How to enable ping responses on the Wireless Box II/III/IV

By default, the O2 Wireless Box II/III/IV will not respond to pings coming from the internet. Although blocking pings is seen by some as a security feature, it also prevents a useful method of diagnosing problems with latency. Read on to find out how to enable ping responses on the O2 Wireless Box II/III/IV.

1) Open a Command Prompt and telnet to 192.168.1.254 (Windows Vista and Windows 7 users without telnet, see bottom of page)

2) Log in with Username: SuperUser. The password is either O2Br0ad64nd or the serial number of your router printed on its underside (excluding the bit in brackets).

3) Paste in these lines (use the little icon at the top-left of the Command Prompt window in order to paste):

service system ifadd name=PING_RESPONDER group=wan
saveall
exit

At this point your router should respond to pings from the internet. You can now use such tools as the thinkbroadband Broadband Quality Monitor. Unfortunately however, the O2 Wireless Box II/III/IV is rather lazy at replying to pings, even when the network connection is idle. This leads to some rather "spiky" results which look like a fine-toothed comb. This can make your connection look like it has issues.

Note: In order disable ping replies, repeat these instructions, but in step 3 use the commands:

service system ifdelete name=PING_RESPONDER group=wan
saveall
exit

Special note for Windows Vista and Windows 7 users: telnet is not installed by default. Go to:

Control Panel > Programs > Turn Windows features on or off

Put a tick in "Telnet Client" and click "OK"