Print

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

[displaced]

Hi all!

Just wondering if anyone’s had any experience with YouFibre?

They’re rolling out here in Gravesend over the next couple of months, and I’ve pre-ordered a 500Mbit symmetrical service.  I can cancel any time between now and the install date, so I thought I’d ask if anyone’s used them here.

I’m hoping to find out if I can use my existing pfSense router instead of the YF-supplied eero devices, and also if there’a anything nasty like obnoxious NATing on their network.  They do mention CGNAT on their site, but also has instructions on how to open ports for public access, so perhaps CGNAT isn’t the problem it once was?

[skyeci]

You can use your own kit. It's meant to be coming to my area as well so crossing my finger's it happens..

https://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,26644.msg446663.html#msg446663

[displaced]

I had a good chat with their pre-sales support today.

They do indeed use CGNAT but offer a fixed IPv4 address for £5 per month which can be added/removed at any time.  I’m going to start without and see if I can live without it. I also asked about IPv6 and was told it’ll hopefully be deployed in the next couple of months.

They’ll try to follow the same route into my home as the existing copper — that’s via an overhead cable from a pole in my case.  The pole looks pretty busy, so hopefully there’s room!

They do a VOIP service for £3 (£8 for unlimited calls).  Not planning on taking that, so I suppose the landline will be retired!

[DaveC]

I don't suppose you asked if the IPv6 will be a static prefix or not?  Although I would take IPv6 as "coming soon" with a pinch of salt.

[displaced]

I didn't, no -- but I'll be sure to ask when I chat with them next.  I'm bound to think of a few more questions between now and April!

Yeah -- ISPs in general have a bit of a "tomorrow, forever" attitude to IPv6 (I'm looking at you, Vodafone). But what gives me a little hope is that a) this quite a young ISP, and b) the support person handled my technical queries very well.  Didn't miss a beat over my CGNAT queries, and seemed very knowledgeable.  His full reply re: IPv6 was that it was running within their network already, and that they were in the process of testing the configuration roll-out to their end-user equipment.  Which at the very least, sounds feasible.

[displaced]

Ok, so I asked about IPv6 static prefixes -- they don't know just yet!  They also confirmed that the instructions on their site for setting up port forwards applies only to business lines and residential customers who've paid for a static IP.  So they've not found some magical way to make CGNAT transparent

Thought I'd be cheeky and ask if there was a discount if I didn't need a set of their eero routers.  Sadly not as they like users to have standard equipment to plug back in for fault diagnosis, which is fair enough.  And to be honest, eero's are great bits of kit to have as ISP-supplied equipment.  If I didn't already have a house full of UniFi gear I'd be over the moon with them.

Chances are I'll eventually want to stump up the cash for the static IP, although I still think £5pm is a little cheeky.  Can't complain too much though, given the otherwise really good prices.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Chances are I'll eventually want to stump up the cash for the static IP, although I still think £5pm is a little cheeky.  Can't complain too much though, given the otherwise really good prices.

Its expensive but that's kinda the point, it will put off people getting it who otherwise don't actually need it.

[Mark07]

Its expensive but that's kinda the point, it will put off people getting it who otherwise don't actually need it.

Exactly this.

IPV6 is already live in some areas as well

[Reformed]

It isn't much more than they'll be paying to lease the addresses from Cogent.

[displaced]

Thanks all.

I've just set up a new pfSense box that should handle up to gigabit speeds just fine, so all that's left is to be connected -- sometime in April apparently.  Got one eye on one.network, watching the netomnia roadworks get closer and closer!

Glad to hear IPv6 is already rolling out.  That should really help with things like games consoles (especially the Switch, which even requires a static port on outbound NAT to work.  Ugh.)

I can see why a static v4 address is so (relatively) expensive these days.  And I'll get it if I need it, but it'll be fun to figure out if I can do without. 

I run an OpenVPN server on my pfSense box, set to TCP on port 443 for maximum reachability from far-flung hotels or corp. networks.  I think that's about the only use I had for IPv4 inbound.  I suppose that's not really an issue these days, considering my next trip abroad's probably still a long while away.

[Alex Atkin UK]

You're expecting Nintendo to support IPv6?  They're decades behind everyone else.

As for static IPv4, as long as you have a public IP you can always go the old fashioned way and use DDNS services.  Much better these days as you can use something like Cloudflare to use your own domain name at no extra cost.

[displaced]

Ha, very true.  Well, looks like if I fancy a bit of Mario Kart online I'll be stumping up that extra fiver -- at some point at least.  Ugh, CGNAT's a pain.  An understandable pain, but still. 

Yeah, I currently use Cloudflare DDNS for my current non-CGNAT Vodafone dynamic IPv4.  I'd continue to use that if I choose to pay that £5/month more to YouFibre for the static v4 IP.  I mean, it's not that I want a static IP... I just don't want to be behind CGNAT

Alternatively, I could set up a UK VPS for £1.20/month and set up a site-to-site VPN to there.  That'd give me a publicly-routable IPv4 address which I could route the Switch (and anything else CGNAT-unfriendly with broken IPv6) through to.  Ping times might be ugly though!

[Alex Atkin UK]

I got AAISP L2TP service so that I can have an incoming static IP over Vodafones mobile network, as its pure CGNAT there.   Useful as 4G does up to 35Mbit up vs the 16 of VDSL.

I tried playing around with my VPS, port forwarding over the OpenVPN connection I have to that (so that Webmin is not public facing), but for some reason I couldn't get it to work.  If I tried forwarding to the web server on my NAS at home it would appear to work but then hang.

Its great knowing just enough about networking to get things working sometimes, but then hit roadblocks you don't understand at other times.