BT FTTC Cabinet - ECI

[dfenceman]

I believe only Huawei cabinets have been installed under the connectingcambridgeshire programme as they are "vectoring ready", where the ECI ones are not.  I also have a vague recollection that an Openreach engineer said they had stopped using them nationally but this is clearly not true.

[chris6273]

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@dfenceman wrote:

I also have a vague recollection that an Openreach engineer said they had stopped using them nationally but this is clearly not true.

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Not quite sure about this.

It makes sense re: vectoring but the problem with only using the Huawei Kit is you have a choice of the MA5616T (Up to 192 Lines - four 48-channel line cards) and the MA5603T (Up to 288 Lines) - Nothing is there for areas requiring 256 lines without the M41- You'd need to provision two smaller Huawei DSLAMs or underprovision a larger Huawei DSLAM (Which usually resides in the much larger cabinet) for an area requiring 256 lines.

Either Huawei comes out with a higher density line card or Openreach would need to source a new DSLAM model to replace the M41 DSLAM if they were to start replacing their ECI roll-out with another vendor (Unless they just install multiple/larger Huawei DSLAMs instead).

[john46]

also reliance on one supplier is bad business practice hence the reason both Huawei and ECI modems are in use and home hubs of several manufactures as it provides continuity of service

[Devon_Dave]

There is no difference from the outside on an ECI dslam. They come in 2 variants the 128 which may only have one 64 port card or have two cards. The 128 can be upgraded to a 256 by installing two additional cards as well as associated multi core connecting cables in the dslam.

[syan123]

Regarding the modem/hub supplied by BT - I don't want to use the stock supplied by BT.

I was planning to use the Asus DSL-AC68U ADSL/VDSL Wireless Dual Band Router or AVM FritzBox! 7490.
I think it is worth investing in a high quality router/modem as I will have full 80Mbps (less than 30m from cab).

What would you recommend guys?

[ray_dorset]

The HH5 is an excellent modem/router.

[Bigmac77]

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@ray_dorset wrote:
The HH5 is an excellent modem/router.

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If you can live with the resyncs.

[imjolly]

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@Bigmac77 wrote:

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@ray_dorset wrote:
The HH5 is an excellent modem/router.

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If you can live with the resyncs.

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That does not happen to everyone - I am with ray

[john46]

same here no problems with the hub 5

[chris6273]

I've got to admit that I've had a lot of issues with the HH5 restarting & resyncing. My HG612 which I got after being fed up with the HH5 has no problem maintaining the full 80/20 sync for months on end literally with at least a 10dB SNR on the downstream so it's not a line problem. Currently at 30-days uptime for this sync and that's only because I restarted it when configuring things.

Could have been a faulty batch with regards to the HH5 being faulty.