tp-link XC220-G3v Ver 2.0, AC1200 Wireless VoIP GPON Router - review

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tp-link XC220-G3v Ver 2.0, AC1200 Wireless VoIP GPON Router - review

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I guess that this is probably not the report that people around here was waiting for (I hope that comes next this week this time) but since I ended up spending the weekend setting up a new custom home router I thought that maybe it could be interesting to write a usual report about it here just as information/content for the site (i.e. google) and quite frankly to also have it as reference for me for future work as usual since at the end of the day the local setup is almost as important as the remote one. so basically in case someone around here ever wondered how the actual hardware of this kind of devices looks like these are the specifications for the gpon router in the title: as can be seen there I think the device is probably one of the cheapest and bulkiest gpon capable routers available in the retail market that can get the job done. it comes from the aginet tp-link line-up which is oriented towards the isp (and similar) market segment so basically this is just about the kind of device you get actually installed on your home by your provider. being oriented towards the isp market means that it features robust remote and centralized provisioning technologies like L2 OMCI at the ONT level or L3 CWMP at the CPE level beside local provisioning tools and custom firmware defaults to ensure a smooth deployment on the clients. all stuff that probably beside the custom defaults which are quite handy and a neat feature you're not probably really use beside testing outside a provider setting but that nevertheless comes with it. as seen on the specifications the device is actually a all-in-one MTA that combines the functions of a ONT, a CPE and a VoIP client in one single device to basically meet all the basic needs of a current residential gpon connection.

when it comes to the hardware as can be seen there the device is just based on a EcoNet EN7528HU SoC featuring a dual core MIPS 1004Kc cpu running at 900 MHz, gigabit ethernet lan and a debug serial port among other things. in addition to that each cpu core is capable of executing up to two threads sharing 64 KiB of L1 cache (32 L1i and 32 L1d) each and 256 KiB of L2 cache in total to bring the total amount of usable logical cores in the software to four instead. being completely different architectures and environments I think it's hard to tell how it would exactly compare to the more usual x86 architecture used in personal computers instead and obviously I'm not gonna go the same lengths in benchmark/monitor it as if it were a actual server here. that said, based in the provided specifications I believe that each thread should compare to about a late mid end Pentium III when not saturated and a late high end Pentium II when saturated as a gross theoretical safe estimate depending on the workload. believe it or not but with those specs I'm confident I should even be able to host something like a small basic legacy Quake III Arena server for 6 players on this thing. as said, at this point I'm not gonna get dragged with something irrelevant like that but may be at some point I give it a try just to know but whatever the case really is with those estimates and the use so far I'm confident it comes with enough power just to handle the usual traffic. the PON device is the EcoNet EN7570N apparently recommended to pair with this soc by the manufacturer. unfortunately not much is publicly known about it so I guess that it just should get the job done. more or less the same goes for the integrated gigabit lan, so far so good, when plugged to the fiber it just runs perfectly smooth without any issues whatsoever.

probably the standout spec of the device is the memory, this board comes with 256 MiB of some sort of embedded ddr3 kind of memory clocked at 900 MHz. although for today standards that might look like something irrelevant for these kind of embedded devices that's actually a very fair amount that indeed adds great value to the package as not only it will allow the device to run more stable and for much longer that it will even allow for further enhancement and management beyond just what comes out of the box. the fxs port to supply the VoIP provided by the skyworks chip also feels like another solid solution. overall although not always perfect, beside the occasional lag/distortion here and there, calls come and go smoothly with decent quality on top of providing access to various extended call management functions and even a volatile call log so definitively it even feels like a good improvement over the original provider router that was very limited in that aspect. on the downside you have the rom, with just 16 MiB of space and with the bus speed even reduced to 25 MHz it kinda feels a bit limited in that regard. although for the end user this can even be preferable as you trade precious memory for bigger roms so this is even arguable I believe that for a isp that could potentially be a handicap or maybe even insufficient. also this specific model doesn't come with any of the pretty much "standard" features nowadays of similar devices that generally include a usb port and a switchable L3 EWAN port in the lan to extend its use and life beyond its regular main service. obviously you can not expect any "extras" from a budget entry level solution to be honest, it's the way it's, you get what you pay for.

as for the wifi, definitively not a fan of it. the device comes with two quality regular consumer grade pci express based MediaTek 2T2R WiFi 4 and WiFi 5 class chips for the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequencies respectively. don't get me wrong here, the chips are good quality and work great for "normal" home use (i.e. browse the web, Smart TVs, phones etc) but just don't get your hopes high, when it comes to a gpon connection, not even close. I'd say that for anything beyond 200-300 mbps maybe a little more with a bit of tuning and the optimal devices/conditions (approx) you're realistically gonna need either a external wifi access point ideally with a sim slot as backup connection as well if you're a end user (best solution) or simply a superior product if you're a isp (best budget) otherwise you'll be stuck to the ethernet (as you always should though for any serious task btw). anyway, at least on the upside it comes with external antennas (although fixed and not replaceable) which are always a small improvement over the usual internal ones and the coverage and more importantly the stability and compatibility even with old legacy devices were great just obviously don't expect gigabit kind of speeds here.

for those that might not know the vast majority of these kind of devices are in reality just tiny linux boxes built with the specific silicon provided tools for the board and then written ("flashed") into the embedded rom chip to bootstrap and start up the machine from there in a fashion somehow similar to a live cd or pxe boot in a it environment hence why the amount of ram here matters as much since that's really where this runs. as commented before with just 16 MiB of rom space there's really no much to "do" (store) here beside the strictly necessary (and even so highly compressed) to get the job done so there's no extra backup and/or debug images stored within the rom in this case and then the firmware just comes down to the usual uboot, kernel and rootfs sections plus other two small sections for the custom defaults along with the user settings and device related identification that will finally run on the device. once everything up and running in whole rounded (approx) numbers, the rom region and kernel itself will take up 32 MiB, the devices and related services other 32 MiB and the system itself round 128 MiB which typically then leaves the device with some ~64 MiB of user space available memory to run anything else. as for the system itself as usual with this kind of devices it just revolves around a single proprietary service that then basically controls everything else according to some cfg settings that then get stored on its respective rom section on any changes, nothing really remarkable there, just the usual stuff you'd expect here. the network stack is also obviously dual IPv4 and IPv6 as it couldn't be otherwise by today standards.

finally note that the selling point of this device for me is that although the whole proprietary firmware is obviously not publicly available at least a fair open source portion of it is in some sort of sdk that allows with some skill (that I will not detail here) to build your own and then customize and enhance it to pretty much operate it as any other linux device of your own. that alone it's what really makes it worth as for other than that kind of work it probably makes no sense to replace your provider router since it doesn't really bring any benefit.
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