EDPnet’s Sagem F@st 3464 (a.k.a. BBOX)

I recently got the EDPNet’s Sagem F@st 3464 modem for free with an upgrade of my ADSL connection to a VDSL connection. I wanted to collect my experiences with the modem in one place, this blog post. The EDPnet modem comes with a version of the Belgacom firmware, which has a number of downsides. Check this great blog post by Patrick Vande Walle and his bbox tricks page for some good tips and tricks. Note that I encoutered some slight differences between the firmware I’m running and the one Patrick is running.

Update (27 August 2010): I’ve basically configured the Sagem to be a VDSL-router only. I only use the VDSL modem part and it’s router and firewall functionality. I moved DHCP and DNS over to my Synology disk (does VPN as well and a ton of other things) and use an old SMC dual-channel Wifi ADSL-modem for wireless (not using the ADSL bit obviously). Why? Well, basically because this Belgacom version of the Sagem sucks. In the future I might get a pppoe Wifi-router so I can completely kill all layer 3 funtionality of the Sagem, but for now I made due with the components I had laying around.

• Some annoying observations
• Connecting and Command Line
• Version Information and Compilation Flags
• Dynamic DNS
• Changing the LAN interfaces IP-address
• Kill some processes
• Logging
• Multicast troubles
• Nomado VOIP

Some annoying observations

I’ll just list some observations here without going into much detail for now.

• EDPNet Sagem routers come with Belgacom firmware, it looks like it’s quite an outdated version
• The Belgacom firmware kills a number of functionalities what seems to be in favor of the Belgacom TV and VOIP functionalities. Some are:
  • no 802.11n Wifi update: apperently the 802.11n is an option if your read through the spec document here, I just checked the specs table, which doesn’t say anything about optional.
  • no WPA2 Update: My firmware is updated to 60R109-60A022 which supports WPA2 personal with TKIP and AES!
  • no Dynamic DNS (at least via the web interface, see here for command line instructions)
  • No advanced xDSL settings
• The Belgacom firmware has some weird bugs:
  • the tr96 (provider remote management) process eats up resources, resulting in 99% CPU utilization and a very hot modem. See here for a fix.
  • Another issue I found with the tr96 process is that it seems that when it runs you will get Wifi disconnects/reconnects, probably due to the CPU utilization.
  • Zerconf/Bonjour networking on the local LAN does not work (wtf?). This means that for instance my Apple devices can’t find each other. It seems that Multicast traffic is dropped by the firewall. Even more fun is the fact that they removed the web interface to turn this on/off. Update: My firmware is updated to 60R109-60A022, which doesn’t have this problem any more!
  • The LAN interface is by default incorrectly bridged to a bunch of WAN interfaces in “Advanced Settings > Network Interfaces > LAN Bridge > Settings”. This causes problems if you try to save any changes on the LAN interface. See here for a fix.

Connecting and Command Line

Connecting to the modem

telnet to 192.168.1.1
Username: admin
Password (default): BGCVDSL2

You are now in OpenRG. And can do a number of things. Type “help” for an overview of commands. Type “help ” for some information on that specific command. OpenRG uses a file system like directory structure for it’s configuration. With “ls” you can have a look around. Check this pdf for a command reference and more information about OpenRG. To get a Busybox (Linux) shell type:

shell

Version Information and Compilation Flags

To get version info telnet into the modem and type: ver

Version: 4.0.21.3.3.1.32.1.1.1.6.Fast3464.60.00.G0 Platform: Sagem F@ST346X Compilation Time: 09-Jul-08 14:56:30 Tag: NRCbelgacom-multimode-fast346xopenrgorig3-3-1-32-1-1-1-64-2-10-0-43

Compilation Flags:

CONFIGBELGACOMBBOX=y CONFIGBELGACOMBIMODE=y CONFIGBELGACOM=y CONFIGHWUSBHOSTOHCI=y CONFIGHWUSBHOSTEHCI=y CONFIGUSBPRINTER=y CONFIGHWUSBSTORAGE=y CONFIGUSB=y CONFIGRGWATCHDOGOPENRG=y CONFIGSAGEMEXTERNALATHEROS5212=y CONFIGHW80211GAR500XX=y CONFIGLIVEBOXVOIP=y CONFIGCSSSTANDARD=y CONFIGSAGEMMANAGECONFIG=y CONFIGGUISTANDARD=y CONFIGGUILIVEBOX1=y CONFIGSAGEMCONSOLEBAUDRATE=57600 CONFIGMRASECSIZE=0x120000 CONFIGJFFS2FSSIZE=0x100000 CONFIGBOOTLDRUBOOTSECURE=y CONFIGSOUCHERECONF=y CONFIGSOUCHETR69=y CONFIGSOUCHESTARTAUTOMATE=y CONFIGBOOTLDRUBOOTCOMP=gzip CONFIGFLASHSIZE=16 CONFIGSDRAMSIZE=64 DIST=SAGEM346X LIC=../jpkgfast3202.lic

Dynamic DNS

You can’t configure dynamic DNS though the webinterface. Patricks trick to access the webinterface for dynamic DNS on the BBOX doesn’t work on the EDPnet version. I wasn’t able to use any other dynamic DNS provider then DynDNS. I tried DtDNS, but it didn’t work. To configure Dynamic DNS do the following:

rg_conf_set ddns/provider dyndns.org (this MUST be dyndns.org)
rg_conf_set ddns/device ppp0 (this is your WAN interface)
rg_conf_set ddns/hostname <your DynDNS hostname>
rg_conf_set_obscure ddns/password <your DynDNS password>
save

Now in the web interface goto “Advanced Settings > Status” and disconnect then reconnect your WAN interface (ppp0), not your VOIP interface. You can now check the DynDNS status by entering “rgconfprint ddns”

Changing the LAN interfaces IP-address/Subnet

See my post here

Kill some processes

One of the first things you might want to do is to kill of some unused processes on the modem, because they eat op resources and cause the CPU to run at +90% all the time, which causes heat issues and slugginish of the modem. One of the major cullprints is the tr98 process, which is used to remote management (as in provider remote management). Unfortunatly you will have to do this for every reboot. In one occasion I had the process restart without a reboot. Not sure why this happend, but I’ll update this post if it happens again and/or I find out what did happen.

To kill processes do:

telnet 192.168.1.1 (or whatever you changed it in)
Username: admin
Password: <your password> (or the default password BGCVDSL2)
shell
top (not down the process ID (PID) of the process you want to kill)
ctrl+c (to exit top)
kill <the PID>

Logging

You can turn on console logging by connecting via telnet and then:

log_lev_on <log level>

Turn it off with:

log_lev_off <log level>

Check help for the log levels:

[admin @ home]$ help log_lev_on 
log_lev_on   Redirect rg_error output equal to or higher
                    than level to the current console.
 
Usage:
	log_lev_on <severity level>
 
	Severity level values are:
	7: Prints debugging messages.
	6: Prints informational messages.
	5: Prints notice messages.
	4: Prints warning messages.
	3: Prints error messages.
	2: Prints fatal error messages and reboots OpenRG

Make sure to turn this logging off when you are done, especially debug logging (level 7) will have a severe CPU impact.

Multicast troubles

Update: Good news, this problem is fixed with the latest firmware version I have received 60R109-60A022.

Found out that Zeroconf/Bonjour networking doesn’t work on the local LAN. Did some research and it seems that the firewall is configured to drop it:

$ fw_dump -c 20  (means to dump firewall chain 20)
 
<cut>
(AND // Broadcast/Multicast protection
    (OR
      IP_SRC_MASK(224.0.0.0:f0.00.00.00)
      IP_SRC_BCAST
    )
    (DO
      VAR_ADD(0, 1)=0  // Broadcast/Multicast protection
      DROP
      EXIT
    )
<cut>

Unfortunately the web interface for configuring this is lobotomized. And I haven’t find a way to change this yet. I’m getting really frustrated with this modem.

Nomado VOIP

I couldn’t get Nomado VOIP working, until I used the IP-address instead of the domain-name of the Nomado SIP server (actually, it’s 3starsnet.com server).

EDPnet Sagem VOIP guide can be found here and a Nomado VOIP guide here.