newer ones probably don't, so upc can make an extra few quid selling you one instead.

Yes that is probably the reason and pretty fair IMO, given how much cheaper 100mb service is now compared to the trial period.

Supercell

Got my 100mb installed today, no wireless n adapter in the box, but not bothered, no use for one anyhow here.

journeyman

Hi All,

I've just got the Thomson router / modem as I've moved up to the UPC 50Mb service.
However, I can't find anywhere in the router admin screens to set up static IPs for my LAN devices (i.e. to map IPs to the MAC addresses of each device so that the router always hands out the same IP to each device).

All previous modems / routers I've had for the last few years (including my previous UPC Cisco modem / router) have had this functionality, so difficult to believe it's not available on the Thomson. Is there something I've overlooked, or is it really not available ?

thanks,

journeyman.

dMaN24

beanian wrote: »

has anyone tried to max out their 100mb connection using a usenet provider? I'm on astraweb and my speed varies from 40-55mb.
Astraweb claim they can max out a 100mb connection and I have seen this confirmed by users.
My speedtest always range from 100-124mb so it's not an issue with UPC.
I'm beginning to suspect it's something with the modem.
I was previously on a 30mb line and i got a solid 30mb from astraweb 24/7.

I get 13.13MB/s when connected with cable on Astraweb.

Supercell

I'm getting 9mb up but never ever above 49mb down using the upc speed test page.
Just ran it now and got the following :-



Have I got a 50mb connection instead of a 100mb one or does it take a few days to reach full speed or something?

Komplett-Tech: Ryan

I got upgraded to the 100mb package at home yesterday. Upload speed is 8.9Mbps, but download is sitting at 40-60Mbps. Spent some time talking to their second level support and apparently this is a very common issue. Have to wait for an enginerr to call out to check the line

KennyLegend

roast wrote: »

Heres a small tut that I wrote about this a few months ago. This should sort you out.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=71665694&postcount=452

-Mick.

Great guide Mick...thanks.
Ive just signed up for the 50Mb option coming from the 30Mb with the cisco epc2425 so im gonna be faced with this issue in a few days as im curently using a Netgear wndr3700 equipped with DD-WRT to deal with my crap.

I mainly use port forwarding for uTRorrent and Xbox Live. WHo knows, maybe i wont even need to set it up. If the Thomson works ok on XBL without any drop-outs i might leave it.

Moriarty

Was just speaking to someone in support there about something else entirely and they mentioned that they're looking at making a second modem available which can work purely as a modem to let you bridge to a router of your own, as they've received a fair few comments from customers asking for this. We'll see if/when that appears, but it's somewhat promising news anyway.

thefinalstage

Moriarty wrote: »

Was just speaking to someone in support there about something else entirely and they mentioned that they're looking at making a second modem available which can work purely as a modem to let you bridge to a router of your own, as they've received a fair few comments from customers asking for this. We'll see if/when that appears, but it's somewhat promising news anyway.

Sweet. Doubt its validity until it's available though....lol

Spear

Moriarty wrote: »

Was just speaking to someone in support there about something else entirely and they mentioned that they're looking at making a second modem available which can work purely as a modem to let you bridge to a router of your own, as they've received a fair few comments from customers asking for this. We'll see if/when that appears, but it's somewhat promising news anyway.

I've gotten the DMZ method to work for me. Surely a simple firmware upgrade to allow bridging must be possible, even those damnable Cisco things managed that.