Fritz!Box 3490 Router - 8 months in

[Zak33]

I was a devoted Draytek boy. For well over a decade.

One had died years ago but the other two were spot on... then they both died in the space of a few months. The wifi senders died.
I purchased an Asus as a stop gap and still have it, in it's box. It's ok.

Was moving home and decided (wisely) to stick with Zen for my new broadband account and part of the setup was a deal on a Fritz!Box 3490 and I took it.
It's a hideously ugly red thing that looks like it should say "To infinity.. and beyond!" on it ( dya like the infinity joke I squeezed in there?...no... OK)



But, it's a beautiful piece of router loveliness. Red or not. Though.. it is red.

The inbuilt software is, frankly, better and easier to understand that the Draytek stuff. It hasn't missed a beat for 8 months. Never rebooted itself, not coughed, sneezed farted or stopped being utterly reliable.
The wifi range is very good, and the speed I get on my mobile devices around my brick built house are very impressive.
The 4 ports are gigabit, and with it stuffed unceremoniously down the back of a sofa for the first 6 months of it's life, if it was gonna get hot and flake out, it would have. It didn't.

Over the first weeks of my Zen account in the new house the speeds slowly improved, and the router re-synced up and up. I started at 50mb/s download and 18 up. I'm now on just over 70mb/s down and 18 up.
That's where I found the Drayteks lost the plot- they went up too fast and then over cooked the link and had to drop right back, losing internet connectivity at inappriate times. So far, Fritz! hasn't done that.

Now, onto a connected rant about Windows 10 networking - it's crap. I am fed up with trying to get my 3 PC's to share folders. It was a doddle in XP, it was harder in Win7, and now it's just broken in 10.
Sometimes, those 3 PC's cant see each others shared folders for ... minutes... many minutes... and occassionaly, they never get there.
I know there are IT techs out there who, with a CMD line would have it solved, but for a network caveman like myself, I want to Right Click a folder, Share it, choose who can edit or just read, and reboot and it work.

Win 10 doesn't do that.

Back to the Fritz!Box ... Fritz! NAS.

Every device in my house can see the Fritz! as a Media player, but also as a NAS.
Get a fast USB drive. (Use FlashBench to test your drives, then do some research, find that your own drives are rubbish and get something fast on Amazon/Ebay like I did)
Whack it into the Fritz!Box, log into the router, click the Fritz!NAS and set it up. It's painfully easy.

Then everyone can see it and Win10 File Sharing can go and assault itself in a dark alleyway somewhere. Cos it's deserves to be beaten stoopid

I put an high bit rate HD film on the NAS and it streamed beautfully.

So I'm going to say, I'm now a Fritz!Box fan. It just works.

Even though, it's Dogs K~'b Red

[peterb]

I’m still loving myDraytek 2920 - with its built in VPN server! (Great when I’m out using an unprotected wireless network - just VPN back to the router).

(But I expect the Fritz box can do that too?)

[Zak33]

think so, but I have never had the need to use it
https://en.avm.de/products/fritzbox/...echnical-data/

think it's "Secure remote access over the Internet with VPN (IPSec)"

[Apex]

Do Fritz do just a router, i don't need any of the wifi stuff, would allow me to retire my N66U from its ap job and move the current AC68U to be a ap.

[Dashers]

Openreach modem and pfsense on a virtual machine for me. I'm not sure whether you can get the openreach modems any more though.

[spacein_vader]

Openreach modem and pfsense on a virtual machine for me. I'm not sure whether you can get the openreach modems any more though.

Of course you can, eBay.

[spacein_vader]

Switched to Zen and the associated FritzBox last week, so far I can't speak highly enough of them both.

The ONLY thing to be aware of is that the WAN/VDSL port is RJ45 not RJ11. It comes with a couple of metre long cable with an RJ11 plug on one end for the master socket and an RJ45 on the other so for most people this won't be a problem.

Unfortunately when I moved into the house I ran 10m of shielded RJ11 from the master socket by the front door, through the wall to the back of the integral garage where I fitted a small shelf high up meaning the router would be as close to central to the house as possible. I'm now desperately trying to find somewhere that sells an RJ11 to RJ45 adapter (RIP Maplin,) as conversion cables are easy to find but adapters don't seem to exist!

[Zak33]

can you learn to crimp ...? I did and it's changed my life. someone here must know what the wiring order needs to be

[spacein_vader]

can you learn to crimp ...? I did and it's changed my life. someone here must know what the wiring order needs to be

I found the wiring diagram but don't see the point buying the tool for one plug. RJ11 inline adaptor will be here tomorrow for a couple of quid that will solve the problem.

In the meantime I'm highly impressed with the functionality of the router and of Zens customer service after I made a couple of queries. Best of all the temporary cabling issue has let me say "I told you so" to my wife who questioned why I keep a 20m ethernet cable around 'just in case.'

[DanceswithUnix]

I found the wiring diagram but don't see the point buying the tool for one plug. RJ11 inline adaptor will be here tomorrow for a couple of quid that will solve the problem.

It should work (it only needs two wires after all) but that connection is passing high frequencies, if you can borrow a crimping tool then fewer junctions is less to go wrong and less signal reflections down the cable.

I have a cable hard wired into the BT socket to a crimped rj11 on the other end. Possibly overkill, but I do get 78Mb/s on my vdsl line.

Good call on the Fritz box though. Zen sent me a Zyxel router, only bad thing about the company in the years I have been with them. The Fritz cost extra when I signed up, but probably would have saved me having to get the DrayTek.

[spacein_vader]

It should work (it only needs two wires after all) but that connection is passing high frequencies, if you can borrow a crimping tool then fewer junctions is less to go wrong and less signal reflections down the cable.

I have a cable hard wired into the BT socket to a crimped rj11 on the other end. Possibly overkill, but I do get 78Mb/s on my vdsl line.

Good call on the Fritz box though. Zen sent me a Zyxel router, only bad thing about the company in the years I have been with them. The Fritz cost extra when I signed up, but probably would have saved me having to get the DrayTek.

If the speed drops considerably that'll be my next step but when I next change ISP/router I may end up needing to convert it back to RJ11.

[Dashers]

FWIW, RJ11 socket is compatible with RJ45 (although obviously not the other way round). And the VDSL cable is unshielded twisted pair (and extension of your phone line essentially).

You can extend from your master socket to your model with any twisted pair cabling. I've got cat 6a utp structurally in my house and so just use that.

I'm not sure if shielding will have an impact on VDSL signals at all?

[spacein_vader]

FWIW, RJ11 socket is compatible with RJ45 (although obviously not the other way round). And the VDSL cable is unshielded twisted pair (and extension of your phone line essentially).

You can extend from your master socket to your model with any twisted pair cabling. I've got cat 6a utp structurally in my house and so just use that.

I'm not sure if shielding will have an impact on VDSL signals at all?

The shielding is just a bullet point on the box, the cable was a way of moving the router from on the floor by the front door to very nearly the absolute centre of the building.

It also improved the WAF by being out of sight in the garage.

[Biscuit]

I'm using an Edgerouter Lite. You would hate it.

[peterb]

FWIW, RJ11 socket is compatible with RJ45 (although obviously not the other way round). And the VDSL cable is unshielded twisted pair (and extension of your phone line essentially).

You can extend from your master socket to your model with any twisted pair cabling. I've got cat 6a utp structurally in my house and so just use that.

I'm not sure if shielding will have an impact on VDSL signals at all?

You can use cat 5 for theVDSL cable - IIRC BT use cat 5 as the drop cable from the box when the renew wiring.

[jimborae]

I'm using an Edgerouter Lite. You would hate it.

Good to know as I have one sitting in the parts bin waiting for me to learn how to set it up properly.