Sky Fibre, HG612 and Draytek 2820

Apologies if I am covering old ground, but after a day of searching the internet I can't find a clear answer for what I want to do. However I know it is possible as I have read posts saying it is.

At the moment I have a Sky Router pushing everything into a DMZ which is picked up by wan2 on my 2820. This works in the main, but causes a few issues.

I have bought a secondhand HG612, and flashed it yesterday with the unlocked firmed. I contacted Draytek and obtained the MER beta firmware for my 2820.

At this point I flashed the 2820 and got it all working with the Sky Router. I then swapped out the Sky router for the HG612, and followed the instructions for entering my username & password (I tried using my old ADSL details as I already had them extracted xxxxxxxxx@skydsl - this worked fine when I was on Sky LLU).

The HG612 seemed to show a DSL light, but the 2820 never connected to/through it I then tried the [email protected]/install combination but that didn't seemed to work.

Is there something I need to configure in the HG612 to make it pass through to the 2820 so that the 2820 performs the authentication? I haven't as yet checked any logs, as I needed to get back online, so I just went back to the SkyRouter and re-enabled my old 2820 DMZ style configuration.

Draytek basically said:
Enabled WAN2, selected PPOE, enter username & password, disable, reboot.
Enable Dynamic/Static, reboot

Thanks

I think its back to Draytek to see if they have this combo working and what settings they used.

Sky are the only ones using MER on their FTTC.

The Sky Hub should also support a port as an Ethernet device with the HG612 rather than connecting direct to the VDSL, though fiddling with that config might break your one working device.

Am I right in thinking that I don't need to touch the HG612 configuration? Just plug LAN1 from it into the the WAN port on the 2820, and then all the configuration tweaks should be done in the 2820.....? In the meantime I have replied to Draytek support asking if they have tried out this particular combination.

Thanks.

Correct the HG612 should need no fiddling at all

The MER firmware is pretty much only for Sky (in the UK)

Maybe I need to obtain a new username and password - it might be the ones I had from LLU aren't compatible?

There's really nothing particularly 'clever' (or evil) about Sky 'MER' - What it in essence does is extend an Ethernet segment over ATM (or PTM with FTTC) - in fact that's what BT does over FTTC as well but they then choose to run PPP over it. PPP is not required with Sky, instead you should treat it as a local LAN and use DHCP to request your WAN side IP address. The 'trick' is that Sky require some additional authentication details before they'll hand you one...this is what DHCP Option 60 is all about.

Set your connection type to DHCP (or automatic for some sky compatible routers) and provide the 'xxxxxxx@skydsl|password' username/password combination. The username|password will get added as 'option 60' of the DHCP request and it should all just work.

In reply to a post by kevindb:

There's really nothing particularly 'clever' (or evil) about Sky 'MER' - What it in essence does is extend an Ethernet segment over ATM (or PTM with FTTC) - in fact that's what BT does over FTTC as well but they then choose to run PPP over it.

I agree. I prefer to give it its proper title, "RFC 2684". Aside from the DHCP authentication thing, it's actually identical to what BE used.

Worth noting that if you swap routers on Sky Fibre it can take anything up to half an hour for the new router to connect as the old DHCP lease has to expire before a new IP will be allocated to the connection.

You may be able to get around this by cloning the WAN MAC of the Sky Hub into the Draytek configuration. This worked when I swapped my Sky Hub for a TP-Link router.

Ohhh, good point, I had noticed the IP addresses seemed to be quite sticky. I'll try and clone the MAC into the 2820 as well....

Tried quickly cloning the MAC address from the Sky Router, but that seemed to have little affect Re-created by username/password using the details on my old LLU (Sagem F@ST) router just to make sure they were ok.

Guess that next, I'll have to check the 2820's logs and/or run wireshark on its WAN2 to port see what it really doing....