I hate most BT Homehubs and Business Hubs, but I hate this one with a vengeance. I would like to bin it and replace with a router of my choice. It is a BT Infinity set up with the extra box - can I put in a third party ADSL router as a direct replacement or do I still have to use the BT box as the modem ?

You need a VDSL modem. The following was a review of integrated modems / routers back in January (so it's probably out of date !!!)
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php...dsl-modem.html

Brian

I got myself a TP-Link 9980 VDSL modem (as I particularly like TP-Link's firmware) but I cannot get it to work. When I look at the status page it looks like it's connected OK and I see bytes going up and down, but it's not actually on the internet. It's definitely connected as VDSL. Anyone here using one of these - I notice that BT sell them so I assume they work with Infinity.

Home Hub 5

I assume that's a recommendation for the HH5 rather then the TPLink. Only problem is I use TPLinks a lot in different locations where I provide support and I am very familiar with their firmware

I would fire up the old BT router temporarily and see if that connects, just to confirm the line is still working. Then go through the set-up of the BT router and compare it with the set-up of the TP-Link just to make sure that the TP-Link is configured correctly.

In particular things like any username and password needed to log into BT's system and the IP config of the WAN side.

If you have a dynamic WAN IP address and the TP Link isn't being allocated one then that suggests it's either not connecting properly or the BT server is failing to recognise it for some reason.

If you have a static IP address check it's been set up correctly.

I had the same issue with my 9980, you have to set it to Annex A Only and not A/B..

http://i.imgur.com/iCyA0Bz.png

the HH5 is so uncomplicated a 3 year old could use it.