Grain Broadband - use own router?

Hello

I recently had Grain broadband installed and has been a good service with exception of supplied router combo wifi signal is not the best.

I have two Eero 6 pro which I'd like to use as have used these on my old connection and were quite solid and worked for me.

My Grain connection uses Point-to-Point fibre, the fibre comes into the inside of property to a termination box, a fibre cable runs from the termination box direct to the back of the Zyxel 5601 router which is connected with SFP module which slides into the rear of the router.

The router is fairly large, sticks out of place and attempts to hide it arent proving well. So I purchased a SFP media converter to ethernet. Upon trying this the other day, the Eero just wouldn't connect (even though the Eero worked when the Zyxel was in bridge mode)

Does anyone know if its possible to do away with the Zyxel 5601 router for something more compact or any connection settings I could try on the Eero to work it with the SFP converter? Or whether an SFP converter is simply unsuitable in this setup.

I consider myself to have some reasonable knowledge or DSL/FTTC connections, however fibre connections and set up have left me with my head scratching.

Thanks in advance
NE.

Did you get anywhere with this?

I'm joining Grain soon and would also like to avoid using their router.

Hey!

Yes I did, I purchased a TP Link SFP converter from Amazon

I then disconnected the SFP module from behind the grain router and inserted into the TP link and connected up the Eero 6 router via ethernet.

Seems to work, but I had to disconnect and reconnect the ethernet cable between converter and router as my router would say it was offline. So anytime I power off the router/converter I have to re-insert the ethernet cable. Not sure if this is just my eero router though.

Works a charm though, stable connection and great speeds.

Let me know if I can help you any further.

Thanks, I may come back once I've had my install completed

My ideal scenario is to use my current router which has an SFP+ port on it.

I got connected today.

My router (Ubiquiti dream router 7) has an SFP+ port so I was able to use my own router without any issue.

I just unplugged the SFP from the grain router and plugged it into my router.

What is it like speed wise? Any issues? And latency or BQM graphs - how do they look?

831Mbit down and 914Mbit up when testing now. Ping was 10ms.

I’ve not had a chance to setup a BQM yet - not sure it would work as I have CGNAT until my static IP is provisioned.

I’m liking it being integrated into my dream router - not having to run a ONT or router in bridge mode is nice.

The UDR7 can also do dual WAN so I’ve got two connections for now.

Been using a UDM-Pro since mid-2020 and there is so much information available to me from it. I also have UI APs and cameras. I do't use Dual WAN - but can, if my FTTP goes down, power up the BT hhub and 4G dongle.

Good that teh UDM-Pro can be set to run a speedtest (basic) every night, latency is continually monitored and when connected to an AP a speed test runs in two parts: Device to AP and Gateway to Host Server.

Once you have your Static IP - if you have problems with BQM, let me know and I will give you some pointers..

Yeah I moved from an Eero to this UDR7 and I love the level of data I can see.

It has been a little buggy (it freezes once a week) but I can live with that whilst they iron out the bugs in the firmware.

I’ll let you know if I need help with the BQM.

How did you get the static IP to work with your UDM? I tried cloning the MAC of the router that previously had a static IP assigned (Zyxel router) but it doesn't appear to work.