Fibre to the Premises

Author
Discussion

Greenmantle

Original Poster:

1,472 posts

115 months

Monday 20th May
quotequote all
In preparation I thought I would ask those that already have FTTP what there setup is after the ONT.
Obviously I could use a basic network switch but I would need DHCP and maybe other things - firewall, VPN?

My current broadband router is staying put. It is very old and I want to use my current line as a backup.
I can do this since the house is wired and I can run separate LANS to every room.

The FTTP set should also include a 3 node WIFI mesh setup. ( The current setup I will disable WIFI).
BTW Draytek is my current supplier so I have most knowledge on their kit. WIll definitely consider others.

x5tuu

12,141 posts

194 months

Monday 20th May
quotequote all
ONT into the provider supplied router, which is sent to modem-only mode.

The modem then is cabled into my master Eero 7 Pro and in turn connected in a mesh to 2 other Eero 7 (non-pro) devices dotted around the house.

I do use the Ethernet outputs on the modem to feed the master sockets in the house too - worked seamlessly for a couple of years now.

Mr Pointy

11,844 posts

166 months

Monday 20th May
quotequote all
Greenmantle said:
My current broadband router is staying put. It is very old and I want to use my current line as a backup.
I can do this since the house is wired and I can run separate LANS to every room.
Do you mean you are going to have a second connection via FTTP & keep paying for the old VDSL line as well?

Greenmantle

Original Poster:

1,472 posts

115 months

Monday 20th May
quotequote all
Mr Pointy said:
Greenmantle said:
My current broadband router is staying put. It is very old and I want to use my current line as a backup.
I can do this since the house is wired and I can run separate LANS to every room.
Do you mean you are going to have a second connection via FTTP & keep paying for the old VDSL line as well?
keep the VDSL for about 3 / 6 months since I work from home so £20 a month seems a small price to pay for peace of mind.

normalbloke

7,714 posts

226 months

Monday 20th May
quotequote all
Greenmantle said:
Mr Pointy said:
Greenmantle said:
My current broadband router is staying put. It is very old and I want to use my current line as a backup.
I can do this since the house is wired and I can run separate LANS to every room.
Do you mean you are going to have a second connection via FTTP & keep paying for the old VDSL line as well?
keep the VDSL for about 3 / 6 months since I work from home so £20 a month seems a small price to pay for peace of mind.
I kept my old BT FTTC connection running for a few months, alongside the new Toob FTTP, for exactly the same reasons.

Funk

26,573 posts

216 months

Monday 20th May
quotequote all
Greenmantle said:
Mr Pointy said:
Greenmantle said:
My current broadband router is staying put. It is very old and I want to use my current line as a backup.
I can do this since the house is wired and I can run separate LANS to every room.
Do you mean you are going to have a second connection via FTTP & keep paying for the old VDSL line as well?
keep the VDSL for about 3 / 6 months since I work from home so £20 a month seems a small price to pay for peace of mind.
I'm with Zen and they provide a FritzBox 7530 which has the ability to failover to a USB 4/5G dongle in the event of a drop in the FTTP premises; that happened quite a bit in the early days as I was one of the first in the area to take up the offer but it's been far more stable over the last year or so. I just have a Smarty SIM in the dongle which I add credit to (£20 for unlimited data for a month).

Durzel

12,459 posts

175 months

Monday 20th May
quotequote all
Are you buying "wires only" or not?

If it's a normal install, you'll be provided with equipment which you can either then have something else behind, or plug your equipment directly into that (which wouldn't work with your backup circuit)

Mr Pointy

11,844 posts

166 months

Monday 20th May
quotequote all
Funk said:
Greenmantle said:
Mr Pointy said:
Greenmantle said:
My current broadband router is staying put. It is very old and I want to use my current line as a backup.
I can do this since the house is wired and I can run separate LANS to every room.
Do you mean you are going to have a second connection via FTTP & keep paying for the old VDSL line as well?
keep the VDSL for about 3 / 6 months since I work from home so £20 a month seems a small price to pay for peace of mind.
I'm with Zen and they provide a FritzBox 7530 which has the ability to failover to a USB 4/5G dongle in the event of a drop in the FTTP premises; that happened quite a bit in the early days as I was one of the first in the area to take up the offer but it's been far more stable over the last year or so. I just have a Smarty SIM in the dongle which I add credit to (£20 for unlimited data for a month).
I'd have said that was better idea given that the FTTP connection & the VDSL line might well go back to the same cabinet.

biggiles

1,836 posts

232 months

Monday 20th May
quotequote all
If your existing broadband router is good/fast/capable, and has a WAN port, you can unplug the broadband, and plug the fibre into the router.

No change to existing users/kit. If there's an outage, then just plug the broadband/phone line back in.

But usually the provider will bend over backwards to provide a router...

ffc

680 posts

166 months

Monday 20th May
quotequote all
My ONT connects to a Fortigate firewall that does the PPP to the ISP. There's a switched network behind that which is way too complex for a domestic environment but it's what I do for a living and I like playing with the set-up. The fibre is from Cityfibre and they are wholesaling to the ISP. The only issue I had was finding the VLAN tag that the ISP was using across the Cityfibre network for the WAN interface on the firewall.

Edited by ffc on Monday 20th May 18:07

frisbee

5,154 posts

117 months

Monday 20th May
quotequote all
biggiles said:
If your existing broadband router is good/fast/capable, and has a WAN port, you can unplug the broadband, and plug the fibre into the router.

No change to existing users/kit. If there's an outage, then just plug the broadband/phone line back in.

But usually the provider will bend over backwards to provide a router...
That's what I did, I couldn't be bothered to go around and fiddle with everything.

I still had to play around with the settings in the router to get it to do router-y things off the WAN port.

LooneyTunes

7,586 posts

165 months

Tuesday 21st May
quotequote all
What you need to have to allow failover between the two is a dual WAN router.

For a while I was running a unifi USG with WAN1 hooked up to the the FTTP modem and WAN2 to a BT ADSL, via a third party modem (Drayton Vigor 130). Switch/Wi-Fi all hung off the back of the USG.

Upgraded the USG to a UDM Pro (USG tops out at iirc 250 meg and my fibre is faster) but have binned the ADSL as it wasn’t proving necessary.

Neither the USG nor Draytel have been used for a few years (still sat in my cabinet) a long with a unifi could key. I don’t know how easy the unifi stuff would be to return to factory settings/unpair but if they might be of use to you I’ll gladly have a look as otherwise they’ll just end up going for recycling at some point.

Supersam83

799 posts

152 months

Tuesday 21st May
quotequote all
Zen Internet 900Mbps to ONT to FritzBox 7530 which is connected to an ASUS ZenWifi AX (XT8) mesh system with 5 boxes dotted around the house (3 storey mid townhouse).

I get 500Mbps wifi speed consistently throughout the house with no dead zones.


Ken_Code

1,566 posts

9 months

Tuesday 21st May
quotequote all
The fibre here terminates in a fibre modem which then plugs directly into the Ethernet port in the wall next to it.

Each floor of the house then has a Ubiquity Unifi access point to provide WiFi access.

thr32

100 posts

147 months

Wednesday 22nd May
quotequote all
Morning all,

x5tuu said:
ONT into the provider supplied router, which is sent to modem-only mode.

The modem then is cabled into my master Eero 7 Pro and in turn connected in a mesh to 2 other Eero 7 (non-pro) devices dotted around the house.

I do use the Ethernet outputs on the modem to feed the master sockets in the house too - worked seamlessly for a couple of years now.
One snippet to add in case it helps anyone - the connection between the ONT and your router is a standard network cable, so you can use existing network wiring (but not through a switch) to give you flexibility on where to place your router, which may make it easier to find a compromise between your existing setup and the possibilities for ONT location.

TH

Ken_Code

1,566 posts

9 months

Wednesday 22nd May
quotequote all
thr32 said:
One snippet to add in case it helps anyone - the connection between the ONT and your router is a standard network cable, so you can use existing network wiring (but not through a switch) to give you flexibility on where to place your router, which may make it easier to find a compromise between your existing setup and the possibilities for ONT location.

TH
If you could answer this in a way a keen amateur could understand, I’d very much appreciate it…

Why can there not be a switch between the fibre box and the Ethernet network?

I tried to put one between so that I could have both my Sky Router attached and my wired network (my Sky box hates any WiFi other than the one from the Sky Router, so needs to remain for that), and as you say, it didn’t work.

8bit

5,003 posts

162 months

Wednesday 22nd May
quotequote all
Greenmantle said:
In preparation I thought I would ask those that already have FTTP what there setup is after the ONT.
Obviously I could use a basic network switch but I would need DHCP and maybe other things - firewall, VPN?

My current broadband router is staying put. It is very old and I want to use my current line as a backup.
I can do this since the house is wired and I can run separate LANS to every room.

The FTTP set should also include a 3 node WIFI mesh setup. ( The current setup I will disable WIFI).
BTW Draytek is my current supplier so I have most knowledge on their kit. WIll definitely consider others.
You may find your old Draytek won't work with FTTP - my old Vigor 2830n wouldn't work with Zen/CityFibre so I made do with the Technicolor thing Zen set when I joined.

I replaced the Technicolor router last week with a Ubiquiti Cloud Gateway Ultra, it supports multiple WAN connections and has no built-in WiFi which is perfect for me as I just use it with my existing TPLink Deco mesh stuff. The Cloud Gateway Ultra has a 2.5Gbps connection dedicated for your primary WAN link, that'll go direct into the fibre box (modem, media converter, whatever it is) and there's another four 1Gbps LAN ports, one of which can be reconfigured to be your secondary WAN connection. My LAN is currently based around cheap Netgear unmanaged switches - an 8 port one connected direct to the Ubiquiti, then a number of other 4 and 8-port ones, the TPLink mesh nodes and some devices around the house connected back through a patch panel to the main switch. Works well for us but I'll be upgrading the switches and probably mesh/APs to Ubiquiti stuff over time.

thr32

100 posts

147 months

Wednesday 22nd May
quotequote all
Ken_Code said:
If you could answer this in a way a keen amateur could understand, I’d very much appreciate it…

Why can there not be a switch between the fibre box and the Ethernet network?

I tried to put one between so that I could have both my Sky Router attached and my wired network (my Sky box hates any WiFi other than the one from the Sky Router, so needs to remain for that), and as you say, it didn’t work.
I'll try... your router has an upstream connection to the internet (WAN) and any number of downstream connections to the local network (LAN). It has to be the point where the internet comes into your network (so ONT -> router -> everything else). My point was that you can put the router anywhere you want (within reason/100m) as long as you can get Cat5e/6 from the ONT to the router. If you have a cable installed between the ONT and your Sky router, that could be all the router you need.

Hope that helps.

TH

spants

1,073 posts

234 months

Friday 24th May
quotequote all
I use Trooli and their residential packages "force" you to use their router with the ONT.
However it is possible to grab the credentials and do things in a better way....

I use OPNsense firewall running on Proxmox with Pihole/Adguard and a lot of other stuff now.