Howto unlock your Eircom F1000

Dermot McDonnell

Eircom are currently several firmware versions behind ZyXel for the F1000. The current beta release from ZyXel UK includes a fix for port forwarding bugs, in particular where a resync takes out the applied rules.

For those who are interested, and understand the risk that you may kill your F1000, I attach a full log of an F1000 unlock followed by flashing both the ZyXel bootloader and the latest firmware. Commands are in blue, comments in red in the PDF.

You will need a phillips screwdriver, a USB-TTL serial cable, communications software that supports serial and xModem protocols, but no soldering skills as the board comes with a serial header.


I do not encourage anyone to do this, I simply pass on the know how to those who wish to do it. You know who you are

NB: Do NOT use the Vcc connector on the header. Serial is 115200baud, 8bits, no parity.

jca

Dermot McDonnell wrote: »

Eircom are currently several firmware versions behind ZyXel for the F1000. The current beta release from ZyXel UK includes a fix for port forwarding bugs, in particular where a resync takes out the applied rules.

For those who are interested, and understand the risk that you may kill your F1000, I attach a full log of an F1000 unlock followed by flashing both the ZyXel bootloader and the latest firmware. Commands are in blue, comments in red in the PDF.

You will need a phillips screwdriver, a USB-TTL serial cable, communications software that supports serial and xModem protocols, but no soldering skills as the board comes with a serial header.


I do not encourage anyone to do this, I simply pass on the know how to those who wish to do it. You know who you are

NB: Do NOT use the Vcc connector on the header. Serial is 115200baud, 8bits, no parity.

Waàaay out of my league. Is there any way of getting my printer on one of the usb ports? (Easily)

Xennon

Lovely Work Dermot!

jhconnolly

Dermot,

I cannot port forward with my Eircom F1000 with firmware 1.00(AAHA.4)DO_20140623, is the reason a software bug ? if so then this could fix it, correct ?

Thanks
James

Dermot McDonnell

James,

Apologies for the delay in replying to you. I caught a bad cold. The later firmwares from ZyXel certainly address a number of issues with port forwarding, see http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php?topic=13930.0 for details and user comments on port forwarding issues.

Regards,

Dermot

_Whimsical_

Any chance it might improve the awful Wi-Fi range or speeds?

Dermot McDonnell

_Whimsical_ wrote: »

Any chance it might improve the awful Wi-Fi range or speeds?

A firmware update will give only a very slight wifi improvement, due to bug fixes. However, I strongly suggest the following:

Got to Network -> Wireless -> Other
Set 802.11 mode to 802.11n only

Your wifi devices need to support 802.11n, most do.

Secondly, the wifi signal is at a maximim along a line perpindicular to the face of the F1000, as the antennae array is on the circuit board. Point the front, or back, face of the modem at the area you want best coverage.

_Whimsical_

Dermot McDonnell wrote: »

A firmware update will give only a very slight wifi improvement, due to bug fixes. However, I strongly suggest the following:

Got to Network -> Wireless -> Other
Set 802.11 mode to 802.11n only

Your wifi devices need to support 802.11n, most do.

Secondly, the wifi signal is at a maximim along a line perpindicular to the face of the F1000, as the antennae array is on the circuit board. Point the front, or back, face of the modem at the area you want best coverage.

Thank you!
That was helpful, I think my wifi might be a bit better as n and it's good to know the best way to point the modem too.

jca

Is it possible to use one of the USB ports as a print server?

doctorg

jca wrote: »

Is it possible to use one of the USB ports as a print server?

Yes, But you have to enable it first inside the router.

192.168.1.254 > Network Settings > Print Server > Enable

jca

doctorg wrote: »

Yes, But you have to enable it first inside the router.

192.168.1.254 > Network Settings > Print Server > Enable

Thanks for replying doctorg. It won't work unfortunately. I enabled print server in the router, connected up my printer (Brother DCP-350C). The USB light illuminates on the router, the printer rebooted a few times followed by the router rebooting but the USB light stayed off after the router reboot. No sign of the printer on network searches... Very frustrating, I thought I had it working when the USB lit up.. Maybe my printer isn't supported.

jca

More problems now. If I try to access the print server tab on the router interface the page greys out and the router reboots eventually. The reboot takes forever to complete, a real pain in the butt. Still no sign of the printer on the network. Very frustrating.

Dermot McDonnell

I have updated my guide to unlocking and unbranding the Eircom F1000. It includes the settings for use with Eircom and Vodafone VDSL (fibre).

Eircom are now a dozen firmware releases behind ZyXel, the manufacturer of the F1000. You may wish to check the latest changelog to see if any of the issues you are experiencing has been fixed.

ZyXel's user guide may be of use too.

Some users get a huge benefit with one man reporting "for anyone thinking about buying one - my speeds went from 18 to 86Mb/s with Vodafone fibre."

Other user experience has been positive too.

Paul Thomas Rowland

Dermot McDonnell wrote: »

Eircom are now a dozen firmware releases behind ZyXel, the manufacturer of the F1000.

Eircom are 17 firmware releases behind zyxel as of this morning. Most of the issues I see mentioned on these forums have been fixed by zyxel but eircom have done nothing to update their firmware. These bugs are driving people daft but obviously eircom do not give a sh!t about their customers.

Unlock your F1000 people, upgrade your firmware as you are entitled to do by law.

rogercross

Hi Guys,

I'd be very interested in unlocking the f1000.

Don't suppose you could post a slightly more user friendly guide to unlocking the it and flashing the factory firmware?

Ill need to acquire the TTL cable, I have everything else I think.

Dermot McDonnell

rogercross wrote: »

..
Don't suppose you could post a slightly more user friendly guide to unlocking the it and flashing the factory firmware?

Ill need to acquire the TTL cable, I have everything else I think.

Roger,

I am happy to assist. However, I don't have windoze in any of its many flavours which prevents a step by step guide that will be useful to the vast majority of boards users.

You will need a USB-TTL cable. You can get them on ebay for little money, but a long wait, from China. Closer to home they are more expensive but arrive sooner. Make sure you get all the necessary wires and cables to connect your computer via the USB-TTL device to the F1000 serial header.

The USB-TTL device, when plugged into your computer will show up as a COM port, e.g. COM5. You need communications software to talk to the Com port, and in this case the software must support ZMODEM file transfer protocol. There are many freeware packages that do this, ExtraPuTTY and KiTTY for example, but I am not in a position to test these.

Your comms software needs to be configured to talk to whatever COM port is associated with your USB-TTL device. Set the BAUD rate and other parameters as per the guide.

If you connect everything up properly, and configure your comms software correctly, you will see the F1000 boot sequence, once you power it up, via the comms software on your PC screen. You will have a brief opportunity to interrupt the boot sequence, by hitting any key, and you will drop to an MS-DOS like environment called the CFE (Common Firmware Environment). Once you get the CFE prompt you can follow the commands in my guide.

This is not a risky business unless you are reckless and as has been pointed out above, you are legally entitled to change the firmware on your F1000. The F1000, and 99% of other modem/routers, are Linux systems. Their manufacturers have signed up to Linux use agreements that specifically entitle users to make any alterations they desire to the Linux software.

I hope this is of use to you. Perhaps you can take a few screen shots as you proceed and I will include them in the guide? Any issues, get back to me.

rogercross

Thanks Dermot,

Just waiting for my cable to arrive.

Got a question for you, have you ever put an f1000 in bridge mode?

I did with mine recently to test and planned on using a tp-link router as my main device, with a cable running from the F1000 into the tp-links WAN port. This same model had been used in the past with UPC without any issue so i know it works as it should.

However when using it connected to the f1000 it worked but wasn't able to assign DHCP address's. I tried disabling the DHCP server on the F1000 and making sure it was running on the TP-Link but still nothing consistent.

Is this a bug you've seen in the F1000 before that maybe this official firmware fixes?

Dermot McDonnell

Roger,

I have used the F1000 as the main VDSL WAN device as it gets the best sync with my ISP. Did bridge it via CAT5 cable to an HG658c (Vodafone VDSL router). It worked fine and I got a 1Gig wired link between the devices. No longer have it bridged though.

Regards,

Dermot.

rogercross

I experienced a strange issue when it was in bridge mode, connecting to my tp-link wirelessly i was picking up 2 gateways (the f1000 and the tp) and 4 dns entries (2 from each router) but no dhcp from either. I was hoping it was buggy eircom software not putting it fully into bridge when it says it does.

Strange as the TP works fine on other isps, e.g upc.

Improved sync would be nice, really what i need is a stable F1000 that i can then turn over to a third party router which has better wireless signal strength, its a big enough area i need to cover.

Dermot McDonnell

With a VDSL (fibre - high speed) connection the DSL light on your F1000 will be ORANGE.

With an ADSL (lower speed) connection the DSL light on your F1000 will be GREEN.

It seems a lot of people believe they have a VDSL connection when, in fact, they don't.

And yes, upgrading F1000 software fixes that issue.

Dermot McDonnell

rogercross wrote: »

...Improved sync would be nice, really what i need is a stable F1000 that i can then turn over to a third party router which has better wireless signal strength, its a big enough area i need to cover.

I visited the home of a German friend yesterday with an unlocked F1000. The sync rate increased 20% and the throughput on wifi doubled - even though he has to use mixed b/g/n mode for wifi due to older laptops without 802.11 mode N. Let us know how you get on, please.

rogercross

Still waiting on my cable, but just a thought, I'll be using my spare F1000 as a guinea pig for this, do I need to know the admin password that was set on the routers management web page or will this cable and initial boot sequence bypass that entirely allowing me to do the firmware flash.

I ask as the password is unknown on the box, it was changed at some point and I suspect was mistyped at the time (also the reset button on the back is broken preventing a wipe of that password the traditional way).

So will the TTL cable allow me to bypass that do you think?

Dermot McDonnell

rogercross wrote: »

...
So will the TTL cable allow me to bypass that do you think?

Yes.

You will interrupt the F1000 boot sequence to do the firmware flash. Afterward these settings will apply:

user: admin
password: 1234
F1000 ip address: 192.168.1.1

rogercross

Dermot McDonnell wrote: »

Yes.

You will interrupt the F1000 boot sequence to do the firmware flash. Afterward these settings will apply:

user: admin
password: 1234
F1000 ip address: 192.168.1.1

Cool thanks Dermot, any month now that cable should arrive, do you happen to have the newest firmware on hand that i need to flash?

Dermot McDonnell

rogercross wrote: »

... do you happen to have the newest firmware on hand that i need to flash?

Firmwares are released by ZyXel regularly. These guys keep track:
http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php?topic=13930.0

captain_boycott

Dermot McDonnell wrote: »

With a VDSL (fibre - high speed) connection the DSL light on your F1000 will be ORANGE.

With an ADSL (lower speed) connection the DSL light on your F1000 will be GREEN.

It seems a lot of people believe they have a VDSL connection when, in fact, they don't.

And yes, upgrading F1000 software fixes that issue.

My F1000 dsl is green, even thought I am on VDSL (vdsl2 annex b according to the router )

rogercross

Dermot McDonnell wrote: »

Firmwares are released by ZyXel regularly. These guys keep track:
http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php?topic=13930.0

So looks like my cable has arrived, I will try the de-branding tonight, quick question, in the guide it mentions "Send ZyXel Bootloader", I have the latest stable firmware file downloaded, where do I get the bootloader?

Doodah7

captain_boycott wrote: »

My F1000 dsl is green, even thought I am on VDSL (vdsl2 annex b according to the router )

me too...

Dermot McDonnell

tallpaul wrote: »

me too...

My apologies, all the OEM firmwares give Orange for VDSL and Green for ADSL. Eircom just shows Green and you have to check xDSL Statistics to determine your connection characteristics. I should have made it clear that I was refering to Zyxel firmwares only.

Dermot McDonnell

rogercross wrote: »

So looks like my cable has arrived, I will try the de-branding tonight,..
....where do I get the bootloader?

Good luck!

The Zyxel bootloader can be found in Eircom's sources, oddly enough, but you can get it here. I will add it to the guide.

haggster

I just registered due to this thread and got one question:

I received my F1000 in June this year (so I guess the firmware hasn't changed since then) and I've been operating it in bridge mode since September, with basically everything turned off: Wi-Fi, DHCP, Firewall, etc., basically everything deactivated, so that it only runs as a modem bridging the PPPoE connection to my dual band Asus router via a Gigabit Ethernet cable link connected to LAN port 1 of the F1000.

I'm on a 90mbit/s efibre profile and get a maximum real-life throughput of 84 mbit/s downstream and 19.xx mbit/s upstream. This has been tested to death repeatedly over the course of several months. Currently, I don't even touch the F1000 anymore - I just keep it switched on and my Asus router does all the work (actually the last time I tried, I couldn't even reach the F1000's GUI anymore, not even via Ethernet and not even after switching it off/on ...seems like a factory reset would be necessary for this, I don't want all the hassle again though).

Anyway, my real question is:
Since my apparent OCD is constantly pushing me to try and improve my connection, even if it's just a 1ms ping improvement or whatever, I'm wondering if unlocking and flashing the latest original ZyXel firmware would do anything to improve the connection between my modem and the cabinet? I'm not an absolute an-alphabet when it comes to networking terms, but I keep reading about differences regarding the "sync" to the provider (this is one of the few terms that I have no clue about) ... does the firmware have any effect on this? And if yes, how would this manifest... i.e. does the connection become more reliable, are there less packets getting dropped? Basically, I'm just trying to find out whether unlocking and flashing a more current firmware is really worth the risk and hassle involved with it. Sometimes I'm getting the impression that this router is like a house of cards and its better not to touch it if its working.

Thanks a lot for your help; the info provided here is amazing!

Dermot McDonnell

haggster wrote: »

I just registered due to this thread and got one question:
.... flashing the latest original ZyXel firmware would do anything to improve the connection between my modem and the cabinet? ...Thanks a lot for your help; the info provided here is amazing!

You will not flash the original Zyxel firmware, you will flash the LATEST Zyxel firmware released last month, about 12 releases later than Eircoms offering. It will most certainly improve your connection to the cabinet and your wifi and virtually everything else as well. See the comments of those that have unlocked their F1000.

I encourage people to do it yourself! The learning is valuable experience.

Dermot McDonnell

The Changelog for the latest Zyxel firmware for the VMG8324-B10a (Eircom F1000) is attached, dated Dec 12th, 2014. It details all bugs fixed from firmware release V1.00(AAKL.0)b1 through V100AAKL7C0, some two dozen releases in total.

haggster

Dermot McDonnell wrote: »

You will not flash the original Zyxel firmware, you will flash the LATEST Zyxel firmware released last month, about 12 releases later than Eircoms offering. It will most certainly improve your connection to the cabinet and your wifi and virtually everything else as well. See the comments of those that have unlocked their F1000.

I encourage people to do it yourself! The learning is valuable experience.

Thanks a lot for your reply. I think I'll order one of these cables and try it out. Will just need to find the correct time frame for this since I cannot afford being without proper internet access for too long.

captain_boycott

haggster wrote: »

Thanks a lot for your reply. I think I'll order one of these cables and try it out. Will just need to find the correct time frame for this since I cannot afford being without proper internet access for too long.

is it possible to make up the cable? anyone got a diagram or failing that, a link to where to buy one? Could not find one down in Maplin last week

ElNino

captain_boycott wrote: »

is it possible to make up the cable? anyone got a diagram or failing that, a link to where to buy one? Could not find one down in Maplin last week

Search for "USB TTL Serial Cable" on Ebay and they are very inexpensive particularly if you order one from China or Hong Kong and are prepared to wait a few weeks for it.

Paul Thomas Rowland

ElNino wrote: »

Search for "USB TTL Serial Cable" on Ebay and they are very inexpensive particularly if you order one from China or Hong Kong and are prepared to wait a few weeks for it.

I got my USB TTL serial cable on adverts. It arrived next day n cost €12 incl p&p, little more than China sellers charge.

Dermot McDonnell

My friend Dave Gaughan got Eircom eFibre and their standard F1000 router. We used a PS4 to test the internet connection speeds of his Eircom unit against my unlocked F1000 which runs the latest Operating System (firmware) released by ZyXel, manufacturer of the F1000.

No prizes for guessing which firmware resulted in ~300% increase in throughput, up and down, as reported by a PS4. The photographs, below, are taken a few minutes apart.

Above the PS4 Internet Test with the Eircom F1000 firmware

Above the PS4 Internet Test with the latest ZyXel F1000 firmware

macyard

Dermot McDonnell wrote: »

My friend Dave Gaughan got Eircom eFibre and their standard F1000 router. We used a PS4 to test the internet connection speeds of his Eircom unit against my unlocked F1000 which runs the latest Operating System (firmware) released by ZyXel, manufacturer of the F1000.

No prizes for guessing which firmware resulted in ~300% increase in throughput, up and down, as reported by a PS4. The photographs, below, are taken a few minutes apart.

Above the PS4 Internet Test with the Eircom F1000 firmware

Above the PS4 Internet Test with the latest ZyXel F1000 firmware

Does vpn functionality work on the unlocked f1000 before I go to the hassle of unlocking mine when it comes or is there a good router that supports efibre that you can install open-wrt on, not wanting to spend more the €150

As far as I am aware there is no vpn options on the locked f1000

haggster

Dermot McDonnell wrote: »

My friend Dave Gaughan got Eircom eFibre and their standard F1000 router. We used a PS4 to test the internet connection speeds of his Eircom unit against my unlocked F1000 which runs the latest Operating System (firmware) released by ZyXel, manufacturer of the F1000.

No prizes for guessing which firmware resulted in ~300% increase in throughput, up and down, as reported by a PS4. The photographs, below, are taken a few minutes apart.

Impressive. It's amazing to have some hard data on this now.

Now, as in this case it's not about features, but simply about connection quality, I'm really wondering why eircom doesn't just update their firmware based on this current Zyxel one. It cannot be that hard and it would improve things for so many people.

Paul Thomas Rowland

macyard wrote: »

Does vpn functionality work on the unlocked f1000 before I go to the hassle of unlocking mine when it comes or is there a good router that supports efibre that you can install open-wrt on, not wanting to spend more the €150

As far as I am aware there is no vpn options on the locked f1000

VPN works very well on recent Zyxel firmware. Our local did the upgrade so CCTV over VPN would work. You can buy an F1000 on adverts for €20. You can get it unlocked and updated for €25 incl p&p also on adverts. Search F1000, efibre n eircom.

Paul Thomas Rowland

Dermot McDonnell wrote: »

My friend Dave Gaughan got Eircom eFibre and their standard F1000 router. We used a PS4 to test the internet connection speeds of his Eircom unit against my unlocked F1000 which runs the latest Operating System (firmware) released by ZyXel, manufacturer of the F1000.

No prizes for guessing which firmware resulted in ~300% increase in throughput, up and down, as reported by a PS4. The photographs, below, are taken a few minutes apart.

I bet your friend was thrilled.
It is amazingng that Eircom can get away with supplying crap software. It must save them millions in back haul costs.
]

haggster

Finally ordered my TTL adapter now after seeing this... should be here next week.

Does anybody know if the F1000 is still limited to an MTU of 1484 when using the unbranded ZyXel firmware?

If you use an MTU higher than 1484 with the current eircom firmware (e.g. an MTU of 1492, which is the usual maximum MTU for PPPoE connections) the connection will drop and the F1000 will crash. There's been some other threads about this here in the past. Mine wouldn't stop bootlooping either until I finally lowered the MTU to 1484 ...there's some guys who wrote that their MTU is 1492 or even 1500 (which doesn't make sense as the packets will fragment) and they didn't have any issues, which I found quite strange.

Dermot McDonnell

haggster wrote: »

Impressive. It's amazing to have some hard data on this now.

Now, as in this case it's not about features, but simply about connection quality, I'm really wondering why eircom doesn't just update their firmware based on this current Zyxel one. It cannot be that hard and it would improve things for so many people.

It makes perfect business sense for Eircom to limit their subscribers bandwidth by supplying a router that will act as a choke point. They get more clients per fibre and more revenue per € invested. Not that Vodafone et al are not doing precisely the same thing.

The 300% increase in throughput for the PS4 is very real. I called to Dave again this afternoon and we retested to make sure it was not a glitch. I will unlock n flash his F1000 shortly.

Bug fixes applied by Zyxel since the Eircom firmware was made are across the board - ADSL/VDSL PHY, wifi, vpn, port forwarding, security, usb, etc, etc.

Dermot McDonnell

haggster wrote: »

Does anybody know if the F1000 is still limited to an MTU of 1484 when using the unbranded ZyXel firmware?

For ADSL, the Zyxel firmware setting is:

MTU Size : 1492 MTU [68-1500]

I just added the Eircom ADSL settings to the latest unlocking guide. Thanks to Declan Holden for confirming these on his ADSL line.

For VDSL, a single change to the Zyxel default settings is required, VLAN 802.1q must be 10.

runswithascript

Dermot, firstly great thread, thanks for it and the guide.

So following your updated guide I am connect in PuTTY as far as:

CFE> atse DSL-2492GNU-B1B

0002784025F9
OK
*** command status = 0
CFE> aten 1, 10F0A7BD

ERROR
*** command status = -1

I used the code in your example as the link http://www.tonycool.es/zyxel/zynpass_en.htm is asking for a seed.

Please advise where I find this seed to generate the code?

Great, great thread! I am hoping these updates will fix 802.11 n for me and I have read it will fix the USB Service feature so the router will act as a NAS!

runswithascript

Ah, it was generated just above it.

Onwards!

runswithascript

The Dropbox link for the bootloader is giving a 404. Can you please link to and/or upload

Dermot McDonnell

dusf wrote: »

The Dropbox link for the bootloader is giving a 404. Can you please link to and/or upload

I shall put it on google drive tonight when I get home. I have it on my PC. Well done, BTW. If you have connection stats or speed test numbers, take note of them for comparison later.

runswithascript

Dermot McDonnell wrote: »

I shall put it on google drive tonight when I get home. I have it on my PC. Well done, BTW. If you have connection stats or speed test numbers, take note of them for comparison later.

Great thanks, I'll look out for it!

You mean from speedtest.net and the page that loads when we login to the WebUI?

I have two f1000 modems, just hacking the first for now so I should be able to provide this easy.

Regarding the guide, as far as I have come so far I generated my own code from the seed and used that and I entered that, but I can see later more is done with the MAC. From here on can I copy all of the text you entered verbatim or do I have to look up my own MAC or anything else to be input?

Am I safe to power the modem down, and if so when I resume do I start again at the beginning?

Dermot McDonnell

dusf wrote: »

Great thanks, I'll look out for it!

You mean from speedtest.net and the page that loads when we login to the WebUI?

I have two f1000 modems, just hacking the first for now so I should be able to provide this easy.

Regarding the guide, as far as I have come so far I generated my own code from the seed and used that and I entered that, but I can see later more is done with the MAC. From here on can I copy all of the text you entered verbatim or do I have to look up my own MAC or anything else to be input?

Am I safe to power the modem down, and if so when I resume do I start again at the beginning?

The flash will bring with it a default MAC address, which is why it is changed later to the MAC address on the F1000 case.

Power down is safe. I will post the boootloader link in a couple of hours. When you power up and Putty in, try

ATBT 1

if that works, you have write access, otherwise start at the begining.