Steve's Space » Billion

Firmware fix!

Steve — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 21:52:23 +0000

Had a response from Billion support today, with a link to a pre-release version of the firmware (1.02e.RC1) which fixes the IP translation issue (and has a few other features to boot) – so far, I’m pretty impressed with the company. Assuming it’s all pretty stable now, I’ll put up a more thorough review in a week or so.

New firmware on the way

Steve — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:21:40 +0000

According to a couple of people, there’s a new firmware release due shortly for the Billion BiPac 7800N (possibly 1.02e), which should fix the source IP address issue, along with adding a few extra features to the web interface.

Close, but not quite there yet – Billion BiPac 7800n

Steve — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:59:46 +0000

I’ve now set up my new Billion BiPac 7800N router, and it’s sitting there merrily sending packets to and fro. Only snag is that the port-forwarding doesn’t work properly – all packets appear to originate from the 7800N’s internal IP address, rather than the actual origin. I’ve logged a support call with Billion UK so we’ll see what they say.

Billion Bipac 7800N ADSL Router

Steve — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:33:25 +0000

My old Draytek 2800G router is on the way out, – it struggles to make it more than a couple of hours without resetting itself, even after reflashing the firmware. As a result, I’ve ordered one of Billion‘s new 7800N series devices to replace it. I did look at the current Draytek device (the Vigor 2820n) but it didn’t quite meet my needs, which were:

802.11n wireless
Gigabit switch
Built-in ADSL modem

The Draytek 2820n for some reason has only a single gigabit Ethernet port, which – seeing as I’m fairly often transferring pretty large files around – isn’t entirely helpful. The fact that the 2820n is pretty near twice the price of the Billion 7800n also was a point against it. Yes, I know the Draytek has a number of other features, such as VPNs that the Billion omits, but in my experience unless you’re working with lots of other sites using Draytek kit, it can be a pain to get things talking to each other.

In an ideal world, the new router would also support the 802.11n 5GHz standard, but as with anything technological you’ll end up waiting forever for the perfect product!

The 7800N actually arrived at work today, but since I’ve been recovering from ferry induced sleep-loss, I’ll be collecting it tomorrow. It’s actually only just been launched in the UK, so there seem to be very few reports on using it with UK ADSL connections, so I’ll put some notes up here in a few days.