Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Alex Atkin UK]

There is nothing complicated in here - KISS, always.

As my eyes glaze over at the description of what you are doing. 

[aesmith]

How are you load sharing your Internet connections? 

[niemand]

I was originally planning pfSense however plans are subject to change and I have a better solution.

https://www.silver-peak.com/sites/default/files/userdocs/edgeconnect_host_system_requirements_r8-1_revh_april2018.pdf

I was originally going to have an EC-V behind the pfSense however this way around I've another masterplan I can complete - hosting another instance in the cloud and having my own on-demand VPN service plus a subnet of public IPv4 address space I may consume as I see fit in a DMZ.

A provider is happy to host a VM for me in their Geneva DC and will mostly charge me a base VPS fee alongside bandwidth charges at cost.

It's simpler to configure it via the EC-V and have it doing everything.

Well, it's simpler for me - YMMV.

[Weaver]

> when the brain is cooperating!

It isn’t, in my case, so I might need some help/pointers. For very stupid old people.

Let us know what UPS you have your eye on?

[niemand]

Will do.

Things have been simplified somewhat by that I have minimal chance of being able to have dual-WAN at the new property.

With that in mind this entire thing is put on hold with the exception of the 10G deployment in the home office.

I'm not entirely sure how they are doing it but Openreach appear to literally be building capacity as each unit goes live and no more. The network is perpetually at capacity so no new ONT may be ordered.

I can't be bothered with the hassle and expense of getting a reactive build order placed so if Openreach really have no concept that the odd property may want multiple feeds

Life's too short to debate with some faceless Openreach guy about a restriction that probably doesn't exist given the components come in fixed port counts and it's actually quite impossible for the entire estate to have zero spare ports, it's a flag on a computer screen claiming there are none.

[burakkucat]

I was not surprised to read your latest posting on this subject. 

Hence my request is that you provide updates as the master-plan develops and phases thereof are deployed, please.

[niemand]

To be perfectly honest I can't be bothered with the masterplan. I have better things to do than argue with idiotic infrastructure providers that pinch pennies over ports on PON splitters.

Best guess for new build the charges are per plot and some bean counter insists on no more capacity being made available than the exact number of plots regardless of cost.

Whatever turns them on. BT / Openreach have a long history of being penny-wise and pound-stupid and that evidently continues.

[niemand]

I should clarify. The primary driver behind the 10G upgrade is the need for resilient connectivity at >1G.

In the absence of 2 ONTs and total WAN capacity of over a gigabit it's basically a pointless waste of money.

I am not going to buy it for the sake of it or to play with it. A network this basic won't teach me anything or be any fun to set up.

I'll hook up a 4G dongle as a backup on an active:passive basis.

Hopefully at some point another operator will rock up using PIA or their own kit.

My concerns about being stuck in an Openreach only area have proven true before I even moved in. That likely single figures pounds saved provisioning the bare minimum CBT ports is so worth it.

 

Just to see off a possible criticism nothing to do with optical budgets. Pretty close to the exchange, 4 PONs required on standard planning rules so should be loads of ports free or they're running PONs with zero spares and a fibre break will result in far more expense than necessary.

Purely some planning rules written by someone with a rod up their hindmost per Openreach / BT / Post Office Telephones standard. Laughable that overprovisioning routinely done for copper but not optical.

Plus ca change, plus la meme chose.

[Weaver]

Let me know how you get on with 4G dongle ?

[niemand]

Not a huge amount to say about that one but will let you know for sure.

[Weaver]

I’m stuck at the moment with only a 3G dongle because of the limitations of various 4G dongles : they’re NAT, I can’t live with NAT; not speaking PPPoE, which my connected router prefers (dongle is plugged into a Firebrick FB2900 router). The interface between a 3G dongle and a connected router seems ideal for the Firebrick’s preferences.

[Chrysalis]

Is the firebrick supplied in a way to lock people into aaisp services?  As all of the things you just described are essentially whats keeping you at aaisp.

Now I love aaisp, however I dont think I love them enough that it would make me use ADSL with them over a much superior technology for a primary internet connection..

However maybe the firebrick is capable of more than you describe.

Have you tried these things.

1 - Asking aaisp if they can do a 4g dongle, it seems a logical step that they should be able to manage if they can do 3g.
2 - If they cannot do it is there a way to utilise another provider's 4g and routing the traffic via the firebrick still.

Surely the firebrick is not limited to pppoe, because aaisp use it for other things aside from consumer broadband, obviously the NAT thing is a preference but I have learnt over the years, NAT is not as bad as it seemed to originally be.  Also if you are prepared to only use 4g on a single device, you should be able to disable NAT e.g. I have managed to use my EE 4G routed direct without NAT, it involved rooting the phone (which was already done), and messing with some firewall rules.

[niemand]

Ah, I see.

So I can easily run a combination of NAT and NO-NAT via anything as I can use my own software either side of connection.

Per earlier discussions I can have a PA range if I want but some NAT doesn't really concern so no need to worry either way.

Unfortunately not applicable to your situation, Weaver, where you are entirely dependent on A&A.

The PPPoE part, however, you can run that over anything. You will be getting some kind of IP address to encapsulate the PPP session within and get it to A&A as the mobile operator aren't going to be inspecting PPPoE. They'll use an IP network to send all your traffic to A&A encapsulated in whatever the Firebrick puts around it. I doubt A&A quite have the scale to be running their own MVNO with own RAN, etc, but am happy to be wrong.

It's probably the same kinda way L2TP customers connect.

[Weaver]

> Is the firebrick supplied in a way to lock people into aaisp services?  As all of the things you just described are essentially whats keeping you at aaisp.

No :-)

I’m with AA because I just love them. And can’t imagine going elsewhere. And I’ve only recently had the dongle and was a customer for many years without. They would like to sell Bricks to as many users as possible and I believe some other ISPs use Firebricks. Some AA users iirc may be using two different ISPs bonded together by a Firebrick, for reliability.

They can support a 4G dongle but the support website says that this requires putting the dongle into a mode where it acts like a home gateway/home user router, and does unwanted NATing of traffic. I just need a dongle to be a modem, and just pass PPP frames straight through, so that IPv4 and IPv6 traffic is completely unmolested.

Since the dongle is only used in a failover situation, once in a blue moon, then I decided that because if the hassle, I would have to stick with 3G mode which acts as a PPPoE modem.

Firebricks are sold by AA, by Watchfront and by Firebrick Ltd which iirc is a joint venture owned by Watchfront and Firebrick both. If I have got this wrong, then I’m hoping someone will correct me. Watchfront itself is another ISP and so there’s one immediate example of a Firebrick being used with a non-AA ISP 

[Chrysalis]

Yeah as Carl pointed out you can mix NAT with no NAT, so a NAT'd 4g wouldnt force ADSL to be also NAT'd.