Does BT force VoIP users to only use their Home Hub?

I have spent most of today pulling my hair out trying to replace my Home Hub with a combination of a Netgear DM602 , FreeBSD 7.0 a Linksys PAP2T and a X100P card with Asterisk software. This would give me free VOIP calls, I could dump the connection at 59 minutes (so I would not incurr call charges) and add a few bells and whistles like voicemail etc.

I intended to use the Netgear in bridged mode - i.e the FreeBSD box takes care of the PPP, DNS, firewalling etc. Prior to getting the Home Hub, this setup worked fine so I thought it would be a simple task of changing my username from xxxx [!at] btbroadband.com (replace the [!at] with a @) to bthomehub [!at] btbroadband.com (replace the [!at] with a @) and then all I would have to configure would be the FXO and FXS.

Wrong.

While I can establish a PPP connection (CHAP is authenticated fine) and I can ping or perform DNS lookups to my hearts content, HTTP traffic seems to be blocked and FTP falls over if any substantial traffic is sent. I have done all the obvious, upgraded the modem with the latest flash image etc. all to no avail. There was no firewall enabled on either the Netgear or FreeBSD box (naughty - I know!).

Now I know for a fact that BT hides their SIP proxies (To get the PAP2T working you need to create a dummy DNS entry) but are BT filtering traffic for Home Hub customers as well? What is so frustrating is that an identical setup worked when I first got the hub 8 months ago - it took me a week before I installed it so I know it did work. As a final test, I tried this out on another box in case the NIC was playing up and even reset the Netgear to Modem mode to let it take care of PPP authentication etc. Zilch. What I did find out though is my old username is still in force.

My only conclusions are:

1] BT is using a transparent proxy for HTTP that requires authentication
2] My Netgear box is toast
3] Or can someone suggest another scenario ?

I'd really appreciate some pointers, I can probably scrounge another modem from somewhere to test, but my gut feel is that BT is up to their old tricks again and forcing end users to use their kit alone.

Many thanks in advance.

Hi Merville

Welcome to Voipuser, give the hardware setup a workout with Voipuser before exploring too much further. There are some further resources here on the forum for BT Home Hub.

From what I have read on the subject it is all possible there are some references on the infamous 'The Scream' BTHH thread to using hubs in tandem with routers...fairly involved as it means downgrading hubs firmware in some cases to insert command lines (at your own risk!)....

http://www.the-scream.co.uk/forums/show ... amp;page=2
http://www.littlehome.co.uk/homehub/

Thanks ever so much Gray for the quick response. It did cross my mind to re-flash the hub so that "I could take control" so to speak, but unfortunately the hub has upgraded to the latest software, and most of the hacks have been closed by BT.

Rather than potentially turning the HH into an illuminated paperweight and breaking my only method of connecting to the net, I am happy to buy another modem / router provided I am 100% certain it will work with broadband talk.

I'll keep you guys posted and thanks again for a warm welcome to the forums.

This afternoon I managed to scrounge a Belkin F5D7633 from a friend which supports bridged mode. Plugged it in with the same settings I used for the Netgear, and voila - one working FreeBSD box .....

Strange thing is we tried the Netgear at the friends house in standard modem mode and it worked fine. Only difference is that he is with another ISP. As I tried that test with BT Broadband Talk, all I can assume is that their is some incompatibility with the DM602 and BBT. I'd swear though that it was a DM602 I had originally !

I will be more than happy to post a How-to on the forums once I get it up and running - while I am proficient with networking, VoIP and Asterisk looks like it could be a challenge.

For reference, I have never used the BT Home Hub with BTs broadband services (they keep threatening to send me a HH whenever I renew by broadband contract, but so far have never managed it). I've used a number of different devices, currently a USR wireless broadband router, which works very well. I've used the BT broadband softphone with this setup, and it seems to work ok. So I'm pretty sure that there isn't anything "funny" about the way the networking is set-up with BT broadband.