Can I use the Netgear DG834N with a VDSL connection?

Skumball · 6 Oct 2010 at 19:16

Hi chaps.

I'm very confused with my upcoming VDSL (Fibre) connection. My ISP says I will probably need to upgrade my modem/router to cope with the new connection. I currently have a DG834N which is a wireless ADSL2+ modem/router. It has an input for an RJ45 cable labelled "ADSL" and 4 Ethernet outputs.

Do I really need to find a new modem/router?

Mattus · 6 Oct 2010 at 19:23

You won't be able to use it as a modem, because an ADSL modem can't handle a VDSL signal. You could probably continue to use it as a router by plugging it into a VDSL modem. Your ISP will probably supply you with a VDSL modem and a new router, but whether you use that router in preference to your DG834N is up to you.

Skumball · 6 Oct 2010 at 19:34

Thanks Mattus, much appreciated.

Skumball · 6 Oct 2010 at 19:41

I forgot to ask, what do I need to look for when selecting a modem? As far as I can tell all the wireless modem routers on the Netgear site have in built "ADSL2+" modems which is what I already have with the DG834N.

tolien · 6 Oct 2010 at 20:29

You're probably looking for something without a modem, i.e. marketed for use with a cable service. You'd then connect the modem you get to the ethernet WAN interface on that in exactly the same way as if you had cable.
The other issue will be getting something that can handle the throughput - a number of routers struggle with much more than 20Mbps, especially when they're doing anything interesting like QoS.

Mattus said:
You could probably continue to use it as a router by plugging it into a VDSL modem.

Nope, ADSL WAN so there's nothing useful to plug the VDSL modem into. The best you could do is turn it into a switch and wireless AP but whatever you connected to it would have to be a router.

Skumball · 6 Oct 2010 at 20:47

Aha, this is where I'm getting confused. Does the BT engineer bring a vdsl modem with them? This wasn't made clear at the time of order. My ISP is offering a Netgear WNR2000 N300 router so I presume that I can just plug the modem (from the engineer) into this?

.Griff. · 6 Oct 2010 at 21:12

Skumball said:
Does the BT engineer bring a vdsl modem with them?

Yep it's an Openreach/Huawei branded modem.

tolien · 6 Oct 2010 at 21:45

The WNR2000 is exactly the type of router I suggested you'd want.

Skumball · 6 Oct 2010 at 21:52

Thanks all!

Mattus · 6 Oct 2010 at 22:35

tolien said:
Nope, ADSL WAN so there's nothing useful to plug the VDSL modem into. The best you could do is turn it into a switch and wireless AP but whatever you connected to it would have to be a router.

Ah. Sorry for the confusion, Skumball - looks like I need to read up a bit more on VDSL!

Skumball · 7 Oct 2010 at 00:16

Mattus said:
Ah. Sorry for the confusion, Skumball - looks like I need to read up a bit more on VDSL!

No problem!

lixxus · 17 Jul 2011 at 01:56

looks like the broadcom chipset in the router supports vdsl going by openwrt hardware anaylsis

http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/hardware/soc/soc.broadcom.bcm63xx?s[]=6348

i guess its just the case of writing firmware for it, to enable the vdsl feature of the chipset