How Do You Connect To CityFibre - PPPOE etc?

Does anyone know how you connect to the CityFibre network?

Do you just use PPPOE username / password and it just works like FTTC with BT?

Thanks

It depends on your ISP. CityFibre is a wholesale network: they just pass the traffic through to the wholesale customer. How they terminate sessions is up to them.

Like with Openreach FTTP it depends on your chosen ISP, CityFibre are the wholesale supplier.

CityFibre support DHCP or PPPoE, I've seen both used on different ISPs.

You also need to know the VLAN - VLAN0 (802.1Q header used for setting the 802.1P priority bits only) and VLAN911 seem to be the most common. I think VLAN101 may have appeared as well with one ISP. The VLAN0 approach can be problematic as a lot of consumer kit does not support that.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/ios-xml/ios/at... is quite useful to explain VLAN0 stuff.

Thanks for both replies very useful.

I wish ISPs made it easier to use your own equipment.

I have no altnets available yet but doing a search CityFibre seem to be one of the biggest.

It appears Vodafone resell CityFibre there are quite a few posts on using their Support Chat to get username and password details.

This is concerning as you may sign up and not be able to use the service with your hardware if they decide not give up these details.

From my experience Vodafone are happy to provide PPPoE details.

Any provider can make it difficult I guess, but pretty sure most will provide them when asked, then just a case of correct VLAN tag and you're done.

In reply to a post by Ad_G:

CityFibre support DHCP or PPPoE, I've seen both used on different ISPs.

Interesting, which ISPs don't use PPPoE?

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

Interesting, which ISPs don't use PPPoE?

Talktalk is the best known example.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

Interesting, which ISPs don't use PPPoE?

Talktalk is the best known example.

Ah, don't think they offer CF in Ipswich. I'd really rather avoid PPPoE but I think I will be stuck with it.

TalkTalk was the one I am aware of that uses DHCP on CityFibre.

Looks like TalkTalk, Zen and Air are your current choices in Ipswich, so you could avoid PPPoE with TT.

What's the issue with PPPoE?

Mikrotik routers support "baby jumbo" frames (MTU 1508), and so does the ONT. Enabling this gives me a full standard 1500 MTU for IP datagrams, which means the effect of the PPPoE header is minimal.

(This works with FTTC too, with a Draytek Vigor130 modem)