Thursday, September 30, 2010

Configure DSL-2640T with Tata Broadband [Wired ADSL]

Hi Friends,

Its been a while since i have posted a new article!
Last week my friend got with him his old Dlink DSL-2640T ADSL 2+ Router from home town.

Now, my current setup with Tata Broadband (Wired ADSL) was with Broadcom ADSL Router tied to a Linksys Wireless Router WRT54GH (a pretty basic & decent wireless router).

We need WiFi badly as we house some 5 laptops (personal [Acer Aspire 3002 NLC, Toshibha A105-S4014] + office [All Dell M65 Precision]), plus latest smartphones like HTC HD, iPhone 3G & Nokia E63 all hungry to be connected over WiFi with social networking ;-)

DSL-2640T seems to be that one device which would have helped me eliminate my Broadcom + Linksys setup including some power conservation ;-)

But hold on!
Though it seemed to be a pretty straight forward setup...i.e. Remove my ADSL Line from Broadcom and plugin to DSL-2640T and switch it on, configure the PPPOE Settings...but it didn't turned out to be a dream run :-(

Two days down the line, i was still trying to play and configure it. Fed up i even started a discussion in India Broadband Forum to check out if these guys had any specific inputs!

From what i got from them was an vital tip! Run the router in a Bridge Mode and create a PPPoE Dialer in Windows to see if you can connect! This step is essential as it certifies that all your router settings are intact and working fine.

I tried this and soon it was clearer to me that somewhere my router settings were incorrect as i was not able to login from the Dialer created within windows in bridge mode :-(

After much dilemma, the setting to be corrected was ADSL Modulation Type! By default it comes with ADSL 2+, but somehow that was not working for Tata.

So lets sit down and configure this router!
STEPS
1) Remove the ADSL Phone Line input and plug it in to your DSL-2640T's ADSL Port
2) Start the router and wait for 2mins to boot up.
3) Use a Straight through or Cross over cable and plug its one end into 1st LAN Port of router and the other end to your machine.
4) Open a browser and type in the browser: 192.168.1.1
5) On the Username/Password prompt use: User-> admin Password-> admin
6) Now lets configure the settings specific to Tata Broadband as below:

For Tata Broadband (Wired ADSL), following are the final set of settings working for me:
WAN ATM VC SETTINGS [Found Under Home->WAN]
VPI=0 ,
VCI=32
WAN Settings: PPPoE/PPPoA
Username: Your Tata Broadband UserName e.g. dummy@vsnl.net
Password: Your Tata Account Password
Authentication Type: Auto
Connection Type: PPPoE LLC

Rest settings for WAN, leave it as default



ADSL [Found Under Advanced->ADSL] 
Modulation Type = ADSL (ITU G.992.2)  [Upload Speeds limited to 128kbps]

UPDATE 1st October 2010:
ADSL (ITU G.992.2) was not giving me the optimum upload speed as the Tata Supplied router easily gave me arould 300kbps of upload speed which is part of my Flash 384 Plan.

Played further around and found the below modulation to give the best optimum download and upload speed:
Modulation Type = ADSL2 (Multimode) [Upload Speeds upto 300kbps and above]
When you set this modulation up, it gets connected over modulation: ADSL_G.dmt.bis


7) Eureka! You are done with the router configuration. Now go to Tools Tabs-> System -> Hit Save and Reboot Button
8) Upon reboot, your ADSL LED on the router should be stable and ON
Status LED keeps blinking all the while which is normal.
9) Below are few post setup screenshots for your reference to show successful connected status:







If you are looking for Firmware Upgrades to your Dlink DSL-2640T, then below FTP Link points to European Firmwares released:

ftp://203.126.164.142/DSL-2640T/

Looking at the various folders, ftp://203.126.164.142/DSL-2640T/20091107 points to the last stable released firmware for DSL-2640T Europe i.e. back in 2009
For MEA Firmwares:
ftp://ftp.dlink-me.com/DLink_ME/ADSL/DSL-2640T/Firmwares/  [Very Slow]


Be very sure before flashing your firmware. Unless you dont face any issues, please do not flash it.

Hope this helps all Tata Broadband Users! :-)

Keywords:
DSL-2640T Router, ADSL, PPPoE, Tata Broadband, Firmware, WRT54GH, Dlink, Linksys, Cisco, Nokia E63, HTC HD, Acer, Dell, Toshibha, iPhone, Apple, etc.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

As per thread http://www.indiabroadband.net/tata-indicom-broadband/32146-tata-broadband-dsl-2640t-router-problem.html you are asked to enter the service name in case ppoe connection. And here you have not mentioned this thing. So how it is working without service name in tata adsl connection.

Shalabhsneha Katdare said...

Hi,

That is what i was asking around in India Broadband forum...how to pass PPPOE service name?

But after my tests, it was pretty much clear that the router and Tata Connection does not require the service name for a successful connection. If it is passed, that is good, but if not it will still connect with correct modulation settings & user/pass combination.

One important thing is, don't try bridge mode. I was trying bridge mode specifically so that by using Windows dialer i can pass the PPPOE service name, but after lot of R&D and talking to a Tata Field Engineer, we were certain that pppoe service name is not required.

Trust me, we have a working setup without service name. Works perfectly fine. If you are not able to connect, fiddle with the different modulation types as those may not be consistent across all fields.