Youfibre now live in my area-thinking of switching.

Hi folks,

Youfibre is now live in my area, and because I have expressed an interest, I have got a number of calls from them.

I am currently with EE switched from BT but since the one group, still using the BT hub, that I find is very good in getting the wireless signal around the house.

On a 500 down package at £38.25, whereas Youfibre can do a 900 MBPS for £30.

Although I am still not long into my EE cvontract, with a buyout cost of £292 (I rang them) Youfibre are willing to pay up to £300 to buy out my contract.

However I do have a few concerns.

1 I want to get the Youfibre ONT at back of house (we live at back). Youfibre have said if I order I can discuss this with Engineer on day of Youfibre install, and if they are not willling to do that, then I don't need to go ahead with the order. As EE will probably be aware of my move at that time, can you see any problems with them, if I decide not to proceed with the Youfibre order?

2 I really like the wireless side of the BT hub, getting the signal around the house, the Erro router that Youfibre provide I am very unsure, as I have already tried one in the past with Talktalk, and I didn't like it at all, really bad coverage, I know that I could order extra units with Youfibre at £7 a month, not a route I want to do down.
Can you think of any other router that is not expensive that should be as good as BT hub?

Thanks for any more info on the above.
Joe

Edited by joemardo1 (Fri 09-Aug-24 18:47:03)

from the way you write, YouFibre is not delivered over Openreach. So there should be no reason for EE to be involved in this at all [apart from some silly ofcom ruling maybe?] until YouFibre need to buy out your contract.

As for hardware, always best to get your own, particularly these days, when you plug into and effectively connect to the ONT.

If Youfibre use their own network, then as already been said, EE have nothing to do with them, as EE is on Openreach network. The only time EE will know anything about you changing is when you contact them, after your youfibre is connected and say, goodbye.

Hi,
I am With YouFibre and am on the gig symmetric product, while I do use my own router, Wi-Fi access points, the Aaris router they provided me with does cover 4 Bed detached property as well as front and back garden. As with all routers the signal is weak in one of the rooms due to having 40CM thick walls hence why I have installed my own cabled in system as no mesh system from anywhere would cope well in my case.

I would say take a look at my BMQ below but I download and upload constantly and as there are over 50 devices connected all the time doing something it causes spikes as I fully use the bandwidth, (especially on a Friday as all my updates auto apply around mid day - evening.

Let me know if you have any questions. Full details on my install were available here: YouFibre - New install

Couple of additional things to consider:

Your EE 500M service will only have < 100M upload speed. The Youfibre 1000 service is 1000/1000. For me, this means a pretty steady 950/950 at any time of the day or night. This may or may not matter to you, but this sort of symmetric broadband is something you cannot get today through any Openreach ISP (including EE). Youfibre only offer services on their own network (Netomnia), which uses the same poles and ducts as Openreach / BT, but is otherwise entirely separate.

Out of the box, youfibre use CGNAT, which means you won't get a "proper" IPv4 address, but instead a pseudo-private address, which gets translated to a proper IPv4 address by Youfibre. For most activities (streaming, downloading etc.) this isn't a problem, but any use case than involves port mapping will not work, e.g. Plex sharing (at least, not without some severe limitations). You can get a Static IPv4 from Youfibre, but this is an extra £5/mo so you may wish to budget for this.

I cannot comment on the wifi performance (I don't use their router, instead using my own and a TP-Link wired mesh), but the router I was supplied (the one that isn't the Eero) seemed good, and a friend who uses it says it's been superb for him in terms of coverage.

Regarding your install, it'll all come down to on the day. My experience with the engineers that did mine was good - we discussed and agreed what I wanted, and while they weren't willing to do it all (I needed it routing under a floor void), they were happy for me to do it myself and they hooked up to it when they installed. I think much of this will depend on who you get on the day though. If you were to supply some sketches, I'm sure those more experience will be able to comment as to whether or not it's reasonable.

FWI, I'm at around 2 months into Youfibre now and it's been superb in every way, so can't hesitate to recommend them.

In reply to a post by daern:

Couple of additional things to consider:

Your EE 500M service will only have < 100M upload speed. The Youfibre 1000 service is 1000/1000. For me, this means a pretty steady 950/950 at any time of the day or night. This may or may not matter to you, but this sort of symmetric broadband is something you cannot get today through any Openreach ISP (including EE). Youfibre only offer services on their own network (Netomnia), which uses the same poles and ducts as Openreach / BT, but is otherwise entirely separate.

Out of the box, youfibre use CGNAT, which means you won't get a "proper" IPv4 address, but instead a pseudo-private address, which gets translated to a proper IPv4 address by Youfibre. For most activities (streaming, downloading etc.) this isn't a problem, but any use case than involves port mapping will not work, e.g. Plex sharing (at least, not without some severe limitations). You can get a Static IPv4 from Youfibre, but this is an extra £5/mo so you may wish to budget for this.

I cannot comment on the wifi performance (I don't use their router, instead using my own and a TP-Link wired mesh), but the router I was supplied (the one that isn't the Eero) seemed good, and a friend who uses it says it's been superb for him in terms of coverage.

Regarding your install, it'll all come down to on the day. My experience with the engineers that did mine was good - we discussed and agreed what I wanted, and while they weren't willing to do it all (I needed it routing under a floor void), they were happy for me to do it myself and they hooked up to it when they installed. I think much of this will depend on who you get on the day though. If you were to supply some sketches, I'm sure those more experience will be able to comment as to whether or not it's reasonable.

FWI, I'm at around 2 months into Youfibre now and it's been superb in every way, so can't hesitate to recommend them.

Thanks to everyone for the helpful replies.

1As regards Plex, the CLient with movie library is installed on my desktop, and I sometimes stream these to my other devices, tablets etc and myabe a Quest 2 VR headset. I do not understand the in's and outs of it, but will this still work under Youfibre?

2 I take it from previous queries on my part a BT hub will NOT work with Youfibre?

Thanks again.
joe

In reply to a post by joemardo1:

1As regards Plex, the CLient with movie library is installed on my desktop, and I sometimes stream these to my other devices, tablets etc and myabe a Quest 2 VR headset. I do not understand the in's and outs of it, but will this still work under Youfibre?

Streaming to devices inside your house, it will work exactly as it does now. Streaming to devices outside of your house it will work, but in a limited fashion (at least from a bitrate point of view) and might not give the same experience. Pay the extra £5/month and it will work exactly as it does now (except it'll be way, way quicker due to the hugely increased uplink bandwidth from Youfibre!)

Edited by daern (Tue 13-Aug-24 13:50:51)

In reply to a post by joemardo1:

In reply to a post by daern:

Couple of additional things to consider:

Your EE 500M service will only have < 100M upload speed. The Youfibre 1000 service is 1000/1000. For me, this means a pretty steady 950/950 at any time of the day or night. This may or may not matter to you, but this sort of symmetric broadband is something you cannot get today through any Openreach ISP (including EE). Youfibre only offer services on their own network (Netomnia), which uses the same poles and ducts as Openreach / BT, but is otherwise entirely separate.

Out of the box, youfibre use CGNAT, which means you won't get a "proper" IPv4 address, but instead a pseudo-private address, which gets translated to a proper IPv4 address by Youfibre. For most activities (streaming, downloading etc.) this isn't a problem, but any use case than involves port mapping will not work, e.g. Plex sharing (at least, not without some severe limitations). You can get a Static IPv4 from Youfibre, but this is an extra £5/mo so you may wish to budget for this.

I cannot comment on the wifi performance (I don't use their router, instead using my own and a TP-Link wired mesh), but the router I was supplied (the one that isn't the Eero) seemed good, and a friend who uses it says it's been superb for him in terms of coverage.

Regarding your install, it'll all come down to on the day. My experience with the engineers that did mine was good - we discussed and agreed what I wanted, and while they weren't willing to do it all (I needed it routing under a floor void), they were happy for me to do it myself and they hooked up to it when they installed. I think much of this will depend on who you get on the day though. If you were to supply some sketches, I'm sure those more experience will be able to comment as to whether or not it's reasonable.

FWI, I'm at around 2 months into Youfibre now and it's been superb in every way, so can't hesitate to recommend them.

Thanks to everyone for the helpful replies.

1As regards Plex, the CLient with movie library is installed on my desktop, and I sometimes stream these to my other devices, tablets etc and myabe a Quest 2 VR headset. I do not understand the in's and outs of it, but will this still work under Youfibre?

2 I take it from previous queries on my part a BT hub will NOT work with Youfibre?

Thanks again.
joe

1 - If you want to stream these when you're off your network, you'll need a static IP at £5/m (unless you use something like tailscale etc)

2 - Technically you could use it as a router connected into the ONT, however I wouldn't recommend it, you'd be better off using the supplied Arris / Eero (dependng on the plan you go for)

In reply to a post by Mark07:

1 - If you want to stream these when you're off your network, you'll need a static IP at £5/m (unless you use something like tailscale etc)

In fact, Plex *can* allow external streaming in a double-NAT environment, using Plex Relay - effectively everything bounces through a Plex server so that neither client nor server need be able to talk directly to each other. The upside of this is that it works with CGNAT environments, but the downside is that because everything relays through Plex's own servers, they limit the streaming bandwidth to 1Mbps (or 2Mbps if you are a Plex Pass subscriber), meaning that it's limited to lower resolution streams - 480p is probably about your limit.

You can tell if you're accessing via Relay because the app will moan that "no direct connection to your server is available". It's kinda cool that they offer this as a fallback service, but I'd probably suggest that if you have all of that uplink bandwidth available, it would seem daft to not be able to use it for the sake of £5/mo. If you are going to want to use Plex remotely and the money really is an issue, I'd probably even suggest dropping down to the 500/500 tier, thus giving you a total of £32/mo including the static IP address.

In reply to a post by daern:

In reply to a post by Mark07:

1 - If you want to stream these when you're off your network, you'll need a static IP at £5/m (unless you use something like tailscale etc)

In fact, Plex *can* allow external streaming in a double-NAT environment, using Plex Relay - effectively everything bounces through a Plex server so that neither client nor server need be able to talk directly to each other. The upside of this is that it works with CGNAT environments, but the downside is that because everything relays through Plex's own servers, they limit the streaming bandwidth to 1Mbps (or 2Mbps if you are a Plex Pass subscriber), meaning that it's limited to lower resolution streams - 480p is probably about your limit.

You can tell if you're accessing via Relay because the app will moan that "no direct connection to your server is available". It's kinda cool that they offer this as a fallback service, but I'd probably suggest that if you have all of that uplink bandwidth available, it would seem daft to not be able to use it for the sake of £5/mo. If you are going to want to use Plex remotely and the money really is an issue, I'd probably even suggest dropping down to the 500/500 tier, thus giving you a total of £32/mo including the static IP address.

Correct, I didn't mention that as I doubt many people would want to rely on that as a solution, other than "emergencies", but you're right, it is in option.