Hey guys.

I'm wanting to get UFB installed at my place - my current ISP is Snap (and I'm happy with them, no intent to move on).  The problem is that I'm a bit confused as to the finer points of installation.  This post is a bit rambling because there's a bunch of stuff I'm confused on, and I can't find a lot of literature that directly addresses it.

The main challenge I've got is that my house is an older rambling one from 1912.  Despite being made predominantly from wood, the walls are as an effective WiFi blocker as if they were made from 3 inch think uranium.  My current setup uses a wired backbone with some Apple Airport Express units as local WiFi distribution points - works great.  Any single WiFi base station solution has failed.

Snap are proposing to distribute a Fritz box as a part of the solution - this box has a gigabit switch on the back (7390, I'm referring to - http://www.fritzbox.eu/en/products/FRITZBox_Fon_WLAN_7390/index.php?tab=1) as well as a dual-radio 2.4GHz/5GHz 802.11n network.  Sweet! So it'd be cool if I could use that as a wireless distribution point as well.  The Snap helpdesk can't really help me though - they can't confirm whether or not the Fritz box will behave well in a shared network topology (for example, alongside my existing AAE's).

Whilst we're on the Fritz, I'm a bit confused as to what the configuration will be in terms of free ports.  Like any aspiring technologist, the number of potentially wired devices in my house significantly exceeds 4.  I understand that the ONT unit will spit out an Ethernet port, and provide PPPoE for Snap (tagged as VLAN 10).  What I'm not clear on is which port on the Fritz box will accept that - the literature indicates that there's a DSL port (despite being an RJ45 connector), and doesn't seem to suggest this will take a standard Ethernet connection.

Based on the literature on Snap's UFB FAQ (http://www.snap.net.nz/support/content/3/73/en/what-is-ufb-faq.html), I'm guessing that they will bring in a block (/48) of IPv6 addresses on that VLAN, and be plugged into the LAN side of the device.  No firewall or router involved?  Or perhaps the Fritz box can apply firewall rules against traffic from that VLAN...?  This may imply that all other devices on that network segment need to be IPv6 capable (...and need their own FW?).

Finally, there's the Snap VoIP solution - it looks to be a standard SIP solution (http://www.snap.net.nz/support/content/5/75/en/snap-plus-_-voip-settings.html).  There's some magic in the Fritz box that allows the Fritz Fons to use it as a DECT base station.  I'm about 100% virginal when it comes to the relationship between DECT at VoIP, so I'm happy to leave it as "magic" and move on - but it does make me wonder how I might use non-Fritz handsets (if I found one I wanted).

There's probably a few of you who are both Snap and UFB customers...  And hopefully some of you have rolled your own.

1. Are there any home-rolled solutions without using the Fritz solution that work great, including VoIP?  Supporting VLAN tagging on PPPoE seems to be the key.
2. If I did go with their Fritz solution, will I be able to continue to extend my 5GHz 802.11n network as I do now (over the Ethernet backbone)?
3. Are there other handsets that are compatible with the SIP solution?  Or better ways of solving this?  Ultimately a couple of handsets in the house that ring on the same number is what I'm after.
4. Does the Fritz solution provide firewalling, or does each device need to firewall itself?
5. Does each device on the network need to support IPv6?

Thanks for reading all that!  I'm hoping someone here can help me out :)