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Hello,
I currently have BT FTTP but Hey Broadband have come to my area and their pricing is so much cheaper than BT for the same service (900mbps) - has anyone used Hey Broadband and what are they like for reliability - I work from home and am totally reliant on the internet so its vital their service is stable.
Be really interested to hear peoples thoughts.
Thanks.
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I've had it for 2 weeks, and it's plenty fast. However, it has gone down twice in that time. First time was a stuck PPP connection, and I had to call them. Second time it sorted itself out in a couple of minutes.
I'm not entirely sure if it's my (very) old router, so I've ordered a new one to try.
Hopefully others will be along with their experiences for balance.
Hey!Broadband 1Gb Fibre
Fritz!Box 3490, and it handles it!
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Been with them for over a year. They are a young company who are fast growing and have experienced some minor growing pains along the way.
Installation was good for me. Very polite installation team. I explained I was precious about routing wires in the most hidden way possible and they accommodated me without fuss or extra charge. Their symmetrical gigabit service for £40/month is excellent value and it all performs as expected. Personally I use my own kit on the connection as I have more advanced requirements so I can't really comment on their supplied CPE in the manner most people will use it.
I've had 2 minor service issues with them in 12 months. The IP block used for my area appears to have been incorrectly labelled as owned by a Russian entity by some IP Whois services (not all). Therefore some sites incorrectly set default languages/currency to Russian (AliExpress is one such example). My second issue was a routing issue to certain US sites. Not sure if that was a HB or a backbone provider issue but it was quickly resolved.
My only real criticism is the lack of a Web Portal for order tracking, customer services & technical support - that's the main point when I alluded to the fact they are a young company. It is coming though I'm told. That said the CS & Technical staff are all very customer focused and responsive via email and phone.
Like you, I WFH 99.9% of the time and a highly available performant internet connection is a must for me. I have a Dual WAN Draytek Router and I was running my £20/month Plusnet VDSL connection in parallel as a backup as I too was concerned with HB's reliability at the beginning. The Draytek only cut over to the VDSL connection once due to the Routing issue mention above and never has since so I will be cancelling with the Plusnet contract is up for renewal as its not needed.
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Than you so much for the reply - very helpful and has settled my nerves a little about moving to them - they have an offer on at themoment for their 900mbps service for £30 a month for 24 months and it really was too good an offer to turn away - especially as my BT contract is up for renewal.
I plan on using my Orbi router and satellites I have around the house - so do you have to use thier supplied router in bridge mode or, like BT, can I just use the orbi straight from the wall (they kind of gave me the impression I had to have thier router even if in bridge mode to my Oribi one).
My gretaest fear with them will be reliablitiy of service - I cannot afford long periods of dropped connection.
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That is a great deal. My contract is up for renewal in a few months so I hope that deal will be available for me 
Back when I joined, the CPE HB provided was a TP-Link GPON router that they put into Bridge mode so I could use my own Draytek kit. That's changed now as I see from their website they now offer a ADTRAN GPON Router by default. I've seen posts from other HB customers that they offer a ADTRAN ONT too upon request. You may wish to discuss this with the CS team when you place your order. See here on the Equipment Tab.
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That went a little over my head! Not sure what the advantages or difference between the two would be?
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I ended up getting the new router, and the service has been stable ever since. I asked for "bridge mode" before the install, and they installed the little Adtran 621 ONT (so no router in bridge mode).
You got a good price! They offered me £35 a month, and I bit their hand off. Should have bargained a bit, but I got a static IP thrown in for free, so can't complain.
Hey!Broadband 1Gb Fibre
Asus AC86U - Asuswrt Merlin
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Thanks for the reply! - good to know they are reliable.
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The ONT is small, and simply provides an ethernet connection for your own router, which logs in with PPPoE.
Their router is bigger, and from what I've heard very locked down. It can be put into bridge mode, allowing you to use your own router in much the same way as an ONT, but then you have an expensive router from them that you aren't making use of.
From Hey!'s point of view, supplying an ONT is cheaper if the customer is going to use their own equipment.
Hey!Broadband 1Gb Fibre
Asus AC86U - Asuswrt Merlin
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In the context of HB's service, if you want to take their VoIP package, you'll want their GPON Router option as that has an RJ11 port on it for your 'landline' phone. If you don't care about porting your phone number to HB's VoIP service and are happy to support your own Router / whatever the ONT is all you need.
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Anyone here use H!B for PC gaming? I've been trying to find some reference to how their latency (ping times) is but haven't been able to find any posts referencing it. I'm not looking for info on bandwidth/download speed, I know that should be close to 900mbps.
I'm sure it will be fine for general gaming, but I'm more interested in specifics relating to games that need lower latency. For example, my TalkTalk connection gets a range of 9-25ms on Rocket League depending on server. I get as low as 5ms on Path of Exile London servers at the moment, which is very low.
Is H!B latency fairly equivalent and most importantly stable?
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I PS5 game regularly. Latency is <10ms on average. Typically closer to 5ms.
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Good to know, thanks. I specifically mentioned PC gaming as when I see PSN players in cross-platform games, their pings are almost always 2-3x higher than PC clients. I assume most probably use wireless, but guess you are hardwired.
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Correct, I am hard wired.
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Hello,
I found this thread a few weeks ago while searching the internet for information about possibly using Hey Broadband and my own router.
While much of what I type has already been said, I figured I'd add this one more post to the list to confirm how its panned out so far (rather than start another thread).
Location: Surrey, Feb 2023.
I'm using my own router (a 7w x86 OpenWRT box) and host a family email server, so it has meagre usage but was a deal breaker in terms of it has to be routeable from the outside world.
Occasionally I have cause to VPN in from outside also.
Previous 2 years with TalkTalk fibre 80Mbps/20Mbps. OpenWRT router connected to Nokia G-010G-Q GPON ONT via ethernet. WAN IP via DHCP.
I pay £8 a year for DDNS, no fixed IP.
BT customer for 12 years, TalkTalk for last 2 years. Reasons for swapping supplier are mostly financial.
Both companies previously competed / discounted when pressured each time contracts came up for renewal. But not this year. TalkTalk were 33% higher than HeyB and BT 50% higher.
I rang HeyB to ask questions and confirm what was on their website (as it differed to info found on some internet posts). Got through to them in less than 90 seconds, they were very helpful.
There were definite gaps in their prepared responses and understanding of their own setup (no doubt this is largely due to they are keeping costs down by focusing on the 80% vanilla installs).
There also seemed a separation between departments and their CRM system. As I received calls / emails about things already resolved. However that's a VAST improvement on not getting called back at all (BT).
Overall, helpful and positive experience, I hope they do well.
As a general moan, it seems a waste that companies cannot "take over" the unused fibre line into the house. As a new provider, they needed to drill another line into the house.
This is not a criticism of HeyB, but the industry setup as a whole. Every 2 years we're to have new cables and holes in the wall just to change supplier? Apparently so.
I admit I didn't research what I can / could not do in terms of removing the old cable beyond it was not my kit. Not to mention the 2 week overlap with service start/end meant I had a fallback plan in case things did not go well.
HeyB provided either:
1. Adtran 814-v6 WiFi Router capable of taking VOIP phone (RJ11 socket). Another of their websites refers to a TP Link Archer XR500v, unsure if this is just out of date info, or location specific.
or
2. "Configure our router to act as a bridge" . They actually provided an Adtran SDX 611 GPON ONT. This meant no VOIP (unless your own kit can), but did mean a much smaller box (than switching a whole router to bridge mode) that uses barely 2w and basically mirrored the TalkTalk setup.
Option 2 is exactly what I was after.
I asked if they operated CGNAT or if my public IP would be routable. The answer was, it was CGNAT, but this could be removed and I could get the engineer to ring through the change on the day, it was a "2 second job".
Given I was using my own kit, it seemed sensible to start off as vanilla as possible, confirm CGNAT was operating and ring through after the connection was working, rather than try and set it up before the install and have potentially adding another variable to the mix.
Install day and the engineer rang in advance, completed the installation efficiently.
The PPPoE connection worked first time and sure enough the routers WAN port IP was 100.64.n.n. So rang in that "2 second" request (5min to get through this time) and it wasn't quite so straightforward. It took a little re-explaining to get across the issue and then took 4 days to fix.
However during that time they called me to update they were still working on it and ultimately they did resolve it fairly promptly overall. Plus the resolution came on a Sunday which is some indication as to their efforts.
It's only been 10 days, but so far so very good. I pay for 400Mbps/200Mbps and with SQM turned off I get between 402/214 and 442/233, with 4-5ms pings. Which is great! And for the same price as 80/20 with TT, fixed for 2 years.
Customer service may not have been a well oiled / polished affair, but they were helpful, rang back and resolved something quickly.
The 2 elephants in the room are quality of service over time (how bullet proof / reliable will the connection be).
And what will the company do re: pricing going forward. Their advert clearly said "No price increase during the length of your contract".
The T's and C's pricing guide says "No price increase during minimum commitment period", mine being 24 months.
However, section 25 of their T's and C's says "At any time, we may change our services, our charges, our equipment, our apparatus or the terms of Our Agreement"
"This may happen" followed by bunch of cost pressure related reasons and finally "for any other reason that we can’t predict now".
Great.
TalkTalk tried this; advertising / selling a "fixed price" deal and then 6 months into it, putting up the price 10%. Ultimately they relented eventually, but it left a bad taste and of course I told anyone I'd ever met about it.
They say there is no such thing as bad publicity, nonsense, try putting prices up mid contract!
So is HeyB too good to be true. Are they just hooking people at lower price points to then increase prices during the contract term. Obviously I hope not!
I'm hoping they are people of their word and are able to provide the service they claim at the price they claim for as long as the contract.
If they do that, and are competitive again in two years, I would of course stay (all things being equal). Not to mention, if I hop again, the house will start to resemble swiss cheese.
Apologies for the waffle. Really was supposed to just cover the setup + kit + process.
Hope its of use to someone else.
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Additional info (unfortunately cannot edit previous post as too long has past).
HeyB do not have their own DNS servers (at least not for home use), They use google (8.8.8.8) + cloudflare (1.1.1.1).
Only found this out because current free use of a spam filter started bouncing as the spam filter company don't allow use of public dns without a login.
So choice was either get a spam filter login, or setup a private DNS server.
No biggy, just hadn't realised.
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Only found this out because current free use of a spam filter started bouncing as the spam filter company don't allow use of public dns without a login.
So choice was either get a spam filter login, or setup a private DNS server.
That's a con pure and simple - free of use spam filter - needs a login. They're just harvesting you, like corn or wheat.
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Are they just hooking people at lower price points to then increase prices during the contract term. Obviously I hope not!
I'm hoping they are people of their word and are able to provide the service they claim at the price they claim for as long as the contract.
If they do that, and are competitive again in two years, I would of course stay (all things being equal). Not to mention, if I hop again, the house will start to resemble swiss cheese.
I signed up with them in March 2021 paying £40/month for their 900Mb/900Mb service. I renewed last September for £29/month for 24 months for the same service. No concerns with price rises at the moment.
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Hi there - sorry to jump in but been having all sorts of trouble connecting to Hey via PPPoE (see thread at https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/technical/t/473220...
Did you have to do any kind of VLAN tagging or MAC spoofing to get your connection working? Did your username start with your postcode then a seven digit number?
I keep getting variants on 'bad username or password' errors in the logs when trying the details they've given me, but seems impossible to get to speak to anyone who actually knows what they're talking about.
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Hi there - sorry to jump in but been having all sorts of trouble connecting to Hey via PPPoE (see thread at https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/technical/t/473220...
Did you have to do any kind of VLAN tagging or MAC spoofing to get your connection working? Did your username start with your postcode then a seven digit number?
I keep getting variants on 'bad username or password' errors in the logs when trying the details they've given me, but seems impossible to get to speak to anyone who actually knows what they're talking about.
Just the PPPoE username and password, nothing else is needed. I've used 2 routers out of the box with the Hey service, and that's all I've had to enter.
Hey!Broadband 1Gb Fibre
Asus AC86U - Asuswrt Merlin
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Thanks Andy. Weirdly enough the connection came up on its own after about eight hours. I suspect it just took a while for the provisioning of the PPPoE login to make it to all the right places. Either that or someone forgot to press 'enter' the first time round...
Speeds now seem very good although I note there was a 90 minute outage in the wee small hours, so I think I'll keep the Virgin cable connection in WAN2 for a couple weeks as a failover before I can that.
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I've had a few long outages, but things seem to be improving. If you need to WFH, definitely have a backup.
They have a status page here: https://status.heybroadband.co.uk/
Hey!Broadband 1Gb Fibre
Asus AC86U - Asuswrt Merlin
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I note there was a 90 minute outage in the wee small hours
Can confirm, my monitoring saw the same - 11:45pm yesterday to approx 2am today
https://imgur.com/a/NEEccXE
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I'm based in Gerrards Cross and had Hey!Broadband (FW Networks) installed today.
£27per month for 900Mbps up and down.
Bridge mode installation, so a connection from their ONT direct into my network equipment.
I too never heard of this company so I am running this in parallel to my BT FTTP service for the last few months of that fixed contract to see if I could do a full switch. I currently run both in Dual WAN mode with monitoring to see how it goes.
Immediate observations:
Download speed has not yet reached anything above 600Mbps via ethernet using www.speedtest.net and testing various servers. High contention perhaps but I need to do more testing over the next week to get a real idea of the speed situation.
Latency is very good, so far over the first few hours of service I am seeing round trip totals averaging 6.6ms with 0.6sd to google 8.8.8.8. The BT connection does edge it, but by only 1.1ms.
The biggest issue I face is the IP address assigned makes some online services think I am not in the UK. A point mentioned by others. Although trace IP tools show my IP as UK, they seem to have come from a block which was originally non-UK. Tesco.com and Netflix is currently not possible on this connection. I am going to do some more testing before I pull together an email to HeyB to see what we can do. (if anything).
Overall, I am so pleased someone like HeyBroadband are in the area challenging the market. Just a few things they need to fix before I feel confident leaving BT when the time comes.
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Just wanted to confirm that the Hey!Broadband IP was not the main issue here. It seemed to be my gateway settings. Resolved.
I'm impressed by HeyB so far but I do need to investigate further my speed as I'm still not near the 900Mbps. Will report when I have more data.
Big thanks to NoFappingWay for helping out on this!
Edited by SpeedyPdA (Sun 26-Mar-23 11:28:33)
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Just wanted to confirm that the Hey!Broadband IP was not the main issue here. It seemed to be my gateway settings. Resolved.
I'm impressed by HeyB so far but I do need to investigate further my speed as I'm still not near the 900Mbps. Will report when I have more data.
Big thanks to NoFappingWay for helping out on this!
Try downloading the speedtest.net app, which is recommends for connections over 100Mbps. Also check which server it's testing against. A local Hey! server will be the best test of the actual fibre speed.
Saying that, I just got 940 down, 930 up on the site.
Hey!Broadband 1Gb Fibre
Asus AC86U - Asuswrt Merlin
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Big thanks to NoFappingWay for helping out on this!
You're very welcome
Edited by nofappingway (Mon 27-Mar-23 17:49:30)
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A local Hey! server will be the best test of the actual fibre speed.
That's not the case for me at all. The 2 local HB Speedtest servers (High Wycombe & Slough) are very poor performing for me. Vodafone Watford gives a very consistent throughput.
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Well that's bizarre. The results I posted were to the High Wycombe server, and I'm in High Wycombe.
Hey!Broadband 1Gb Fibre
Asus AC86U - Asuswrt Merlin
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I'm not which is probably why.....but then again I'm not in Watford either.
When HB used to have a Gerrards Cross SpeedTest server, that was better.
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Yeah, the fibre itself is great, but they only have one peer so we're at the mercy of their network (SSE).
Hey!Broadband 1Gb Fibre
Asus AC86U - Asuswrt Merlin
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I know they are in the process of migrating the customer base to a new platform so hopefully that will increase their network resiliency amongst other things.
I’ve been running my own Speedtest server on a VPS and that gives me 900Mb up and down so I’m not concerned with Ookla’s service variation.
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I know they are in the process of migrating the customer base to a new platform so hopefully that will increase their network resiliency amongst other things.
I’ve been running my own Speedtest server on a VPS and that gives me 900Mb up and down so I’m not concerned with Ookla’s service variation.
This migration is news to me, do you have any more details?
Hey!Broadband 1Gb Fibre
Asus AC86U - Asuswrt Merlin
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"Migration to a new platform" is all I know
I'm sure you will have noticed the planned maintenance overnight too. Probably something to do with it.
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Whatever happened last night broke my connection completely, my ONT is refusing to dish out an address via DHCP ever since connection went down inline with the planned maintenance period. Have heard that annoying hold music way to much today !
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Been with them for 16 days now, no dropouts or downtime other than on the day where there was scheduled maintenance/upgrades taking place on the network which I was notified about with an email about a week or so in advance letting me know what was gonna be happening. So far so good with HeyBB, hopefully it's stable as it has been in the future.
Most providers are good as gold at the start (during the 14 day cooling off period) then turn to sh&t shortly thereafter, hopefully this wont be the case with my new connection. Time will tell I guess, I've yet to have to contact support for anything..
Also, I think they're relatively new to my area and don't have too many subscribers around here, but I think that will change in the coming months as people will no doubt be switching as contracts are ending/prices going up on Openreach/Virgin connections.. hopefully they don't oversell like Virgin did (had those at this address many years ago and it was a nightmare, due to being oversubscribed, peak time was always getting less than half advertised speeds and plenty of dropouts)
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Really hoping someone here may be able to help. Sorry for the long story!
Signed up on 29 March, ordered bridge mode.
Engineer who installed did a tidy job and tested using the HeyB router and said I could connect my own to the ONT which I did and it worked (DHCP (no PPPOE in my area) and VLAN 10).
It worked for 20min. Then nothing.
I reconnected the HeyB router. Nothing.
I raised a ticket and 5 days later(!) the tech support team (tier 2) put the ONT in bridge mode (apparently it never was). An engineer also came to test the ONT - all ok.
He told me to use DHCP no VLAN tag now it's in bridge mode.
Router wont connect.
Neither will a laptop directly into the ONT. (I assume we agree that should work?)
Laptop shows a "No DHCP server found" error.
Any ideas? The tech support team seem to be going round in circles.
As an aside, I am intrigued by what "putting the ONT in bridge mode" actually means. I wonder whether it's a security thing. I have learnt that my router stopped working due to "foreign MAC" after 20min.
Intriguing and very very very annoying.... TIA!
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Update:
after chasing a few more times, i am online. I did ask what was done but just told that the connection was refreshed and some settings changed....
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This doesn't sound right to me. My connection uses PPPoE, and no VLAN tagging necessary. I can't see different areas from the same provider using different connection methods?!
Hey!Broadband 1Gb Fibre
Asus AC86U - Asuswrt Merlin
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Apparently they are moving towards DHCP, region-by-region.
I am certainly connected using DHCP currently.
The HeyB router appears to tag with VLAN 10 (apparent before i moved to "bridge mode").
My router is not tagging.
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That's interesting. I've noted issues with PPPoE authentication in the past, so perhaps that's why.
Hey!Broadband 1Gb Fibre
Asus AC86U - Asuswrt Merlin
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Certainly there is some overhead in PPPOE that it make sense to avoid.
I wouldnt say their DHCP implementation is without issue though, at least based on my experience to date. Time will tell whether it was a one-off.
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Certainly there is some overhead in PPPOE that it make sense to avoid. It takes CPU at each end, and if the physical network can use VLAN technology to link customers to ISP, then the PPP overhead is wasted. Even the Openreach network works this way, as at least Sky connects without PPP.
Many domestic routers have hardware acceleration for PPP to enable them to use low end chips for everything else.
23 years of broadband connectivity since 1999 trial - Live BQM
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This doesn't sound right to me. My connection uses PPPoE, and no VLAN tagging necessary. I can't see different areas from the same provider using different connection methods?!
I’m not a customer of theirs, but know that their authentication protocol has been area dependendant for some while now. It’s been mentioned variously on the threads here and elsewhere.
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This new platform I alluded to earlier maybe revealed soon if this is anything to go by
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Which bit - the announcement that they have 6,000 customers?
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"We have some exciting news to share......"
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Just wanted to add my experience.
Had my connection installed on Monday. The engineer said all new installs are DHCP only. He could have been saying that due to the network here being brand new (the poles went into the ground literally 5 or 6 weeks ago). I didn't need to set up a VLAN, just set the WAN port in OPNSense to DHCP and the connection sprang into life.
Been rock solid so far, the symmetric gigabit is a real jump up from the 50/15 I was getting with FTTC 
I'm going to miss the excellent customer support from AAISP when I cancel the old connection though, been with them for years.
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Found this thread useful when choosing hey broadband so thought I'd follow up with my experience. Installation was good, happy to accommodate a longer route into the house. Connection was good...until it wasn't. Out for 5 hours on Sunday, then again since yesterday morning at about 9am. My biggest gripe is that the communication has been poor, still no end in sight.
Apparently they have a 48hr SLA for an engineer to contact you - just contact - no idea how much longer it will be until it's resolved.
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Just to say i have moved over my Landline and Internet connection from BT 65mb connection to Hey broadband 900/900 . Was able to get a good deal including a few months free and landline ported over ( Voip )
Actually install from pole to home was relatively straight forward but fell apart slightly as i originally wanted Bridge mode using my own TP link Deco mesh. But i was slightly mis-sold as you cannot have your phone line BT number ported over and working if you do not use their own router ( It has the telephone socket on it where normal routers only have network points. ( Hey does not support ethernet for Voip )
So im left with 3 pieces of kit , Black ONT Box ( powered ). Hey router ( Adran 854 with all wifi turned off ) and Deco mesh set in Access point mode. Phone line has been ported over and seems to work no problem using my existing dect panasonic landline phone plugged into the RJ11 adapter and router.
Service has been up for about 3-4 week.
Had one outage the day after ( about 2 hours ) didnt notice it to be honest just when the wife complained about something.
Second outage very recently for good few hours. Have to say when it works its been solid but when its goes down Hey Broadband are generally a chocolate Teapot in terms of information and support.. ( forsure understaffed in Support ) . Slow responding to emails and the service page
https://status.heybroadband.co.uk/ would not really trust it ,normally very slow to update and not accurate.
For anyone thinking just expect a few outages. but to be honest any outage in unacceptable given how important the service but the lack of comms during problems is poor.
Another note is that when doing the speed test from the Hey router ( It has a 2.5gb Wan port) its registered 1.2GB download speeds so guessing there is scope for further upgrades in future and generally when tested i get more than 900/900 at the entry point
Having such a fast connection means my current mesh only really maxes about 350-450mbs on wifi so looking at a wifi 6 or 6e mesh ( current is a Deco M9 3 nodes )
Edited by BiscuitBachchan (Fri 19-May-23 21:52:44)
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I've got my Hey Broadband install planned for 3 July 12pm to 4pm.
My hopeful plan is to get the fibre run all the way around from the front to the back of the house, then up to the first floor through an existing hole which is being taken up by a disconnected coax aerial cable at the moment.
Going by all the positive and finicky installs people have had so far successfully, I'm praying that this will also be ok without their "bespoke installation charge". If worst comes to worst, I could always ask them to run it to the ground floor and leave extra length for me to run it up the outdoor wall myself, but that's a last resort.
I requested bridge mode when I was called about my installation time slot, so that shouldn't be an issue when it comes to connecting it to my new Ubiquiti Dream Machine SE, and even better I got the SE since some are reporting > 1 Gbps on the WAN!
I'll try and come back with an update after the install.
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So my install finally happened after about 10 weeks. There were two civils issues that needed sorting before install, and it also took a 1 star Trustpilot review to finally kick them into action after that was done too.
Hey/F&W now no longer bury any ducting run as part of an install, which is pretty shoddy in my opinion. They left a 20m black pipe running up my front garden, which I spent about 30 mins burying under the grass, and ran it straight over a paved path round the side of the house. I'm chasing them to work out if they will actually bury that for me or not.
For me, Hey uses DHCP to assign a WAN IP for my router with bridge mode, which had nothing like the PPPoE or VLAN tagging issues which others mentioned above. They seem to be using CGNAT for my connection, though, which is really frustrating. I'm hoping that they can add a static IP to my home plan without trouble.
Speeds are fine, but peering isn't fantastic for F&W's ASN. Ping to most services is ~5ms, so not quite as good as BT/OR FTTP, but still fantastic.
Bridge mode is gig Ethernet only. I haven't bothered trying to ask them if they have any plans for >1gig services in the future, but given it's all GPON and not XGS-PON (another downside), I doubt it.
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Good you've got the install completed, but thanks for the detailed information. Looks as if I'm going to soon (maybe by end of year) be able to choose between Hey on F&W, or Toob. Both appear to be CGNAT, but Toob are using Adtran XGS-PON hardware and offer a static IP for quite a bit of money.
23 years of broadband connectivity since 1999 trial - Live BQM
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Does anybody have any idea on who is providing their backbone at all? They're available in my area but concerned about the future and routing. Tempted to wait it out and wait for CityFibre to deploy but I'm a phase 2 build area (Redhill)
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If by backbone you mean peering/transit, they only have 2 peers, but one of the them in Cogent, which is good: https://ipinfo.io/AS207645#block-peers
They could use a lot more peers however, so probably have transit arrangements in place.
Hey!Broadband 1Gb Fibre - Live BQM
Asus AC86U - Asuswrt Merlin
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Cheers AndyPandy for your help. Gives me another option to think about
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HB have just opened the order book in our area (Crawley), I have similar concerns, Cityfibre and Openreach are still 'planned' so have gone for it
Fingers crossed
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HB have just opened the order book in our area (Crawley), I have similar concerns, Cityfibre and Openreach are still 'planned' so have gone for it
Fingers crossed
Have you ordered as a new connection or transfer of your existing XDSL service? If you have concerns it would be better to order as a new connection even though it means paying two monthly fees as you will have your XDSL connection as a fallback if HB does not perform adequately. You can cancel the XDSL once you are happy that HB is satisfactory (or vice versa).
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Exactly the plan 👍 will keep our TalkTalk FTTC service until HB has proven its self
1st phase of the install went smoothly, we now have a coil of fibre by the front door.
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One thing I found out anecdotally is a neighbour recently asked F&W to re-present the fibre elsewhere in their property. Like me they had the original TPLink Archer Router in Bridge using a PPPoE connection.
When F&W came along to reroute the fibre, seems they did a reprovision. Now the Archer is gone and an ONT has been used. The connection is no longer PPPoE but DHCP behind a CGNAT which I assume is the new default for HB connections.
They still offer a static IP so that can be overcome unless you want to use tools like Cloudfare Tunnels or Tailscale or similar to overcome.
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I have opted for a Static IP so guessing it will be a PPPoE setup
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I think you'll still be DHCP but with a publicly routable IP.
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That's handy, assuming it takes a workload off the router
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Yes, far less intensive. Unlikely you'll see anything though unless you're using your own router that is currently constrained.
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I can confirm this is the case.
"Upgraded" to a static IP and it changed over from the 100.64.0.0/16 IP to a public IP with about 5 mins downtime around 4am the next day.
My new IP is linked to AS207645 and is part of 45.137.18.0/24, which is a pretty small range!
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Hi, anyone else got problem with ping 1.1.1.1 latency?
The Hey Broadband 900/900 connection is generally good but I am currently having kind of weird issue that pinging to 1.1.1.1 takes around 300ms where to other sites is only around 5ms.
PING 1.1.1.1 (1.1.1.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: seq=0 ttl=56 time=311.371 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: seq=1 ttl=56 time=313.251 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: seq=2 ttl=56 time=311.067 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: seq=3 ttl=56 time=311.022 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: seq=4 ttl=56 time=311.962 ms
--- 1.1.1.1 ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 311.022/311.734/313.251 ms
traceroute to 1.1.1.1 (1.1.1.1), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 * * *
2 * * *
3 * * *
4 * * *
5 * * *
6 * * *
7 * * *
8 * * *
9 * * *
10 * * *
11 * * *
12 * * *
13 * * *
14 one.one.one.one (1.1.1.1) 312.697 ms 311.719 ms 313.644 ms
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No problem for me (connected to BNG Crawley)
PING 1.1.1.1 (1.1.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=59 time=7.78 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=59 time=7.77 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=59 time=7.71 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=59 time=7.82 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=59 time=7.91 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=59 time=7.84 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=7 ttl=59 time=7.91 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=8 ttl=59 time=7.71 ms
John
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Also fine for me (high ping because over WiFi).
$ ping 1.1.1.1
PING 1.1.1.1 (1.1.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=58 time=16.0 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=58 time=16.3 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=58 time=16.5 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=58 time=14.3 ms
64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=58 time=16.3 ms
^C
--- 1.1.1.1 ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4007ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 14.383/15.944/16.569/0.803 ms
$
Edited by davwheat (Wed 04-Oct-23 14:12:31)
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What does https://1.1.1.1/cdn-cgi/trace show, specifically which 'colo' are you on? Maybe cloudflare routing has went wrong.
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Oh... that is something. Thanks a lot!
fl=582f17
h=1.1.1.1
ip=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
ts=1696684098.69
visit_scheme=https
uag=Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/117.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
colo= HKG
That rings the bell that I do have a VPN Director client running (ASUS Merlin).
It is strange that the IP reported by https://1.1.1.1/cdn-cgi/trace is not the same as https://www.myip.com/
Probably a bug some where in the VPN Director as the rule is configured to only apply to some clients, (not the one I am doing the test). Or, I have messed it up somehow.
When I turn off the VPN Director, the IP reported by 1.1.1.1 and myip.com now the same. Ping test to 1.1.1.1 now around 7ms.
Problem solved. Definitely have a closer look at my VPN configs. Thanks guys.
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Came to the forums to check if anyone was seeing latency today (it's been getting worse for a couple of weeks), but found this thread & details of CGNAT, which I wasn't aware HB were using & didn't think to check.
I'm certain I was not on CGNAT before (have been with Hey since May22) but have been having issues with port forwarding recently. Have been banging my head against the wall trying to figure out why my port forwards weren't working, it turns out I am on CGNAT... Public IP is 87.254.x.x, router WAN is 100.64.x.x. I'm on bridge mode with my own firewall/router.
Guess I'll need to email them to get a static IP.
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What kind of latency are you seeing/what time of day?
Mine has never been quite right (Evening congestion style) - they're FINALLY looking into fixing it in "Early November" apparently.
Wondering if it's a similar situation for you.
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If you just ask for a public IP, they should oblige without the extra cost of a static IP.
I’m having peak time evening throughput issues at the moment. Speeds are down to 200Mb. It’s been acknowledged and there is a new line card waiting to be installed I’m told. Latency is all good though.
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Exactly the same thing they said to me @nofappingway,
From my last email with them:
"Apologies for the late answer.
The issues in the evening regarding the connectivity should be solved by the end of the month or during the first weeks of November. A New Card will be installed on the OLT.
Now I can’t give you a precise date , but as soon I have an update, I will pass it on to you."
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There were some pretty major issues around May this year with evening latency & packet loss but it's been pretty flawless for me since then, until around mid-October. It's been nowhere near as bad as earlier in the year, but we're getting sporadic high ping times in games, and periods of packet loss.
It generally only lasts a few minutes at a time as far as I've noticed, but it has been getting more frequent the past few days or week. Time-wise usually around the evening peak 6pm-11pm. I don't often do speed tests unless I notice an issue, but earlier this evening it went down to around 500/200 for a while. It's back to normal now. Usually I get a very solid 930/930+, which it is right now.
@nofappingway, I'll ask about the public address first, rather than static.Thanks for the suggestion.
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Thought I'd add a post in case this helps someone sometime...
I've had Hey Broadband for about a month, in West London, Ealing.
900/900; Own router (pfSense) & Static IP address.
Install was fine and speeds are great (some work for me to improve the home network & router HW)
But I started to notice connection losses occasionally (ie dropped conference calls).
Traced it back to DHCP issues on the WAN interface to the Hey Broadband ONT.
PFSense was trying to renew the 10-minute (!!) lease, as expected at 50% ie 5 mins, and was sending DHCPREQUEST to 'renew' the current IP - and would get no reply. All the requests were UNICAST to the IP address of the server that had answered the previous renewal (in my case, always .3 in my subnet). No answer. Eventually Pfsense would send the request BROADCAST instead (not sure what triggered this... not always the same Nth request). The broadcast request would get an immediate successful response.
But if PfSense didn't change from UNICAST to BROADCAST requests soon enough, the lease would expire, at which point PfSense would mark it at down, and remove all the routes (including default / 0.0.0.0) from the route table (so now, no internet). It would then immediately do a (BROADCAST) DHCPDISCOVER, which would get a response, and then the internet connection would be back again. Always under 20 seconds or so, but long enough for a noticable connection drop.
Some google searching found others (in other countries) with similar issue. Conclusion seems to be that HeyB (and others) set their DHCP servers to ignore unicast DHCPREQUEST and PfSense (perhaps other FreeBSD) was persisting with unicast DHCPREQUEST (or persisting too long??). An "incompatible" combination.
However, as of Pfsense 2,7 it's possible to put
'supersede dhcp-server-identifier 255.255.255.255'
in the WAN Interface's / Lease Requirements and Requests / Option modifiers
to force the dhcprequests to go broadcast not unicast.
In my case I can see the renewal now getting a success at the first attempt... so seems a successful fix so far
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Thanks for sharing, that’s good to know. HB still use PPP in my town but I do plan to switch OPNsense sometime soon which I can only assume shares the same behaviour out of the box.
What hardware are you running pfSense on?
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I'm also running pfSense, though my installation is very borked at the moment. The machine it was on died & I had to replace it in a hurry. Fortunately my daughter is an SRE for a domain hosting company & was able to "massage" the system to get it working on a new box I bought from Currys... I haven't had the time to rebuild it properly. I have 2 connections set up as failovers & to be quite honest I can't remember how I did it
I've not had any of the disconnection issues you mention here, though it wouldn't hurt to check the DHCP logs to see if mine is doing the same thing. Where do you see the logs for the WAN DHCP requests?
@nofappingway, mine is running on a very low spec PC:
Intel(R) Celeron(R) N4505 @ 2.00GHz
2 CPUs: 1 package(s) x 2 core(s)
It was the cheapest Acer Aspire I could find in stock at Currys the same day, that had space for the dual NIC I needed to put in it... I need 3 network ports for 2 incoming & one local. I had to get it up asap as I work from home. That is the downside of having the incoming fiber on bridge mode & using your own router/firewall to connect to PPPoE. It's been rock solid though. Aside from the slightly hacky pfsense reinstall by moving the SSD to a completely different machine, the hardware itself has been great.
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Previous Openreach based fibre connections have always been via DHCP for me.
HeyB started in Feb'23 with PPPoE with no VLAN ID.
As part of buying, agreed not use CGNAT, get a variable IP.
Then around Apr'23 it moved to PPPoE with VLAN ID 20, which is where it still is Nov'23
This changed put me back on CGNAT and I had to ask to be taken off again.
This was around the same time the upload speed increased for free 400down/200up to 400down/400up.
Happy days.
In 9 months there have been a couple of 30-60mins of downtime at 2am which were planned maintenance (received warning emails).
Have had one, one hour outage and one two hour outtage during the day. Both unplanned but near the start (around March/April).
Had one 4 day outtage because some other supplier decided to yank my cable out while working on another property (nice bit of job creation). Not Hey'B fault. Notified Monday and engineer fixed it Friday.
So on the whole HeyB have been excellent so far. Perhaps not 100% slick + well drilled. But they have been responsive to customer issues and communicated things up front.
FAR easier / quicker to speak to compared to BT / TalkTalk also.
And crucially the actual connection has been solid + consistently 10% faster than advertised.
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Hello,
I found this thread a few weeks ago while searching the internet for information about possibly using Hey Broadband and my own router.
While much of what I type has already been said, I figured I'd add this one more post to the list to confirm how its panned out so far (rather than start another thread).
Location: Surrey, Feb 2023.
I'm using my own router (a 7w x86 OpenWRT box) and host a family email server, so it has meagre usage but was a deal breaker in terms of it has to be routeable from the outside world.
Occasionally I have cause to VPN in from outside also.
Previous 2 years with TalkTalk fibre 80Mbps/20Mbps. OpenWRT router connected to Nokia G-010G-Q GPON ONT via ethernet. WAN IP via DHCP.
I pay £8 a year for DDNS, no fixed IP.
BT customer for 12 years, TalkTalk for last 2 years. Reasons for swapping supplier are mostly financial.
Both companies previously competed / discounted when pressured each time contracts came up for renewal. But not this year. TalkTalk were 33% higher than HeyB and BT 50% higher.
I rang HeyB to ask questions and confirm what was on their website (as it differed to info found on some internet posts). Got through to them in less than 90 seconds, they were very helpful.
There were definite gaps in their prepared responses and understanding of their own setup (no doubt this is largely due to they are keeping costs down by focusing on the 80% vanilla installs).
There also seemed a separation between departments and their CRM system. As I received calls / emails about things already resolved. However that's a VAST improvement on not getting called back at all (BT).
Overall, helpful and positive experience, I hope they do well.
As a general moan, it seems a waste that companies cannot "take over" the unused fibre line into the house. As a new provider, they needed to drill another line into the house.
This is not a criticism of HeyB, but the industry setup as a whole. Every 2 years we're to have new cables and holes in the wall just to change supplier? Apparently so.
I admit I didn't research what I can / could not do in terms of removing the old cable beyond it was not my kit. Not to mention the 2 week overlap with service start/end meant I had a fallback plan in case things did not go well.
HeyB provided either:
1. Adtran 814-v6 WiFi Router capable of taking VOIP phone (RJ11 socket). Another of their websites refers to a TP Link Archer XR500v, unsure if this is just out of date info, or location specific.
or
2. "Configure our router to act as a bridge" . They actually provided an Adtran SDX 611 GPON ONT. This meant no VOIP (unless your own kit can), but did mean a much smaller box (than switching a whole router to bridge mode) that uses barely 2w and basically mirrored the TalkTalk setup.
Option 2 is exactly what I was after.
I asked if they operated CGNAT or if my public IP would be routable. The answer was, it was CGNAT, but this could be removed and I could get the engineer to ring through the change on the day, it was a "2 second job".
Given I was using my own kit, it seemed sensible to start off as vanilla as possible, confirm CGNAT was operating and ring through after the connection was working, rather than try and set it up before the install and have potentially adding another variable to the mix.
Install day and the engineer rang in advance, completed the installation efficiently.
The PPPoE connection worked first time and sure enough the routers WAN port IP was 100.64.n.n. So rang in that "2 second" request (5min to get through this time) and it wasn't quite so straightforward. It took a little re-explaining to get across the issue and then took 4 days to fix.
However during that time they called me to update they were still working on it and ultimately they did resolve it fairly promptly overall. Plus the resolution came on a Sunday which is some indication as to their efforts.
It's only been 10 days, but so far so very good. I pay for 400Mbps/200Mbps and with SQM turned off I get between 402/214 and 442/233, with 4-5ms pings. Which is great! And for the same price as 80/20 with TT, fixed for 2 years.
Customer service may not have been a well oiled / polished affair, but they were helpful, rang back and resolved something quickly.
The 2 elephants in the room are quality of service over time (how bullet proof / reliable will the connection be).
And what will the company do re: pricing going forward. Their advert clearly said "No price increase during the length of your contract".
The T's and C's pricing guide says "No price increase during minimum commitment period", mine being 24 months.
However, section 25 of their T's and C's says "At any time, we may change our services, our charges, our equipment, our apparatus or the terms of Our Agreement"
"This may happen" followed by bunch of cost pressure related reasons and finally "for any other reason that we can’t predict now".
Great.
TalkTalk tried this; advertising / selling a "fixed price" deal and then 6 months into it, putting up the price 10%. Ultimately they relented eventually, but it left a bad taste and of course I told anyone I'd ever met about it.
They say there is no such thing as bad publicity, nonsense, try putting prices up mid contract!
So is HeyB too good to be true. Are they just hooking people at lower price points to then increase prices during the contract term. Obviously I hope not!
I'm hoping they are people of their word and are able to provide the service they claim at the price they claim for as long as the contract.
If they do that, and are competitive again in two years, I would of course stay (all things being equal). Not to mention, if I hop again, the house will start to resemble swiss cheese.
Apologies for the waffle. Really was supposed to just cover the setup + kit + process.
Hope its of use to someone else.
Apologies for resurrecting such an old thread, but I have a question: When you said they can remove the CGNAT, will they give you a normal dynamic IPv4 address or would it be a static IPv4 address or do you have the flexibility to choose?
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Additional info (unfortunately cannot edit previous post as too long has past).
HeyB do not have their own DNS servers (at least not for home use), They use google (8.8.8.8) + cloudflare (1.1.1.1).
Only found this out because current free use of a spam filter started bouncing as the spam filter company don't allow use of public dns without a login.
So choice was either get a spam filter login, or setup a private DNS server.
No biggy, just hadn't realised.
Ugh that kind of sux a little bit! Means our uncached requests need to flow through more hops to resolve name to IP address. Ideally would've been better hosted within the ISP's network (for shorter hops)
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Cloudflare, Google etc. will resolve from London so probably still same latency, or at least very close.
I get 5ms to Cloudflare as an example.
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Cloudflare, Google etc. will resolve from London so probably still same latency, or at least very close.
I get 5ms to Cloudflare as an example.
The signs of this ISP being new to the broadband game are definitely showing ... peering, default cgnat, lack of self hosted dns servers etc... but I guess beggars can't be chooses if that's the only fibre provider currently in the area!
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Yes I think they have been setup with as low capital expenditure as possible, basically "just enough" to provide a basic internet service. End game in their plan is likely being brought out by a bigger player.
Lack of DNS is likely the smallest issue out of what you listed though, I actually dont use ISP hosted DNS as a preference, and ultimately they still better than having no FTTP availability.
Edited by Chrysalis (Thu 02-May-24 19:01:16)
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Yes I think they have been setup with as low capital expenditure as possible, basically "just enough" to provide a basic internet service. End game in their plan is likely being brought out by a bigger player.
Good point, and agree!
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There are other ISPs offering services using F&W networks fibre, see here:
https://fwnetworks.co.uk/partner-with-us/current-par...
I can't vouch for any of them however. Hey!Broadband was definitely set up as the partner ISP of F&W networks, but they do offer wholesale to other ISPs.
Unfortunately the larger ISPs only seem interested in using Cityfibre's wholesale offering.
Hey!Broadband 1Gb Fibre - Live BQM
Asus AC86U - Asuswrt Merlin
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Yeah there is a degree of risk averseness within the sector, and even Cityfibre isnt enough of a pull for all of them, Sky arent involved, and on my FEX there is no Talktalk/Zen. Vodafone is the only big one on there.
Edited by Chrysalis (Sat 04-May-24 21:01:58)
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Last time I asked, they will give you a dynamic IP gratis or you can pay £5/month for a static.
For DNS, you could always spin up an instance of Unbound and/or with PiHole in front. It's trivially easy to setup if you have any Linux experience.
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Last time I asked, they will give you a dynamic IP gratis or you can pay £5/month for a static.
For DNS, you could always spin up an instance of Unbound and/or with PiHole in front. It's trivially easy to setup if you have any Linux experience.
Interesting idea, but will it give me the resolved IP from a source that's taken minimal hops? That's what I'm fundamentally after ... The benefit of using ISP's DNS servers is that it's their network at the very start so it means low hops to get the resolved IP address.
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It'll be on your local LAN. You can either configure Unbound to forward on a request to a public DNS Server like Cloudflare, Quad9 etc or put Unbound into recursive mode where it'll go out and query Root names servers to find the authoritative name servers to resolve the name. Whilst that would be slower on the first look up, the record would be cached after that. Any name server including a 'local' ISP one would have to do the same.
Either way, both options will cache records locally up to their TTL.....so it would be faster than using an ISP provided name server as the majority of requests would be fulfilled by a cache on your local LAN.
Edited by nofappingway (Tue 07-May-24 16:47:27)
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