MásMóvil, their ZTE F680 and a Synology [now works, see update]

Hi there,

so today I got a nice neat new internet connection for my place. As I am currently living in Spain, I signed up for a fiber connection from MásMóvil, a big ISP here. They offer symetric GPON connections of up to 300MBit/s for as little as 40 EUR a month. I was super excited as I signed up for that. The technician came two days after signing the contract and pulled a fiber cable from my apartment to the distribution panel in the building. That all worked well. Internet is fast, as advertised.

As CPE they hand out a ZTE F680 unit with Gigabit LAN ports, a PON socket, some USB and phone stuff. Pretty standard. Wifi is to AC specs with advertised 1750 cpacity. Anyway, as soon as I removed my trusted LEDE router and put that white box in it's spot, I connected my ethernet devices, changed the wifi password, IP ranges, .... the usual stuff

Now comes the strange part. My XPenology seems to be able to get an IP from the DHCP but I am not able to ping it or connect to it. I tried multiple machines, different LAN ports, wifi network. I also gave it a manual IP address. No chance. As soon as I connect it back to the LEDE router I can access and use the NAS as usual. It seems like the ZTE doesn't like the XPenology N54L HP Microserver. I have found some other people complaining about this as well on a Spanish forum and it seems as there is a firmware bug in the ZTE which prevents the Synology to properly connect to the network. All packets seem to be dropped.

My temporary solution for now is that I am using my secondary LEDE router now as a common access point outting it on the same subnet as the ZTE router. The LEDE is the DHCP server handing out the IPs with the ZTE's IP as default gateway. That works and I can connect to my NAS from my other devices. If I hardwire myself (or connect to the ZTE wifi) I am not able to access the Synology device.

The firmware of the ZTE F680 is V4.0.10 P1T3 ( Hardware version 4.0 )and the XPenology is DM 5.0-4458 Update 2. I am not upgrading this as it stays in my home network only and is not connected to the outside world. Never change a running system ;-) So if you experience the same issue with the ZTE gateway, let me know. Maybe you have found a solution?

As my Spanish is not very good I will not bother with the support as they would probably have no idea anyway.

UPDATE:
My TP-Link Archer C7 died the last week and I was forced to use the ZTE CPE as Router again. Everything is working, the Synology works fine on the LAN ports. There has been some updates to the firmware of the ZTE, the current one now is:

Software Version	ZTEGF6804P1T6
Boot Loader Version	V4.0.10

So they have fixed something since I tried it last time. Good enough!

How turn your Synology NAS into an Airplay Speaker

Hi guys,

long time no post, anyway, here is a new awesome little feature I was able to add to my homemade Synology NAS.

It will add the possibility to receive airplay streams for music and plays them directly to the connected USB speakers!

I am just spreading the word of this, all credit to Lost Carrier! His blog.

1) Make sure the speakers work with Synology by installing the AudioStation and test some files with it.
2) Make sure AudioStation runs after every reboot. This is necessary.
3) Go over to here and grab the latest version of Shairport for Synology. Maybe the author will add it to the Syno Community Packets soon, too.
4) Install the packet.
5) If you don't know which architektur you are on, log onto your Synology with ssh and enter this as root account, password is the same as ethe admin passowrd for the web GUI. Google if you don't know how to log on wih ssh.

uname -a

This should show you the CPU/architektur type! Grab the right packet and enjoy!

To controll the volume, go over to the AudioStation and use the Volumebar there in case it is not loud enough! Worked for me. Put it to full retard :-) and then use the iPhone/iPad or whatever to reduce again to good level via Airplay.

I am using this combined with TuneBlade to stream my music to my high-end speakers from Bowers&Wilkins, which are USB-connected to get the best sound from. As I don't want my Ultrabook to be connected to those while roaming through my flat, this is the best option for me enjoying wireless high quality audio from my Windows 7 machine!