Genius Modem Firmware Upgrade for Fibre

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › Genius Modem Firmware Upgrade for Fibre - Lose Port 4

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#626685 17-May-2012 09:45

No mention of a WAN port on the product specs - just 4x ethernet ports, so one would assume you could use all four ports. I'd hit them up for a new switch, or since they have changed the product - you perhaps have an early out from you contract?
http://www.orcon.net.nz/support/gfaq_page/orcon_genius_tech_specs
Not a smart move by Orcon.

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#626729 17-May-2012 11:00

It would be interesting to know what other changes are in the firmware? Any improves?

detonate

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#626751 17-May-2012 11:53

It was no easy decision, that's for sure. However, as mentioned above, the benefit of having 1x common config across the board was perceived to be worth it.

The firmware change itself introduces several bug fixes for various things, but also does change the factory default settings to have Eth4 configured as a WAN port for UFB.

Now, here's what you want to hear. :)
The front page of the admin panel will have a drop down saying "Modem configured for: UFB"
Change that to ADSL, and you should regain LAN usage of your port 4.

Just remember you'll have to change it back when you move to UFB.

garryk

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#626772 17-May-2012 12:50

sbiddle:
garryk: I don't get why Orcon have to change everyone's Genius config now, when most of us won't be able to use it in the new mode for quite a while, and some won't ever! So why reduce the port availability unnecessarily early? If it's for ease of support, then that seems to me to be a reason more for Orcon's own convenience than their customers!

You've clearly never tried to manage a network with thousands devices, paricularly routers. Keeping everything on the same firmware revision is quite simply the best way of managing things as every device has exactly the same characteristics and feature set.

Only changing some routers would be the worlds biggest nightmare.

Actually, I do get that, as I'm doing it every day. And I agree it's easiest that way, for the Operator. I'm just disappointed that Orcon aren't looking at it from the customer's point of view and putting some smart management in place to minimize disruption to most of the rest of their customers who won't get fibre-based service for quite a while.

I don't know the details of exactly how they are planning to implement this change, but I'd be surprised if it's just a firmware issue. Loading firmware capable of reconfiguring the router so that one port can be designated as a WAN port, yes, that would be best done universally, and I agree should be kept as uniform as possible. But configuring the 4th port as a WAN port doesn't have to be done as part of the firmware change, at least not on some of the systems I've worked with. It could be configured at the time the service is established, which is something Orcon already have to keep individual customer settings for, so shouldn't be a big extra overhead. I'm just guessing, but probably they have taken the option of embedding this config as part of the base firmware, a) because it makes everything the same, as you point out, and b) because then there are no options for customers who know how to fiddle with it (and that would cause headaches!)

At the end of the day, it's not that big a deal, as someone else has pointed out, switches are cheap. I'll just have to buy a slightly bigger one than I already have now, that's all.

garryk

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#626777 17-May-2012 12:58

detonate: It was no easy decision, that's for sure. However, as mentioned above, the benefit of having 1x common config across the board was perceived to be worth it.

The firmware change itself introduces several bug fixes for various things, but also does change the factory default settings to have Eth4 configured as a WAN port for UFB.

Now, here's what you want to hear. :)
The front page of the admin panel will have a drop down saying "Modem configured for: UFB"
Change that to ADSL, and you should regain LAN usage of your port 4.

Just remember you'll have to change it back when you move to UFB.

Oops, missed this before posting my reply to sbiddle.

That seems to me a perfectly adequate solution! Just unfortunate it wasn't communicated in the letter we got!

detonate

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#626778 17-May-2012 12:58

garryk:
Actually, I do get that, as I'm doing it every day. And I agree it's easiest that way, for the Operator. I'm just disappointed that Orcon aren't looking at it from the customer's point of view and putting some smart management in place to minimize disruption to most of the rest of their customers who won't get fibre-based service for quite a while.

Actually they are.
The reason why it was chosen this way is to enable out-of-box plug and play for both DSL and UFB.
The only way to do that is to have the one default config.

You're right, the firmware upgrade could have been done independently, but then the default config would not allow for a customer to plug it in to UFB and have it working straight away.

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#626842 17-May-2012 14:20

thanks detonate, the added functionality to restore the port is very much welcomed as I'm not going to be on UFB for the time being.

gpsboy

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#626891 17-May-2012 15:47

Great news thanks!

garryk

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#627090 17-May-2012 21:35

Good to have this info about the reasoning behind the change surface, thanks!. If the option to retain the use of the 4th port came about as above, I'd have to agree that Orcon have thought things out well. It just didnt come across that way with the initial information that was made available. :-)

mgnz

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#627110 17-May-2012 22:24

I sent this email to Orcon this evening:

Hi Orcon,
According to the UFB Rollout maps, my property is not going to get fibre for over a year, and there is no guarantee that it will be getting fibre in the year after that. So in effect what the email below is saying is that you are reducing the capability of my genius modem in order to make life easier for yourselves. Then you suggest that in order to regain functionality that you have just removed, I need to spend my money on a new ethernet switch.

This seems a little unjust to me. I feel that if you are going to take something away you should replace it with something else. Either discount the price of the services that I currently subscribe to, provide a switch free of charge, or show some love with a data cap increase.

While telecom and other ISPs have been increasing their data caps for free over the last little while, it seems a bit ridiculous that Orcon would go against this trend and actually reduce the quality of their service. I understand that the modems will need to be upgraded to account for the fibre rollout, but there must be a smarter way to do this.

Looking forward to a positive response,

M.

It will be interesting to see how they respond.

Oblivian

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#627121 17-May-2012 22:45

mgnz: I sent this email to Orcon this evening:

Hi Orcon,
According to the UFB Rollout maps, my property is not going to get fibre for over a year, and there is no guarantee that it will be getting fibre in the year after that. So in effect what the email below is saying is that you are reducing the capability of my genius modem in order to make life easier for yourselves. Then you suggest that in order to regain functionality that you have just removed, I need to spend my money on a new ethernet switch.

This seems a little unjust to me. I feel that if you are going to take something away you should replace it with something else. Either discount the price of the services that I currently subscribe to, provide a switch free of charge, or show some love with a data cap increase.

While telecom and other ISPs have been increasing their data caps for free over the last little while, it seems a bit ridiculous that Orcon would go against this trend and actually reduce the quality of their service. I understand that the modems will need to be upgraded to account for the fibre rollout, but there must be a smarter way to do this.

Looking forward to a positive response,

M.

It will be interesting to see how they respond.

Probably with the same solution posted a few messages up perhaps?...

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coffeebaron

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#627177 18-May-2012 08:55

Oblivian:
mgnz: I sent this email to Orcon this evening:

Hi Orcon,
According to the UFB Rollout maps, my property is not going to get fibre for over a year, and there is no guarantee that it will be getting fibre in the year after that. So in effect what the email below is saying is that you are reducing the capability of my genius modem in order to make life easier for yourselves. Then you suggest that in order to regain functionality that you have just removed, I need to spend my money on a new ethernet switch.

This seems a little unjust to me. I feel that if you are going to take something away you should replace it with something else. Either discount the price of the services that I currently subscribe to, provide a switch free of charge, or show some love with a data cap increase.

While telecom and other ISPs have been increasing their data caps for free over the last little while, it seems a bit ridiculous that Orcon would go against this trend and actually reduce the quality of their service. I understand that the modems will need to be upgraded to account for the fibre rollout, but there must be a smarter way to do this.

Looking forward to a positive response,

M.

It will be interesting to see how they respond.

Probably with the same solution posted a few messages up perhaps?...

Which they probably should have included in the letter!

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mgnz

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#627179 18-May-2012 09:04

I forgot to mention I emailed them before I saw this forum topic.

I assume they will reply with this fix, but it seems weird that they didn't mention it in the email, and the only suggestions were to purchase a new switch or move devices to wireless.

Surely if the fix was this easy they would have mentioned it, rather than annoy a whole bunch of people.

Snackos

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#627633 19-May-2012 09:22

detonate: It was no easy decision, that's for sure. However, as mentioned above, the benefit of having 1x common config across the board was perceived to be worth it.

The firmware change itself introduces several bug fixes for various things, but also does change the factory default settings to have Eth4 configured as a WAN port for UFB.

Now, here's what you want to hear. :)
The front page of the admin panel will have a drop down saying "Modem configured for: UFB"
Change that to ADSL, and you should regain LAN usage of your port 4.

Just remember you'll have to change it back when you move to UFB.

That's not mentioned in the email though. So you're going to have lots of people running out and buying a switch (which is what the email suggests) when you can save money and time by just taking a minute to change the port back to what it was.

garryk

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#627917 20-May-2012 13:19

Anybody know when this change is supposed to happen? Apart from a reference to a link about UFB rollout timeframes, I didn't see even an approximate date mentioned in the letter.

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