Got a Vodafone Ireland Home Broadband Router? Make These Changes

If you do and you’ve experienced issues then you should consider doing the following three things:

Confirm It Is A EchoLife HG556a

Browse to this Vodafone Ireland page and get the advanced configuration username and password.  They should be:

User name: admin

Password: VF-IRhg556

Log into the router (probably http://192.168.1.1) using those credentials.  That should open the Device Info page.  If the product name is EchoLife HG556a then you should consider doing the next two steps.

Update The Firmware

You’ll find a link and instructions for this on the Vodafone Ireland page.

I found (it might be a coincidence) that my slow home broadband browsing issue seems to be gone afterwards.  I’m not saying that it’s fixed but it’s not present now.  I am not closing my call – there still might be an issue and only testing over a longer time frame will confirm that. 

Change the QoS Setting

I’ve been having issues with streaming media to my XBox from a media PC for a while now.  I decided to browse through the settings on the router to see what the manufacturers/Vodafone Ireland have done.  There is a setting called QoS (Quality of Service).  QoS allows network administrators to slow down certain types of traffic to allow other types to speed up.  Here’s the rub: there is no one size-fits all that works.  I found this setting (Advanced Setup – Enable QoS) was enabled.  I disabled it, saved the setting and rebooted the router.

Now I tested XBox media streaming from a media PC.  It worked like it should do, no delays, no stutters, and the sound was staying in synch with the video.