Its been talked about before, but thought I would post about my experience with an alternate router.
Firstly lets get why bother out of the way :),
Its why not I suppose, like many I tinker and an alternate router allows me access to more setting 🙂
Though I dont need the Voip Phone socket currently.
I bought a TL-R605 as it promised gigabit WAN port and LAN ports which many don't.
Install went easily. Powered up the router with a hardware connection to my laptop. Accessed the web page and entered the pppoe user name (bthomehub@btbroadband.com). Brief confusion as it demanded a password but a quick google and bt works fine. Connected the WAN port to the ONT and hey presto, it works.
As it has no wifi by itself (which was exactly how I wanted it, using the BT discs to provide wifi) I then just connected it to the switch and Hey !, what a mess. Of course some of my devices didn't like the change in subnet and didn't automatically get a new IP address, so a power down of every network device sorted that.
A speed test shows its easily as fast as the Smarthub (which shows the smart hub is actually a decent bit of kit) .
Its marketed as a very secure router, but it does not do IPv6 which the SmartHub can do (except the BT DNS is still V4) but v6 is promised in the next update.
Visually I like that its smaller and unobtrusive and can be wall mounted out of the way with the netgear switch and it seems to run much cooler.
Wasn't expensive either.
