FTTC routers and Zen

[Gaz]

We are hopefully soon moving to an FTTC solution, I think with Zen although I've not fully decided yet.

 

What routers/modems are people using on their school connection.

 

Has anyone got FTTC with Zen for either home or work?

Edited November 7, 2013 by Gaz
Spelling

[Quackers]

We have a Zen leased line, Zen provide a managed router, then we popped a Fortigate 200B box for the filtering/firewall between that and our network. Edited November 7, 2013 by Quackers

[Gaz]

We're no where near big enough to warrant a leased line hence the FTTC. How has the customer service been? It'll be serving 30 concurrent and possilby more when we decide to implement BYOD. For now however I just want an idea of what routers people use for an FTTC solution.

[Quackers]

Zen customer service is the best i have experienced of all the ISPs i have had to contact. Had them at home to, and were very helpful when the BT line at home developed a fault.

[nicholab]

I would just have the modem from openreach and then put your firewall after that.

[AngryTechnician]

When we got FTTC from Zen we took the recommended router from them, a Draytek Vigor 2920. It works fine with the Zen connection, though it has terrible problems with port forwarding from our failover connection on the rare occasion that the Zen connection goes down.

 

In the long term I want to replace it with something a bit higher-end, but I don't have the budget for it this year.

[nicholab]

I would go for pfsense on 1u server.

[Gaz]

When we got FTTC from Zen we took the recommended router from them, a Draytek Vigor 2920. It works fine with the Zen connection, though it has terrible problems with port forwarding from our failover connection on the rare occasion that the Zen connection goes down.

 

In the long term I want to replace it with something a bit higher-end, but I don't have the budget for it this year.

 

Normally I'd get a Draytek as thats what we currently use and its faultless but I was just wondering if there were any other other options out there.

The 2920 doesnt support VDSL so you you use the Openreach modem as well? Ideally I'd like to avoid that as I've got one at home and it runs pretty hot and thats with just 4 users.

 

What higher end product would you look at?

 

pFsense while seeming like a good idea would still require new hardware as I don't want to stick it on an old PC as that just looks ulgy in the server cabinet.

[nicholab]

Possibly a Ubiquiti EdgeMAX router I rather keep my network as open source as possible.

[AngryTechnician]

The 2920 doesnt support VDSL so you you use the Openreach modem as well? Ideally I'd like to avoid that as I've got one at home and it runs pretty hot and thats with just 4 users.

Pretty sure Openreach mandate the use of their modem; AFAIK they won't support the use of anything else. The first wave ones did get a bit toasty but many of them fell over as a result and ours was replaced about 9 months in with a newer batch that runs fairly cool.

[Jamman960]

We're currently using a Draytek 2820, not had any problems so far

[glennda]

Zen recommend the technicolour routers themselves.

 

Zen's customer support is one of the best out there for an ISP. You always speak to somebody who knows what they are doing first time round.

 

I have standard broadband package at home and cannot fault (I use a Netgear router).

 

a lot of my clients are with zen and they all use netgear dg834 but non are on FTTC yet.

[Gaz]

We're currently using a Draytek 2820, not had any problems so far

 

Thats what I was using at home but its not as fast as a cheapo d-link over PPPoE, now its just a glorified WAP.

[Gaz]

Thank you all for your comments. We have just placed an order with Zen. I think we are going to go with Draytek again.