2011-06-02

FB2700 to the rescue

Well, we had a slightly impromtu test of the new FB2700 3G dongle support last night when BT had some issues.

Sadly this happens, and is why we offer things like dual line (2xBT), and dual line (BT+Be) type services. DUal line tends to be a bit expensive for home users though.  However the FB2700 has a USB port and over the last few days the new s/w releases have included the 3G dongle support (at last).

One of our customers has been testing this and was suitable impressed :-

"Very impressed to see the FB2700 fall back to a routed IPv4 block over 3G, when BT tripped over a cable this evening! I only noticed 10 minutes after my main connection died when I happened to glance at the CQM graphs on the FB2700."

By default the support allows simple NATted (yes, I said it) routing over a single IP on a generic 3G dongle which is ideal as a backup. However when used with A&A data SIMs it allows the backup to be for the DSL line, handling routing of the block of (legacy) IPs to the dongle when the line is down... His irc session did not even drop!

Seems this "just worked".

Thanks to "tgb" in A&A irc for confirming.

7 comments:

  1. I would imagine that this would work for anyone with "3" coverage?

    I hope they are both very happy.

    What are we Northerners supposed to do when our ferrets chew through the cables?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Have two lines?
    Have another dongle and use NAT on GPRS?
    Buy a fibre link (digging up roads)?
    Move to where the people and infrastructure are?

    :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have 4 :-)
    Mmmm, GPRS coverage would be good
    £200,000 might cover it
    Ugh! People!

    Just send me "The Internet" once a week and I will wget -m

    ReplyDelete
  4. It was my connection that dropped onto 3G, and I live in a valley in (relatively) rural Yorkshire, so some of us Northerners get by just fine with 3 coverage!

    I've also got Vodafone and O2 data connections for work; AA data SIMs on 3 are consistently better in my experience so far (which as a 3 customer when they first started, surprises me), whether at home, on the train or in the middle of cities.
    (I do wonder whether some of that is down to AA SIMs not having a 2g fallback, so where other SIMs would switch to 2g/EDGE due to a stronger signal, the AA ones plod along on 3G)

    ReplyDelete
  5. @tgb Very nice - sounds like you have excellent coverage.

    I'm in the Peak Park and they object to any mast erection so we have sod all. (Excpet for the Police who have Tetra masts all over - sigh)

    I might try my FB2700 with a USB Dongle - I wonder how far I can extend the USB? I have a 15M Clarke Mast - that should get me a signal, albeit 2G Orange.

    ReplyDelete
  6. "However when used with A&A data SIMs it allows the backup to be for the DSL line, handling routing of the block of (legacy) IPs to the dongle when the line is down"

    Is that accomplished because of PPP?

    ReplyDelete
  7. The PPP is all faked in the mobile network - this was a lot of work to get the network to cope with routed IPs. The next challenge is IPv6 :-)

    ReplyDelete

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