Advice Sought - Full fibre install connected to current LAN

[bradders]

Hi All,

Hope someone can offer me some advice. I am planning to add, if possible, a full fibre connection to my existing LAN.

Currently, I have a Draytek Vigor router (2860), connected to the BT phoneline, supplying their Infinity internet. The router provides DHCP to the home LAN (extensive wired connections) and wifi via a Draytek mesh. Router is connected to the main switch (Draytek P2261), and all connections are passed through the switch, including the mesh wifi.

The phone line to the house is at the centre/rear of the house. It passes under the floor, and up into an office and from there into the rack cab, and into the Draytek router.

My understanding is that a full fibre install (likely Vodafone with the 4G backup) will locate a new fibre modem on the internal wall closest to the fibre ingress to the house. I have hard wired CAT6 from there to the office, and was wondering..........

Is it a simple case of connecting the full fibre router/modem to the Draytek WAN port via the CAT6, and unplugging the phone line, and maintain the Draytek DHCP so that all existing items on the LAN do not need to be reconfigured? I assume I will need to turn off DCHP services on the fibre router/modem?

All and any suggestions welcome - I have a lot of devices connected on the LAN (inc smart home, and home assistant devices), and preferrably would like to leave all assignments as they are.

[JimbobVFR]

Yes it's exactly that. The ONT as it's known needs a power supply and an ethernet cable to your router.

[bradders]

JimbobVFR said:

Yes it's exactly that. The ONT as it's known needs a power supply and an ethernet cable to your router.

Thank you and much appreciated.

Any issues you can think of jointing the CAT6? The existing cable runs to the garage (was put in for solar/battery use), and is spare. I can joint it (coupler) and then into the office that way. Or better to pull a new cable through from the front of the house, under the floor and directly into the office (care taken, splits etc)? Any preferable coupler if that way is OK?

[varsas]

bradders said:

JimbobVFR said:

Yes it's exactly that. The ONT as it's known needs a power supply and an ethernet cable to your router.

Thank you and much appreciated.

Any issues you can think of jointing the CAT6? The existing cable runs to the garage (was put in for solar/battery use), and is spare. I can joint it (coupler) and then into the office that way. Or better to pull a new cable through from the front of the house, under the floor and directly into the office (care taken, splits etc)? Any preferable coupler if that way is OK?

A coupler is sort of OK, but is a point of weakness. It could rust if moisture gets in etc. I am also assuming the total cable run is not too long. The specs say 100m, realistically you need less than 90m for it to cause no issues. If the run is longer you need to run a new cable or put a switch where you are planning to put the coupler.

[outnumbered]

bradders said:

JimbobVFR said:

Yes it's exactly that. The ONT as it's known needs a power supply and an ethernet cable to your router.

Thank you and much appreciated.

Any issues you can think of jointing the CAT6? The existing cable runs to the garage (was put in for solar/battery use), and is spare. I can joint it (coupler) and then into the office that way. Or better to pull a new cable through from the front of the house, under the floor and directly into the office (care taken, splits etc)? Any preferable coupler if that way is OK?

Another thing to consider is what your new ISP will provide. As well as the ONT box that terminates the fibre, they will typically provide their own router. You probably want to use your existing router in place of this, so it will likely need some reconfiguration (e.g. depending if your ISP uses PPPoE or IP/DHCP for the WAN link). Check first that whichever ISP you pick allows the use of a 3rd party router, most do, but will say you're on your own for support.

[devnull]

The key thing here is whether your ISP will support you using your own router, you might need to check.

For example, I am with Truespeed who largely dominate the Southwest for fibre and for the longest time they did not permit you to use your own router on their residential package. However they started offering support last year and I made the switch (and the service has been faultless over the last 12 months). They push a config change to your ONT.

[LooneyTunes]

bradders said:

My understanding is that a full fibre install (likely Vodafone with the 4G backup) will locate a new fibre modem on the internal wall closest to the fibre ingress to the house. I have hard wired CAT6 from there to the office, and was wondering..........

I generally find that Openreach engineers are pretty helpful. If you want the fibre run differently then they can sometimes be persuaded to do so. There’s a joint box goes on the wall outside before the internal connection is made, so they do have a bit of flexibility.

(Mine runs around the outside of the house to the external connection box, then in under the floor to my comms cabinet. I\d put a drawline in place from the wall to the cabinet and OR were more than happy to drag it through that way.)

[Swervin_Mervin]

LooneyTunes said:

bradders said:

My understanding is that a full fibre install (likely Vodafone with the 4G backup) will locate a new fibre modem on the internal wall closest to the fibre ingress to the house. I have hard wired CAT6 from there to the office, and was wondering..........

I generally find that Openreach engineers are pretty helpful. If you want the fibre run differently then they can sometimes be persuaded to do so. There’s a joint box goes on the wall outside before the internal connection is made, so they do have a bit of flexibility.

(Mine runs around the outside of the house to the external connection box, then in under the floor to my comms cabinet. I\d put a drawline in place from the wall to the cabinet and OR were more than happy to drag it through that way.)

Yeah the OR engineers are reasonably accommodating. You can also pay for a more premium installation and they will fit the line wherever you want (within reason) and will also cable internally up to a specified maximum distance (I can't recall the details sorry).

[8bit]

[quote=bradders]My understanding is that a full fibre install (likely Vodafone with the 4G backup) will locate a new fibre modem on the internal wall closest to the fibre ingress to the house. I have hard wired CAT6 from there to the office, and was wondering..........

Is it a simple case of connecting the full fibre router/modem to the Draytek WAN port via the CAT6, and unplugging the phone line, and maintain the Draytek DHCP so that all existing items on the LAN do not need to be reconfigured? I assume I will need to turn off DCHP services on the fibre router/modem?/quote]

If going with Vodafone then won't that be CityFibre? I couldn't get my own Draytek router (old Vigor 2830n) to work with our CityFibre connection to Zen Internet. Ended up using the Technicolor thing Zen sent us for now. In physical terms, as said above there's a small box which converts the fibre presentation from the street into copper ethernet which then connects direct to the WAN port on the router but there must be more to it than that - I think I asked in a thread here on PH and it was suggested that a call to the ISP would put it right but I personally wasn't that attached to the Draytek so never bothered.

Saying all that I may have to revisit that soon as I'm now thinking about rebuilding my whole network (pretty similar setup to you by the sounds of it) to Ubiquiti, but that's for another thread.

[LooneyTunes]

Swervin_Mervin said:

Yeah the OR engineers are reasonably accommodating. You can also pay for a more premium installation and they will fit the line wherever you want (within reason) and will also cable internally up to a specified maximum distance (I can't recall the details sorry).

If you just ask them nicely, and make their life easy, they’ll usually accommodate without charging.

8bit]radders said:

My understanding is that a full fibre install (likely Vodafone with the 4G backup) will locate a new fibre modem on the internal wall closest to the fibre ingress to the house. I have hard wired CAT6 from there to the office, and was wondering..........

Is it a simple case of connecting the full fibre router/modem to the Draytek WAN port via the CAT6, and unplugging the phone line, and maintain the Draytek DHCP so that all existing items on the LAN do not need to be reconfigured? I assume I will need to turn off DCHP services on the fibre router/modem?/quote]

If going with Vodafone then won't that be CityFibre? I couldn't get my own Draytek router (old Vigor 2830n) to work with our CityFibre connection to Zen Internet. Ended up using the Technicolor thing Zen sent us for now. In physical terms, as said above there's a small box which converts the fibre presentation from the street into copper ethernet which then connects direct to the WAN port on the router but there must be more to it than that - I think I asked in a thread here on PH and it was suggested that a call to the ISP would put it right but I personally wasn't that attached to the Draytek so never bothered.

Saying all that I may have to revisit that soon as I'm now thinking about rebuilding my whole network (pretty similar setup to you by the sounds of it) to Ubiquiti, but that's for another thread.

It’s a 2 part install with OR. Box outside is fibre-to-fibre, with a second box inside that does fibre-copper. It’s dead easy to go from that to the WAN port of a Ubiquiti gateway (I run mine via a UDM SE)

[quinny100]

Pretty sure the Vodafone FTTP with mobile backup uses their router to signal to the network to bring up the mobile connection to do the failover between fibre and mobile - makes sense really otherwise you could just hammer the mobile all the time in another location when your fibre is up.

Draytek can do failover to mobile itself with a USB dongle, but won’t do the signaling bit to the ISP. You’d need to source your own mobile SIM.