Any reason why 2degrees plans are more expensive then Snap's old plans?

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › Any reason why 2degrees plans are more expensive then Snap's old plans?

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ajw

1932 posts

Uber Geek

#1377783 1-Sep-2015 14:34

djrubbie: It could have been cheaper if they continued to offer Home Phone Basic along with the Plus option, but elected not to and called that value added when it doesn't really add anything to people who only wanted a local line and nothing else.

Then again, the supplied router isn't hardcoded to use their VoIP services, so a different provider can be used instead of them and still be able to use the existing line setup.

But you still have no choice as to what modem router you can use. What other isp's dictate to the consumer what modem router they can use.

Aredwood

3885 posts

Uber Geek

#1377969 1-Sep-2015 23:04

I thought they all want you using their supplied router, to make tech support easier. Well my Edge router lite is still working just fine on my [now 2degrees] connection. And I also have a nice new fritzbox 7490 sitting here still in it's box. If I ever get a fault at least I can temporally plug it in to test and keep tech support happy.

And the new pricing worked out really well for me. Over $20 per month cheaper. Although spent some of the savings on getting a static IP.

fe31nz

1228 posts

Uber Geek

#1377974 1-Sep-2015 23:31

Aredwood: I thought they all want you using their supplied router, to make tech support easier. Well my Edge router lite is still working just fine on my [now 2degrees] connection. And I also have a nice new fritzbox 7490 sitting here still in it's box. If I ever get a fault at least I can temporally plug it in to test and keep tech support happy.

And the new pricing worked out really well for me. Over $20 per month cheaper. Although spent some of the savings on getting a static IP.

I am pretty similar: $30 cheaper, and my EdgeRouter Lite is still running my 200/200 connection. I am not on a contract, so there was no new router involved in moving to the new plan. My old FritzBox 7390 is tucked away behind my second EdgeRouter Lite running just the phone. 2degrees has all their usual access to the 7390 to update it and manage the phone setup, and as it is set up to have a second copy of my external static IP address it works identically to if it was running my fibre connection. If I have a problem, I can temporarily move the 7390 to directly connect to the fibre to see if that fixes it, but doing that disables most of my network - only things connected directly to the 7390 will work, which is usually just my laptop for testing purposes. But since I got this setup running after the fibre was installed, I have not had any problems and have not had to do that.

redeye52

118 posts

Master Geek

#1378751 3-Sep-2015 08:57

fe31nz:
Aredwood: I thought they all want you using their supplied router, to make tech support easier. Well my Edge router lite is still working just fine on my [now 2degrees] connection. And I also have a nice new fritzbox 7490 sitting here still in it's box. If I ever get a fault at least I can temporally plug it in to test and keep tech support happy.

And the new pricing worked out really well for me. Over $20 per month cheaper. Although spent some of the savings on getting a static IP.

I am pretty similar: $30 cheaper, and my EdgeRouter Lite is still running my 200/200 connection. I am not on a contract, so there was no new router involved in moving to the new plan. My old FritzBox 7390 is tucked away behind my second EdgeRouter Lite running just the phone. 2degrees has all their usual access to the 7390 to update it and manage the phone setup, and as it is set up to have a second copy of my external static IP address it works identically to if it was running my fibre connection. If I have a problem, I can temporarily move the 7390 to directly connect to the fibre to see if that fixes it, but doing that disables most of my network - only things connected directly to the 7390 will work, which is usually just my laptop for testing purposes. But since I got this setup running after the fibre was installed, I have not had any problems and have not had to do that.

Would you be willing to share your settings/setup for your EdgeRouter?Will be getting one soon to have a play, but not sure where to put in my 2D settings to get connected.

fe31nz

1228 posts

Uber Geek

#1379308 3-Sep-2015 17:38

redeye52: Would you be willing to share your settings/setup for your EdgeRouter?Will be getting one soon to have a play, but not sure where to put in my 2D settings to get connected.

The basic settings to connect to 2degrees fibre are straightforward - PPPoe on VLAn 10:

interfaces {
    ethernet eth0 {
        description "Outside raw to ONT"
        duplex auto
        mac <FritzBox MAC address>
        speed auto
        vif 10 {
            description "Outside raw VLAN 10 to ONT"
            pppoe 0 {
                default-route auto
                description "Internet connection to ISP Snap"
                ipv6 {
                    address {
                        autoconf
                    }
                    dup-addr-detect-transmits 1
                    enable {
                    }
                }
                mtu 1492
                name-server none
                password <your password>
                user-id <your username>@snap.net.nz
            }
        }
    }

I spoof the MAC address of my FritzBox on the eth0 interface, but I believe that is uncessary, so you can leave out the "mac" line. If you want to do that, the MAC address should be on the label on the bottom of your FritzBox.

Note that I have a static IP address (and also therefore a static IPv6 /56 prefix delegation). If you have dynamic IP addresses, you will need to add the config for updating your external DNS provider if you have one. And if you need to get a dynamic IPv6 prefix delegation, you would need to add the setup for that also. It used to be necessary to have the IPv6 PD config even if you had a static IPv6 address, but since a recent change in the routers used to make the fibre connection, that became uncessary and IPv6 packets were forwarded without having done DHCPv6 to delegate a prefix.

I run my own DNS servers, hence the "name-server none" option - you may want to use the ISP provided name servers and would need a different option to do that.

You will need to have basic firewalling in place - see the SOHO examples on the ubnt.com forums for that. I use a full scale zone firewall system, as I have servers running on a DMZ/guest subnet on eth1 as well as my main subnet on eth2, and using zones makes it easier to change things when I need to, but harder to set up initially.

For a fibre connection to run at full speed, make sure you have hardware offloading enabled:

system {
    offload {
        ipsec enable
        ipv4 {
            forwarding enable
            pppoe enable
            vlan enable
        }
        ipv6 {
            forwarding enable
            vlan enable
        }
    }

and do not use any of the config options that disable offloading such as QoS. Otherwise, an ERLite will only route packets up to about 60-65 Mbit/s, instead of full fibre speed. The command "show ubnt offload" will show the actual state of offloading, so you can tell if you have used some config that automatically disables it.

Here is my config for my eth2 interface (my main subnet):

    ethernet eth2 {
        address 10.0.2.251/24
        address <IPv6 prefix>02::251/64
        description Inner
        duplex auto
        ipv6 {
            dup-addr-detect-transmits 1
            router-advert {
                cur-hop-limit 64
                link-mtu 1492
                managed-flag true
                max-interval 600
                name-server <IPv6 prefix>02::4
                name-server <IPv6 prefix>02::2
                other-config-flag true
                prefix <IPv6 prefix>02::/64 {
                    autonomous-flag false
                    on-link-flag true
                    valid-lifetime 2592000
                }
                reachable-time 0
                retrans-timer 0
                send-advert true
            }
        }
        speed auto
    }

The "link-mtu 1492" is an important workaround to make external IPv6 connections work properly. Due to the connection to fibre being via PPPoE, the extra PPP bytes at the front of each packet reduces the size of the packets so a lower MTU is required. That lower MTU should be found automatically by IPv6 MTU discovery, but for some reason that does not work with PPP connections. So you need to tell all devices using IPv6 to use a reduced MTU. That does also reduce the MTU of the IPv6 packets that are sent internally on the network, which slightly reduces the throughput on internal IPv6 traffic unnecessarily, which is why I describe it as a workaround rather than a proper fix.

My IPv6 setup is for using DHCPv6 to assign the addresses ("managed-flag true" and "other-config-flag true"). Adjust that as necessary.

Should you want to run your FritzBox behind the ERLite as I am doing, I can tell you how to do that. But it requires two routers. I use my spare ERLite as the second router, but am planning on moving that to my OpenWRT based WRT1900ac WiFi router eventually. It also requires static IP addresses, but with some scripting it should be possible to make it work with dynamic addresses. The reason for needing two routers is because of a fundamental concept in how routers work. The FritzBox needs to have the same external IP address as the ERLite connecting to the ISP. Since the ERLite is directly connected on that external IP address, it has it on one of its interfaces. So if you try to set up routing inside the ERLite to send packets to that same IP address via another interface where the FritzBox is, it will not work as routing rules are only processed after packets have been sent to any directly connected IP addresses.

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