Technicolor or Huawei for BP Vdsl?

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Technicolor or Huawei for BP Vdsl?

TeaLeaf

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#154234 21-Oct-2014 20:09

Which of the modems is better, the telecom or vodafone modem?

BigPipeNZ

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BigPipe

#1159572 21-Oct-2014 20:43

Telecom has both a Technicolour and a Huawei for vDSL, the technicolour is a little older.

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TeaLeaf

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#1159623 21-Oct-2014 21:13

thanks for that, that makes the choice simpler :-)

benokobi

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#1159626 21-Oct-2014 21:16

Spark guy on twitter told me the Huawei HG630b is better than the normal technicolor router provided in the past for fibre.

TeaLeaf

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#1160114 22-Oct-2014 16:32

what the huawei hg659?

jonb

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#1160203 22-Oct-2014 18:01

The 659 is the better one, with ac wireless and is also a gigabit router? There is one on TradeMe now, with bidding starting at $20.

The 630b is now the standard consumer model from Spark, I use it for fibre and get very good wireless-n in a standard 3 bed house.

I don't know how the vodafone huawei compares.

TeaLeaf

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#1160303 22-Oct-2014 20:36

AC wireless is better?

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Jase2985

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#1160328 22-Oct-2014 21:33

TeaLeaf: AC wireless is better?

if you do a bit of googling on what AC wireless is you will find its in a different frequency spectrum and is less susceptible to interference (ie less devices using that spectrum and bigger spectrum) you will also find that the range is generally shorter than a comparable N network

TeaLeaf

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#1161655 24-Oct-2014 19:07

only concern is it might be locked to vodafone as its never been used etc.

outside of buying used, what is a good new vdsl modem to buy?

Nil Einne

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#1181155 22-Nov-2014 10:15

Jase2985:
TeaLeaf: AC wireless is better?

if you do a bit of googling on what AC wireless is you will find its in a different frequency spectrum and is less susceptible to interference (ie less devices using that spectrum and bigger spectrum) you will also find that the range is generally shorter than a comparable N network

This isn't quite correct. Both 802.11ac and 802.11n support 5ghz. (802.11g and b do not, you need to go back to 802.11a for 5ghz.) However 802.11n also supports 2.4ghz and there's no requirement to support 5ghz, so for legacy, cost and other reasons, some 802.11n routers and many devices may only support 2.4ghz. (It's also possible for a 802.11n device to only support 5ghz but this is far less common and I'm not totally sure if it's standards compliant.) Any 802.11ac consumer router is basically guaranteed to support 802.11n 2.4ghz.

The primary advantage 802.11ac brought over n is possibly higher speeds thanks to some improvements (using more channels and other things). Well I think there's probably at least some small improvement in range over the 5ghz spectrum (and in range where 5ghz will be better than 2.4ghz) as well. I believe these weren't likely to do much for 2.4ghz (given the small number of channels) and so there's no 2.4ghz in 802.11ac, you just use 802.11n 2.4ghz. You can also be sure a 802.11ac device and router will support 5ghz (almost definitely in addition to 2.4ghz), which means you don't have to dig in the specs unlike you will with 802.11n to see if it supports 5ghz if you want to use that. (I have no idea if the n routers mentioned support 5ghz.)

Edit: I should perhaps also mention it's also not just a matter of supporting or not supporting 5hgz. There are some 802.11n routers which do support 2.4ghz and 5ghz, but only one at a time, you have to select which one. Possibly this remains the case for devices even in the 802.11ac but I'm not sure. There may be some limited advantage to using both at the same time for a device, but it's often not such a big deal. I think any decent device should automatically try to choose or look for networks on both if it has both. This doesn't work very well with routers since you may have multiple devices connecting to them, some on 5ghz and some on 2.4ghz. Also none of this means you have to make both available. Both devices and routers should generally allow you to switch off 2.4ghz or 5ghz if you desire.

richms

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#1181225 22-Nov-2014 12:25

Some 802.11ac chips will do a 600 meg on 2.4ghz mode that is basically the 802.1ac 40mhz modulation but on 2.4ghz. Not standards compliant and used to make the total megabit number of the router higher. Intel on board don't seem to support it so it's pretty pointless.

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