A few weeks ago I wrote about that I was in need of a new wireless access point, where I hinted about getting a Billion BiPAC 7401VGP ADSL2+ Router to replace my whole networking rig. I ended up putting my pre-order in, as the item was only available on 23rd of February. Bought mine from KLK Technology in Western Australia. It arrived on the 28^th of February. However, I have only had a chance to play around it a few days later.

It has now been handling all my home networking routing needs for a week, and I am pretty happy with it so far.

Total cost: AUD$185 (+$10 delivery).
Initial impression: Excellent.

My old rig is a 4-year-old D-Link DSL-300 modem (still in good order) + 6-year-old NetGear 100Base-T 4 port hub (those things don’t break do they?) + 3-year-old Asus WL-300 802.11b access point (very flaky lately). Note none of them has any routing capability. I also run DHCP/Bind from my 5-year-old Pentium III 450Mhz Linux server with 3 network cards.

A little bit complicated for a small home network. However, I expect 7401VGP will be able to replace all of their functionalities, plus Voice over IP (VoIP) as a bonus.

Package

7401VGP comes in a box that contains:

• 7401VGP ADSL modem/router. Dimensional wise it is actually smaller than my old D-Link DSL-300. Plastic all around, but felt quite solid build.
• Power supply.
• 1x line filter for analogue devices sharing the same phone line.
• 1x RJ11 phone line to connect modem to wall socket.
• 1x CAT5 Ethernet cable to connect router to computer.
• 1x Ethernet to RS232 cable. You can actually plug it into port 4 and connect to your computer’s COM port to diagnosis the modem using programs like Hyper Terminal.
• Quick start guide + warranty.
• PDF manual on CD.

1. Power switch 2. Power 3. Reset switch 4. Ethernet (RJ45)
5. Phone (RJ11) 6. PSTN line (RJ11) 7. ADSL (RJ11) 8. Wireless antenna

Installation

Installing 7401VGP was a breeze. I think it probably applies to all modern ADSL routers, but it is a vast improvement from my previous setup.

Basically you just need to plug in the power, plug in the phone line, make sure all other telecommunication devices sharing the same line have filters, plug in the computer onto the Ethernet port, power on the modem, browse to http://192.168.1.254/, set up ADSL authentication information, and I am on-line!!

Actually for me the configuration is more complicated, I am running servers (including the web server that hosts this site) behind the link so there are some Network Address Translation (NAT) to be setup. I will talk about the networking feature later.

General Features

• ADSL2/2+ Capable.
  • I am not on ADSL2+ — just the 512k/512k ADSL link on Telstra’s DSLAM. I left the modem on ADSL2+ modem that falls back to ADSL1 and it worked fine for me.
• 4 Port Fast Ethernet Switch.
  • That is one more Ethernet port in comparison with its sister product, the 7402VGP.
• 1 FXS + 1 FXO Inputs.
  • FXS port is for you to connect to a regular phone. Currently I am using an old Telstra corded phone to test out VoIP, but I’m thinking of getting a Doro 530 from Deals Direct.
  • FXO port should connect to PSTN fixed line. It is only required if you want to fall back to PSTN to dial out or to receive calls, and not needed if you intend to use only VoIP on the phone connected to the FXS port. If it is the same line used by ADSL, remember to put filter on!
• 802.11g Wireless AP.
  • 7401VGP comes with a small antenna to be attached to the back of the modem/router, and looks like a bigger external antenna can be attached, if purchased separately.
  • WEP, WPA1 and WPA2 encryption are supported.
  • To reduce the exposure of your access point, you can also turn SSID broadcasting off, and set up MAC address filtering.
  • Wireless Distribution System (WDS) is supported if you wish to connect to a peer wireless AP by specifying its MAC address.
  • I am getting very good signal from all rooms in my double brick house so I am happy :)
• Browser-based Configuration.
• 2 Years Warranty.

Networking Features

I am pretty happy with the networking feature of 7401VGP, as it does everything I need. I have managed to run several services behind the firewall using NAT port forwarding (HTTP, FTP, XMPP, etc), and its QoS enables me to get good VoIP quality during heavy downloading.

• Network Address Translation (NAT)
  • This is the feature that enables “Internet sharing”, by re-writing the source address of out-bound IP packets, and track established connections. Most, if not all, ADSL routers have it.
  • Virtual Server — it allows rewriting the destination address of in-bound connection to go to a particular server inside the private network. It supports various protocols from TCP/UDP to ICMP/GRE.
  • DMZ Host — alternatively you can designate a host to forward all incoming connections to. A “catch-all” address.
  • One-To-One NAT — instead of having a DMZ host, you can also map a net-mask of addresses to an internal list of hosts.
  • Time-based NAT — all NAT options can be turned on/off using a time-based schedule, for example enabling port 80 forward to an internal web server only between 8pm and 12pm.
• Firewall / Packet Filtering
  • Default firewall setting is “Off”, but you can set up packet filtering base on combinations of source/destination address, protocol type and port number (for TCP/UDP). Rules can also be turned on and off by pre-defined schedule. However there are only two targets — Allow and Drop. The interface says “Block” but it appears to just drop the incoming packet and never bothered to reply.
  • Intrusion Detection — it adds source/destination address into a black list when the “hacking attempts” have reached the pre-defined threshold.
  • URL Filter — it can block HTTP traffic that matches certain keywords, domains and can block Java applets. It appears to have some transparent proxy sitting in middle, but only works on port 80. Feature is a bit limited and it is probably better using a stand alone package for HTTP filtering.
• Quality of Service (QoS)
  • Prioritising — You can mark certain LAN to WAN traffic as “high priority”, for example interactive applications like SSH.
  • Throttling/Shaping — You can also limit both LAN to WAN or WAN to LAN traffic by kilobits per second, in the increment of 32. That’s useful if you want to limit the traffic used by your P2P applications that do not have throttling built in. You define them also by combinations of source/destination addresses/port range.
• Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
  • 7401VGP can respond to SNMPv2 or v3, and it provides real-time information on packets received/sent from all its interfaces (PPP, Ethernet, wireless, etc). I use MRTG running inside a Linux server to draw nice graphs of network utilisation.
• Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
  • 7401VGP supports DHCP server, DHCP relay or turning off DHCP completely. It allows you to also specify static MAC to IP address, customised DNS addresses, etc. For me I turned DHCP off completely as it does not integrate well with my own DNS server for the LAN, but I think it is good enough for an average home network.
• Routing
  • You can add static routing to the modem/router, if your network is multi-homed.
  • IGMP is supported (if that’s anything useful to you).
  • Create virtual local area network (VLAN) if you want to separate computers/other networks connected to this router. For example putting wireless and Ethernet-connected computers into separate IP networks.

Note that it only supports VPN pass-through, and cannot use as VPN end point. You will probably need something like 7402VGO for that.

Voice over IP

One reason I bought 7401VGP instead of cheaper modem/wireless combo is its VoIP capability. I want to switch to use VoIP to cut my telecommunication cost, and drop my monthly line rental to absolute minimum with Telstra. 7401VGP comes with one FXS port so you can attach one phone on it, and it uses the industrial standard SIP protocol to talk to VoIP providers.

Setting up the VoIP is easy. I personally use SIPME prepaid, who has very good price for a no-frills service (9.9cents untimed capital city call, 27cents/minute mobile calls, etc). Setting 7401VGP to use SIPME is just a matter of entering the registrar address and login credential.

Personally I found little difference between VoIP calls and regular PSTN calls, if the right codec is used. It supports G.729 and G.711. G.729 works with SIPME, and I found the IDD calls actually have better quality than calling from PSTN lines.

If for some reason you prefer to use PSTN instead of VoIP, you can also set up PSTN dial plan to bypass VoIP and uses the PSTN line to make out bound calls, when certain dial code is used. It is useful if your PSTN plan happens to provide cheaper calls (like capped STD calls), and it can be used to call 1300/1800 or emergency number that are not always accessible from VoIP.

However, there lacks VoIP dial plan feature that is available on 7402VGP and 7402VGO, which allows you to use different SIP provider depending on the prefix you use. That means you can only use one out-bound provider, unless you are willing to cut and paste SIP configuration whenever a call needs to be made.

Conclusion

Personally I found 7401VGP a good value purchase. It is a good ADSL modem, a competent wireless AP and a featureful network router. It is only marginally more expensive than a similar featured ADSL2+ modem/wireless router, but provides an ATA to help getting started with VoIP. While someone might argue that 7402VGP is a better buy, with 2 FXS ports and VoIP dial plan feature, but I cannot see the $60+ difference justified for someone who probably will never use more than one SIP provider. Moreover, it does not stop people to provide dial plan feature in pure software.

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