BT Broadband-Only Ultrafast (900mbps)

NigelUX

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Hi, after finally deciding to dump our Virgin services my cursor is currently hovering over the "check out" button to sign up to BT broadband for their 900mbps FTTP (BT upgraded the estate we're on during the first lockdown last year, 12 months ahead of schedule. Win!) service.

We don't intend to take their digital voice service (or any other bolt-on's they may offer) and will port our existing landline number to my sipgate account and I'll hopefully be able to use one of the redundant Cisco ATA's I've got in my pile of might-be-useful-in-the-future-bits in the garage to use to convert our existing DECT handsets into a pseudo-VoIP handset to cover our limited voice requirments.

Given I have a very well tuned Unifi wireless and wired setup and the house is groaning under the weight of Cat6A cabling I put in last year, can I safely ignore whatever useless Wifi hub/router thing they send me and connect my OPNsense firewall direct into the ONT, wherever the engineer decides to fit that? Are there any gotchas (like MAC address spoofing etc) that I need to be aware of when it goes live as I assume the BT engineer will probably not want to encourage anything outside of their standard setup?
 
BT couldn't care less what you connect to the ONT. However, once the Openreach enginner comes he will connect BT's router to the ONT to make sure everything works as it should and the speeds are as ordered. Once the Engineer has left, you're free to connect your own equipment to the ONT as long as it supports PPPoE authentication. FYI for obvious reasons BT/Openreach will ask you to connect their router for troubleshooting purposes should you have any issues on the line, so i would just keep BT's kit as a spare rather than binning it or setting it on fire on bonfire night.
 
Ah, excellent, thanks for that. Hoped it would be as simple as swapping the firewall in. Vrigin's support people could never seem to get to grips with their cable modem/router being set to modem only mode, even though they still had visibility of it in that mode.
 
The BT hub is actually a decent bit of kit, and has hardware offloading, which means it can cope with higher traffic that 1Gb connection allows.


I bought an Asus router when I got my Gb broadband and my speed dropped 50Mb compared to the BT router, and it wasn’t notably quicker over WiFi either.
 
I am currently with Virgin Media. I have in fact used cable broadband since the days of Diamond Cable/NTL. I currently have the 500Mb service, plus I have one cable TV box with the MaxIT TV package for an elderly family member. I pay for the TV package + broadband and my family member pays for a BT landline. I feel that I could probably knock £40-£50 pound a month off our combined costs, by switching to BT 900Mb FTTP and basic TV package. This would also get me a faster speed and of course the future proofing of a fibre connection.

I have one or two questions I am trying to answer with respect to the BT Full Fibre service, but having googled am still not 100% convinced I have the correct answer(s). Hence, would appreciate any help/comments offered on this forum.

My first and burning question relates to how the fibre optic cabling is connected to the house. It is not clear to me if it would come from the telegraph pole (which feeds our current fixed line copper wire phone) or if the cable comes from a hole in the ground on the street???

I ask this because the driveway was re-done a few years back and the front is now all gravelled/brickwork etc. I do not want this digging up/damaged. I did have pvc conduit put under the new driveway which carries the current broadband cable, but I am guessing that BT/OpenReach might not be willing to make use of this channel due to it already carrying a Virgin Media cable!

Any claritification on this subject based on other members experiences would be appreciated.
 
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The other question I have is regards the OpenReach modem point (ONT Optical Network Point).

I currently use my Virgin Media hub 3 in modem only mode + my own ASUS AXE11000 router.

My plan would be to not use the BT Hub, but simply connect the WAN port of my current ASUS router to the broadband socket on the OpenReach ONT.

Is this definitley ok to do ?

I feel silly asking this question as I do in fact have strong knowledge of basic networking, IP and Ethernet protocols. The reason I find myself asking this question is because I'm sure that 20 years ago they used to tell you that routers came in two different flavours. In other words you used a router model which could connect to ADSL modems, or a different model to connect to DSL modems ???? I don't think this applies anymore - but not 100% certain. Hence, just looking for clarification that my current ASUS router which is cuurently connected to Vigin Medias DSL modem will work fine with the OpenReach ADSL Modem.
 
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The other question I have is regards the OpenReach modem point (ONT Optical Network Point).

I currently use my Virgin Media hub 3 in modem only mode + my own ASUS AXE11000 router.

My plan would be to not use the BT Hub, but simply connect the WAN port of my current ASUS router to the broadband socket on the OpenReach ONT.

Is this definitley ok to do ?

I feel silly asking this question as I do in fact have strong knowledge of basic networking, IP and Ethernet protocols. The reason I find myself asking this question is because I'm sure that 20 years ago they used to tell you that routers came in two different flavours. In other words you used a router model which could connect to ADSL modems, or a different model to connect to DSL modems ???? I don't think this applies anymore - but not 100% certain. Hence, just looking for clarification that my current ASUS router which will work fine with the OpenReach Modem.
I can’t answer your previous post but I can’t see any reason you shouldn’t be able to plug your current router straight into the Openreach ONT, it’s what I do with my Netgear one (Shell FTTP)
 
I can’t answer your previous post but I can’t see any reason you shouldn’t be able to plug your current router straight into the Openreach ONT, it’s what I do with my Netgear one (Shell FTTP)
Thankyou for your comments. May I ask, have you had BT fibre broadband for long and do you find it reliable? The one thing I can say about my Virin Media connection is that it's incredibly reliable - very few problems using cable broadband for last 22 years. The main complaint I have with Virgin Media is their unthanthonable pricing which seems to rip off loyal customers.
 
Thankyou for your comments. May I ask, have you had BT fibre broadband for long and do you find it reliable? The one thing I can say about my Virin Media connection is that it's incredibly reliable - very few problems using cable broadband for last 22 years. The main complaint I have with Virgin Media is their unthanthonable pricing which seems to rip off loyal customers.
I’m with Shell but it’s using the openreach fibre. It’s been rock solid for the 3 weeks I’ve had it whereas we would get daily dropouts on fibre to the cabinet.
 
Hence, just looking for clarification that my current ASUS router which is cuurently connected to Vigin Medias DSL modem will work fine with the OpenReach ADSL Modem.
Routers are separate entities to modems. With xDSL that flavour of broadband needs a modem to deliver the connection to the router. Many modems come with the router built in so you will be remembering the days when there were ADSL modem/routers, VDSL modem routers etc.

FTTH (full fibre to an ONT) gives you the connection at the ONT. The ONT is the modem. All you need therefore is a router like the ASUS. If your ISP gives you your connection log-in details you can plug the ASUS WAN port into the NTD. Setup as a router, enter the details and the router will obtain the public IP and that’s it.

If you need to use the ISP device, you won’t be using the modem part of it. You should be plugging its WAN port in the same as for the ASUS. xDSL connections on the device are redundant and not used.

Putting ISP devices in modem mode (bridge mode) is only for xDSL services where you need the modem part to do its job. The synched internet connection is then delivered to your ASUS router rather than internally being passed to the ISP device router.
 
Routers are separate entities to modems. With xDSL that flavour of broadband needs a modem to deliver the connection to the router. Many modems come with the router built in so you will be remembering the days when there were ADSL modem/routers, VDSL modem routers etc.

FTTH (full fibre to an ONT) gives you the connection at the ONT. The ONT is the modem. All you need therefore is a router like the ASUS. If your ISP gives you your connection log-in details you can plug the ASUS WAN port into the NTD. Setup as a router, enter the details and the router will obtain the public IP and that’s it.

If you need to use the ISP device, you won’t be using the modem part of it. You should be plugging its WAN port in the same as for the ASUS. xDSL connections on the device are redundant and not used.

Putting ISP devices in modem mode (bridge mode) is only for xDSL services where you need the modem part to do its job. The synched internet connection is then delivered to your ASUS router rather than internally being passed to the ISP device router.
Thankyou - very much appreciate you're input.
 
I'm looking at moving away from Virgin also, at the moment paying £50+ for 200 and BT are offering 500 for £31 at the moment. I assume I can just plug my Deco Mesh Wi-Fi straight into the ONT thingy once installed and no messing around then ?
Do you need any login details for this ?

I assume they will send an engineer out also to install it all and that is included in the cost ?

Was looking at Vodafone but there deals seems to have ended now.

Really tempted in the 900mbps deal but I'm not sure I really need something that fast....do I ?!?!
 
Do you need any login details for this ?
You need to enter the connection type settings for the WAN ethernet port you plug the cable into from the ONT to the Deco “base” unit which is the router, some are called the gateway. Other units are the nodes and have no capability to set a connection type for their inputs.

Depending on connection type and your ISP a password etc may or may not be required. For FTTH usually not.
 
You need to enter the connection type settings for the WAN ethernet port you plug the cable into from the ONT to the Deco “base” unit which is the router, some are called the gateway. Other units are the nodes and have no capability to set a connection type for their inputs.

Depending on connection type and your ISP a password etc may or may not be required. For FTTH usually not.

Thanks, yeah the first one you setup can be set as WiFi Router Mode or Access Point and then all the others access that one. Would certainly make it easier if I can just plug it in. Thanks
 

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