BT Infinity, third party router?

[8bit]

A friend of mine who I help with IT stuff for his small business contacted me recently to say that his work computer could no longer access the internet and his business partner and secretary could no longer connect to it over the VPN. Previously he had a regular BT Business ADSL line and I'd set up a Draytek router with a VPN facility which the others used to connect to his work PC from time to time.

I got there last night to discover that he'd been offered BT Infinity and had duly accepted their offer. BT had turned up, removed the Draytek, installed a new telephone/DSL socket, an OpenReach Infinity modem and the BT Business hub thing as a separate unit with a CAT5 type cable connecting to the modem. Helpful chaps, they hadn't even bothered to check if there was anything specific like VPN etc. on his existing router.

So I unplugged the BT gubbins and connected up his original Draytek ADSL router to the DSL socket on the new phone point but it couldn't bring up a DSL connection. So question one - I take it that Infinity presents a newer DSL standard that his (2004 vintage) Draytek can't deal with?

If so then question two - can I get him a newer Draytek (or similar) that's able to connect to the OpenReach router with a CAT5 cable and just do away with his little black BT business hub thing?

I should point out that the reason I don't want to use the BT stuff is because it doesn't have a VPN endpoint facility and I don't want to open ports in it to have the work computer act as the VPN endpoint (by endpoint I mean the device that acts as the "server" end of the VPN connection, I'm not really a network person so please excuse me if I've abused the terminology a bit).

Thanks in advance,
8

[djfaulkner]

If the business Infinity is presented the same as the home setup, then you need to use a router that supports cable connections.

Have a read of this - http://community.bt.com/t5/BT-Infinity/3rd-party-r...

[theaxe]

You probably need one of these. HTH

[Megaflow]

There will have been a BT modem in between the phone socket and the BT router, try it again, but leave the BT modem in place and connect the Draytek to the modem with cat 5.

[gizard]

Depends what Draytek router you have curretly.

I had Infinty VDSL replace standard BT ADSL recently and the BT Home Hub 3 lasted 24 Hours before it started not being able to handle more than about 10 different devices on my home network - so I got rid of it and plugged the BT VDSL modem into the the WAN2 port (instead of WAN1 which is ADSL) of my older Draytek 2820n, I had too change the Draytek WAN connection to use WAN2 and also turn off QOS etc. - but now it seems fairly stable and works okay.

So you need to use either the WAN2 port of the Draytek you have if it has one or buy one that does have a WAN2 connection or buy one that has an in built VDSL modem (some do check the Draytek site).

cheers

G.

[LotusMartin]

Just ordered a Netgear N900 after a fair bit of research - I'll let you know how I get on tomorrow after Infinity 2 is installed

[sgrimshaw]

I went through 3 Netgear routers before asking for (and following) advice on PH.

I got a Draytek 2830n.

When I upgraded to BT Infinity, I ripped out the BT Homehub as soon as the engineer left and replaced it with my Draytek following the instructions from Draytek on how to set it up with BT Infinity.

It was up and running in less than 5 mins.

If it were me I'd cancel the Netgear and order a Draytek.

[Accelebrate]

Infinity is VDSL based, so your old ADSL modem won't work. BT will have supplied a VDSL modem along with the router, you can use that with any router that supports PPPoE authentication. Or replace both boxes with a newer VDSL based DrayTek router.

[8bit]

Awesome, thanks for all the help.

I hadn't realised that infinity was vDSL - that makes sense now.

The current Draytek is a Vigor 2600, it's of a 2004 vintage and has no WAN2 port for support of a cable modem connection, only an aDSL port. I selected a Draytek originally back in about 2005 for him as it had hardware VPN endpoint support and I'd heard good things about their stability, reliability etc. I've since used Draytek routers for a few of my homers and had no problems at all so I'll have a look and select another one. That 2850n that someone linked to on Dabs (many thanks) looks like just the thing.

Thanks again, everyone

[WelshBoyo]

I work from home a lot and found the BT Home Hub 3 they installed a complete pile of poo. So many issues trying to connect to my work using VPN. I took it out and placed a nice Cisco Linksys EA4500 wireless router but kept the BT Infinity modem. No problems since, I now get much faster N wifi, no drop outs or need to re-start the router (like every 8hrs on BT Home Hub) and a proper 1GB lan connectors (why does the BT home hub only have 1x1GB lan port - pointless!)

[stemll]

Another Draytek vote here.

Once you set it up, the Infinity PPPoE username for the router is [e-mail] with a blank password.