So after a relatively painfree experience with an Orcon Homehub at work I decided to get one for home.
My main motivation was my wondering if my DLink DSL-502T & a WRT54G modded to run DD-WRT were causing double NAT issues and resulting in slow connections/torrents. You would imagine an all in one solution would at least half the possible causes for slow speeds. And since upgrading so far so good - more green lights than amber in Azureus/Vuze.
But as I've come to get used to the Homehub, I was hoping to get a feature of Leopard/MobileMe working - Back to My Mac.
The general use is to setup a zero configuration VPN between your various Macs that aren't all in the same location. If this thing
actually worked it would be an awesome. Remote Desktop/VNC, File Sharing - even Bonjour support all with no complex setup. The problem is it only works in ideal configutations - and most of those are centred around America's cable connections - and not an ADSL setup in NZ.
Back to the Homehub - although offering uPnP, it would seem to be lacking true NAT-PMP support. Via this Apple Discussion, I've found that looks like the same issues but on a BT Homehub (which is in no way the same box as Orcons).
OK, so the problem is that the BT Voyager 2100 only supports the WANPPPConnection service of UPnP, while Apple currently only supports the WANIPConnection service. There's a chance Apple could add WANPPPConnection support in a future release, but until then you're out of luck.When I used Lighthouse, a dynamic port forwarding utility for OS-X, to give me some indepth info, it reports -
Lighthouse could not associate with the router '192.168.1.1' because of invalid protocol implementations
The router '192.168.1.1' sent invalid responses to Lighthouse's requests to associate with it. This may happen if your router doesn't support NAT/PMP or UPnP (please check its manual) or because their implementation is incomplete. It may help to upgrade your router to its latest firmware version (information on how to do this should also be present in the router's manual).
So my options would be to loose the Homehub, replacing it with a NAT-PMP supporting ADSL2+ Modem, ideally that supports Bridge mode - this turns it into a dumb modem that forwards everthing through to your routers WAN port - including login and authentication - and hopefully NAT/uPnP. The I can use my Airport Extreme to get proper NAT-PMP.
I did some reading and it would seem that the newest revision of the DLink DSL-502T does this - look out for Revision C.
Has anyone out there managed to get a bridged modem connection working into their router and if so what gear are you using?
Also - Orcon seem to be shipping a 2nd revision of the Homehub, its still based on a Siemens SX763, the new model has a WPS button on the back to allow for easy Wireless pairing (if you're other gear supports it). The new Homehub also has a Orcon Logo screened on the top and theres no standard Siemens packaging - just a Orcon branded slip around a white box.
