BYOD Fibre Router - good idea?

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PaulL

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#288192 12-Jun-2021 17:48

I'm currently on Farmside for wireless - moved across from Vodafone 8 months ago. Fibre is finally coming to our street, so I'll move to a fibre plan. Farmside don't do faster than 100Mbps, but will let me switch back to Vodafone without an early disconnect fee. Vodafone aren't my favourite due to the general pain of their customer service, but avoiding a disconnect charge is reason enough not to move to another ISP.

Looking at the website, I can pay $69 per month with my own modem, or $73 per month with their modem. I have a unifi wireless setup in the house - I wouldn't use the wifi router portion of a new modem. $4 a month isn't much money ($100 over 24 months), I don't think I can buy a fibre modem for $100, so I would probably be best going with the Vodafone modem?

I gather that Vodafone may have oversubscription issues, so in moving to Fibre Max I may not actually get the speeds promised. But probably better than 100Mbps I assume? What is people's experience there? Is it different by location, or pretty consistent across the country? I WfH a fair bit, and MS Teams with multiple video streams might benefit from more than 100Mbps (or then again, 100Mbps might be fine - I'd just like to be with an ISP where I have the choice of an upgrade if I need).

Any other fish hooks I should look out for before I sign up?

cokemaster

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#2727736 12-Jun-2021 18:04

I’m now with Vodafone Broadband after pulling my services from 2D. Service and pricing has been great, haven’t had the need to contact the tech support so far.

The Vodafone modem is ‘ok’ but fairly basic in features. Personally I purchased a Fritzbox and use that instead as it allows me to delegate IPv6 prefixes. I’d strongly recommend taking up their superwifi offer which they offer at no cost (24 month contract) - it provides a significantly better wireless experience.

In terms of ‘oversubscription’ - I regularly get 800mbps+ down and 450mbps up and haven’t had any performance impacts. You’ll probably find 100mbps is fine for teams and other stuff, just be aware of the limited upload, that can impact your screen sharing, video calling performance if it’s being maxed out. 1000/500 solves that by just providing surplus bandwidth but if you only have 10/20mbps upload, a onedrive/Google drive upload could ruin things.

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PaulL

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#2727738 12-Jun-2021 18:12

My wifi is fine - I've got 4 unifi devices that are hard wired. The UAP-AC-PRO on paper does 1300Mbps. It's wifi, it won't really do that, but it'll do more than 100Mbps, and we're spread through a few rooms. They wouldn't be the bottleneck on a 100Mbps connection, they might be on a 1Gbps connection. I'd be happy with a solid 200Mbps up and down. My servers are on a wired gigabit connection, and once on wifi I'm going to look into cloud backup, so that might benefit from a bit more speed.

Does Vodafone offer ipv6 over their network? I thought they didn't. They definitely don't on 4G, as I was looking into that as a solution to the CG-NAT and lack of a static IP.

Looks like a fritzbox would set me back $410 at pbtech. Not sure I want ipv6 enough to pay that much. What other benefits might I get with a BYO modem?

Delorean

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#2727739 12-Jun-2021 18:20

Maybe get a MikroTik Router, they are well priced and you can keep your existing WiFi Setup

https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/NETMKT1192/MikroTik-RB750R2-RouterBOARD-Five-Port-Router

Referral Link: | Quic Broadband (use R142206E0L2CR for free setup)

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#2727740 12-Jun-2021 18:21

Vodafone does offer IPv6 and they assign a public IP address. Static IP is about $5 per month.

I do have a surplus fritzbox 7530 working on sleepout duty that I could pretty much give away (let’s say $40 including courier costs) if you are interested.

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PaulL

91 posts

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#2727746 12-Jun-2021 18:29

I see the 7530 struggles with Gb. I guess ultimately the question is whether there's any reason not to use the Vodafone ultra hub. Looks like it supports IPV6, and I wouldn't use the wifi side of it and turn off dhcp (I have a pihole and a unifi usg on the network). A static IP might be nice, $5 isn't too much. I used to run servers that were internet accessible, but I don't really have any need for that any more, I guess only if I wanted to remote into the network to fix something when not home (which I can't do at the moment).

As an aside, I also suspect, when thinking about it, the USG may become a bottleneck too. I don't think it'll run Gb with packet inspection turned on.

In regards the MicroTik, that looks to be an ethernet router. I have a 24 port Gb router already.

My issue is the fibre modem and whether I'm better to just pay the $4 per month and use Vodafone's (which I assume will be a Huawei, and therefore will be cheap but also somewhat suck), or buy one. My brief look said that there aren't a lot of fibre modems out there, and they come with a bunch of functionality I'd never use. None of them look to have any particular claim to do fibre modem duties better than any other, and none of them look like I could buy them for less than the $48 Vodafone will charge me in total over 12 months.

Am I missing anything, or is that the default decision?

shk292

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#2727757 12-Jun-2021 19:29

Funny that this is the second thread today where people believe they need a modem for a fibre connection.

It's really simple - for fibre, you don't need a modem (modulator-demodulator, used for converting digital signals to analogue tones used on a voice line). The connection is ONT to router

PaulL

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#2727759 12-Jun-2021 19:42

Hmm. That's super interesting. I have a USG, so I can connect that directly to the ONT? Makes sense, but I hadn't thought about it that way. I guess I'd assumed that something must hold a username/password for the connection to Vodafone, but I guess I'm used to 4G with a SIM card, or ADSL with a logon. If there's no need for something to hold a session with Vodafone, then makes sense that the ONT is already providing me an ethernet with the internet on the end of it.

EDIT: yeah, I knew fibre isn't a modem as such, but everyone calls the box that connects you to the internet a modem whether it's actually modulating. I guess arguably the ONT is modulating light, but whatever. Strictly speaking a 4G modem isn't really a modem either, other than in the broadest terms. It's a radio.

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cokemaster

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#2727765 12-Jun-2021 20:15

As long as your gateway supports VLAN 10 tagging and DHCP, you are good to go. A lot of the other providers (eg. Spark, 2 Degrees use PPPoE ).

Haven’t had any issues on GB speeds on the 7530, although wifi isn’t the greatest. I personally use a fritzbox and the superwifi units (with IPv6 enabled).

Unless you are doing anything special, the Voda box should be fine. It does support IPv6 but I just couldn’t get prefix delegation working.

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phrozenpenguin

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#2727771 12-Jun-2021 21:20

If you are moving from wireless to 100Mbps fibre this is already a big step up. For the use case you mentioned it would be plenty. Teams isn't going to use more than 100Mbps...

If you already have a USG then you have what is required?

If you don't you could buy one and integrate with your Unifi gear, or a Ubiquiti Edgerouter X would set you back $100. Mine has been rock solid for three years.

If you want to learn a bit about networking then get something and configure yourself. No offence intended, but from the questions you are asking it is clear that you don't really know what is involved. If you have no time or inclination to learn then just get the Vodafone one and enjoy the internet!

ghettomaster

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#2727784 12-Jun-2021 23:40

As has been mentioned, if you have a USG that is all you need unless you are using Vodafone’s VoIP services, in which case that’s another discussion.

The USG3p will do 85mbps with inspection turned on and 1 gbps with it turned off. The USG 4 Pro will do 250mbps and the UDM will do about 850. Can’t remember what the UDM pro will do off the top of my head.

I used to use teams video all the time and from memory it uses about 5mbps with 9 video feeds on the screen - less if it’s audio only, and 1mbps or so upload. 100/20 should be plenty for a couple on video conference calls and a few streaming or gaming sessions all at the same time, and in fact even ifc the USG chokes that to 85 you’ll be fine.

The only other thing I’ve seen you mention which might be an issue is backing up servers to the cloud. You could use QoS to ensure those servers don’t use up all your upload bandwidth. Unless you’ve got those servers doing some other task that requires high priority on your QoS, you could just start with QoS rules to say your user devices get higher priority than your servers and go from there. You could achieve this either by putting the servers on their own VLAN, or simply assigning IP addresses and applying the QoS rules accordingly.

Something like this could work.

DHCP range: 192.168.1.100-200
QoS high priority range: 192.168.1.100-200
QoS low priority range: 192.168.1.1-99

Then all you need to do is put your servers in that low priority range and you’re done. If your servers are doing something that requires high priority internet access, let us know what and we can suggest some rules / strategies.

PaulL

91 posts

Master Geek

#2727816 13-Jun-2021 09:27

phrozenpenguin:

If you want to learn a bit about networking then get something and configure yourself. No offence intended, but from the questions you are asking it is clear that you don't really know what is involved. If you have no time or inclination to learn then just get the Vodafone one and enjoy the internet!

I know enough about networking to be dangerous. I just have never had a fibre connection, and haven't had hands on the tools for a number of years. We do fibre connections at home for staff all the time, and I know we always ship a "modem", I've just never paid enough attention to notice that the modem isn't actually needed, and is just doing DHCP, Wifi etc.

Looks like I'll have a bunch of new stuff to play with when the fibre comes - in particular ipv6 and prefix delegation. I'll also have to work out how the pihole works with ipv6. All good fun.

Thanks for all the help from everyone. I had a vague unease that something about the picture was wrong, but without already knowing that fibre doesn't need a modem at all, it wasn't obvious from the Vodafone information (they say "for fibre plans, opt to bring your existing modem", which didn't make it obvious that it's actually a wifi or a gateway, not a modem at all).