TekSavvy → [VDSL] So I found a working modem for Stingers. but....

I got a Zhone 6652-A2 from eBay. It uses an Ikanos chipset, so it does actually sync and work with the Stingers. The web interface is easy and you can configure the VLAN ID 35 on all 4 ports to act as a bridge. This part was stupid easy, and it works. It even pulls 50meg no problem on speedtests in bridge mode.

However, not all is rosy... While it syncs at full 53936 downstream, it has issues on upstream, and I can't seem to figure out how to tweak it... the firmware is the latest, i contacted Zhone and they said they dont have any newer ones. But this one contains a very old VDSL driver, (from 2007) and I'd be guessing this is an issue.

Both the Cellpipe & Sagemcom sync no problem at 11320 on my line.

This modem is fully accessible thru telnet, so editing the vdsl.conf file is easy, but i've tried all the settings, was even suggested i copy settings from the sagemcom file, and it does not improve things...

I wonder if its somehow possible to find a newer Ikanos VDSL driver, and package it into this modem's firmware...

Connection status : Link up
Firmware version : 1.0.7r45IK105012 Time Sep 28 2007, 14:31:57
Downstream line rate : 61360 kbps
Upstream line rate : 8624 kbps
Downstream padload rate : 53936 kbps
Upstream padload rate : 7488 kbps
Downstream attainable line rate : 72720 kbps
Downstream attainable payload rate : 59632 kbps
Downstream Training Margin : 10.5 dB
Tx total power : -18.7 dbm
FE Tx total power : 14.1 dbm
VDSL Estimated Loop Length : 938 ft
G.Hs Estimated Near End Loop Length : 1147 ft
G.Hs Estimated Far End Loop Length : 1172 ft
Framing mode : 0x10 (EFM mode)

This modem uses the same chipset as my Zyxel P870M-I1-V2. It is a first generation Ikanos VDSL2 chipset. The Sagemcom uses the VX-180 chipset which their second generation VDSL2 (with ADSL compatibility). Needless to say I have the same results on my Zyxel as you have with the Zhone 6652-A2. I tried four different firmware versions but they all synced well below the 11320 I get on my Sagemcom.

Think it is kind of funny, I ordered a Zhone from Ebay last week. Guessing you used the same seller as I did since he had 10 of them. Wish I had known someone else was trying one, could have saved myself $60 . At least now we know that it is likely that all first generation Ikanos chipsets will exhibit this behavior. At least it is stable. Even using the bridged mode hack on my Sagemcom has not made it useable. My Zyxel ran from November until last week without need for so much as a reset. Zhone makes good products so I am guessing this will be the same.

Twinge

Ahh... so i guess we're screwed.... Yeah it seems to be stable...

Yeah it was the same guy... Modems are made in 2011, so i figured it cant be so old, but i was shocked how old the vdsl driver was once i loaded it up...

Well, if the Sagemcom uses an Ikanos VDSL2 chipset, why does it require a stinger-specific firmware? If merely having an Ikanos chipset was enough for compatibility with a stinger, then all the Sagemcom modems on Bell's network would be using the same firmware.

I wouldn't say screwed, we are better off than people on Stingers who only have the Bell Sagemcom. While we have sacrificed some upload speed we at least have a rock solid connection. Even using the interleaved 25/10 profile and the Sagemcomm bridged mode hack you still get sync and surf issues.

I guess now that I know the Zhone works I will probably use it when it arrives because 1) it will tag the packets going through it with the correct VLAN ID for me so if I ever need to pull the WAN link from my ASA I can easily do it 2) it has a web interface for looking at line stats (I assume at least) which is better than the serial (RS232) connection on the Zyxel 3) It is made by Zhone.

Oh, and for what it is worth, I tried IK1.0.7R45, IK1.0.7R87 and two earlier than the R45 with the same upstream sync issue so I don't think any first gen Ikanos chipset driver will help.

There is a readily available 3rd gen Ikanos (VX185) modem in Europe (FRITZ!box 7369) but it goes for well over $200cndn. I am going to try to see if I can recoup some of the $250 I spent on the Zyxel from selling it when the Zhone arrives and then maybe try the FRITZ!box but I am not sure yet. I am pretty far in the hole to spend even more money on modems not knowing how well they will work.

Twinge

I am pretty sure they all do. Wasn't it only the Cellpipes that had different firmware revisions for Stingers and 7330's? Would make sense since the Cellpipes were Broadcom based CPE.

Twinge

Next step for you would be to try a IPTV profile with the Sagemcom... I've never encountered someone saying it didn't fix the sync no surf issue.

where did you see FRITZ!box 7369 for $200?
VX185 sounds awesome, i like higher numbers

why don't we all pitch in and get one?
$20* 10 people is nothing 9 more and lets do it

also
»www.sagemcom.hu/uploads/ ··· 3965.pdf

sagem 3763
Ikanos Vx183 for F@st

sagem 3765
Ikanos Vx185 for F@st

I've been lucky so far with the Sagemcom and the bridge mode "patch". Full speed reliably (50/10) and so far haven't had the ping-no-surf issue like I did when using the Sagemcom as a router. If it stays reliable, I'm pretty much set. The modem will never update its firmware if I don't do a factory reset, so I'll just leave it like that forever.

Yeah i researched the fritzbox modem too, but too damn expensive to try, without knowing how limited the firmware is in terms of allowing a true bridge mode with configurable VLAN ID.

AFAIK, the main problem is with the stingers, not the modems. The Stingers' chipset has a bug/quirk and it does not matter what chipset your modem has, it needs the stinger-specific quirk work-around to work properly with stingers.

What is a DSL chipset anyhow? A few analog front-end bits, a DAC, an ADC, some fixed-function digital circuitry and a DSP. If you find a bug in your fixed-function stuff, you can try correcting/replacing it with DSP-based stuff at either end of the link as long as the bug is non-fatal and the DSP has sufficient processing power to correct or replace the affected hardware function(s).

If only it was known what sort of firmware it comes with... ISP butchered, or generic with full configurability...

I sincerely hope Marc and his gang are doing something about this problem we're all having.

Custom firmware is one thing but these manufacturers would very likely send out a sample to TSI at little to no cost.

It's ridiculous that we've resorted to gambling away 4x the monthly service fee to find out if we can make this service reliable..

I did a lot of searching for other VX180 based Sagemcom modems and they all seem to be sold directly to ISPs so they come with ISP firmware. They seem to mainly be triple play solutions so I expect they will have a lot of junk running on them like the Bell one and they are, based on forum posts I read form users of these various modems, pretty heavily locked down. Some ISP's don't even let their users forward ports or have PPPoE pass-through. They mostly look like they use the same board and the model number is really nothing more than a number, perhaps for Sagemcom to identify which modem goes to which ISP. My assumption is that all of the F@ST models are pretty much the same and may even have the same stability problems the Bell one does.

My Sagemcom in bridge mode works better than in PPPoE pass-through mode but it still randomly goes sync no surf for 5-10 second periods every few hours. The FibeTV profile is not an option for me as it is not available to resellers. For 25/10 there are two profiles (interleaved and non-interleaved). The same for the other speed tiers (from memory I think it is 25/8, 25/7 and maybe 25/5 or something like that). Last night it went sync no surf for about 2-3 minutes. It may have lasted longer but I was in the middle of playing an online game and didn't want everyone to have to wait for me any longer so I power cycled it. One way that seems to make it go sync no surf predictably is to take a bunch of finished torrents in uTorrent, start them up and then allow my upload speed in uTorrent to go up to 800-1000kbyte a second. Within about 4-5 minutes it will go sync no surf and then repeat every 4-5 minutes afterwards. By comparison, I never once had it happen in the last 4 months or so with the ZyXEL and I suspect the Zhone that HiVolt got will be the same.

Twinge

I'm not sure how much the ISPs themselves modify the firmware. For example the Bell specific firmware our 2864s use has a ton of references to Telecom Italia in it, including part of the config file for their deployment. Unless that stuff was merged back into the SDK and shipped to Bell it seems like Bell may just send their specs and graphics to Sagem and have them build the firmware.

I wonder what tweaks Bell had done to the Cellpipe... I believe thats the first generation Ikanos chipset, but they have gone thru several VDSL driver revisions, i had all these revisions and took screenshots at the time for stats comparison.. here they are...

Firmware 1.0.4.3EF-STINGER, VDSL Driver 1.0.6r19IK105012
Firmware 1.0.4.3EF-ISAM, VDSL Driver 5.4.0.4IK105012
Firmware 1.0.4.4R3WH, VDSL Driver 6.12.0.5IK105012
Firmware 1.0.4.4R8WH, VDSL Driver 9.3.2.6IK105012 - This one is the last one released for Cellpipe.

Edit: so it would be interesting if a VDSL driver could somehow be extracted from the Cellpipe firmware... also the vdsl.conf...

But nobody has bothered try to hack one to see if it can be accessed via telnet...

I agree. I suspect that the ISP provides a desired feature set, menu layout and style, graphics and logos and then Sagemcom provides them with the finished product and firmware updates. I doubt anyone at Bell does any modifications.

Twinge

Then there are the AT&T U-VERSE modems (also Ikanos based), but i have no knowledge of the configuration... I've posted a question on the AT&T Forum here, but no reply so far.

»AT&T 3600HGV/3800HGV VLAN ID

Does anyone have a Cellpipe firmware file? If they use a relatively standard format it may still be possible to extract the firmware and grab the driver and VDSL config from there.

Unfortunately no, the firmwares were always pushed by Bell by TR069...

Maybe their TR069 server can be probed for one, since the Sagemcom firmware has been dissected the access info should be in there...

It would not surprise me if the driver parts of the firmware can be made interchangeable with the right knowledge but you would need a modem with a compatible chipset. I have yet to find anything I can acquire that uses a 2nd gen Ikanos CPE chipset (VX180), except of course the Bell Sagemcom. I doubt the driver from second gen based CPE will work on a first gen chipset like in my Zyxel or HiVolt's Zhone.

Twinge

Yeah, but I think the Cellpipe is a first gen box... Hence the IK105012 part in the VDSL driver revision...

I googled that around, seems like there are some other modems with this, namely some sagemcom from several years ago...

If you can find a firmware for the Bell version of the Cellpipe we should be able to dump it, it looks like they using an embedded Linux system too. Same file system as the Sagem modems.

Of course the driver wouldn't be usable on another platform unless it's using the same CPU as the cellpipe. Without the driver source it'd be useless. The VDSL conf might me worth looking at though.

EDIT - It seems this road has been travelled before, have a look here (»exploring the alcatel lucent cellpipe 7130 ) for a teardown and dump of the Bell version of the Cellpipe 7130.

Copying the vdsl.conf settings from a Sagemcom doesn't, on it's own, help get your upstream speed correct. I took the Sagemcom vdsl.conf file and used to mirror the config on my Zyxel and ended up with the same reduced upload speed as when I started. More is definatly needed.

Twinge

The problem is it needs to have the same CPU architecture or the compiled driver won't run. Since we won't have the Ikanos driver source we can't re-compile it to run on a different CPU architecture (e.g. ARM rather than MIPS).

Oh, right, I get it... Geez.. the hoops we gotta jump thru, lol...

Is there a command i can run on the Zhone to see what its using?

"uname -p" should do it

Alternately "cat /proc/cpuinfo"

The uname command doesnt work, the cat/proc/info returns this..

# cat /proc/cpuinfo
system type             : ADI Fusiv Core
processor               : 0
cpu model               : R3000 V0.0
BogoMIPS                : 199.06
wait instruction        : no
unaligned_instructions  : 110
microsecond timers      : no
tlb_entries             : 64
extra interrupt vector  : no
hardware watchpoint     : no
ASEs implemented        :
VCED exceptions         : not available
VCEI exceptions         : not available
 

Well, it looks like we could be in luck. According to the dump log from that thread I linked the Cellpipe 7130 is using the same CPU*. Correction, probably only a similar CPU but the same architecture.

The Cellpipe uses the Ikanos VX150.