So 2 lines one with EE and the other with another ISP?

In reply to a post by OfficialSnap:

I have 2 lines but 1 is my EE line.

Out of pure interest why do you need two broadband connections in one property?

Exactly my point! If providers done this the amount of electronic waste that could be cut down would be massive! It would allow for the main providers to start being comfortable with the possibility of offering consumers a choice as to whether they want to use their own hardware before placing an order instead of making a piece of kit be sent out.

Vodafone routers are in particular disappointing that they lock them down so much. Vodafone’s hardware has always been solid and their latest router I’m pretty sure it based of a Technicolor model that is open to any network. However with Vodafone routers I can be atleast happy to tell you that they do work with any network that runs using the TalkTalk infrastructure! This is because whilst TalkTalk based networks do provide you with a broadband username and password they typically aren’t actually doing any of the authentication (Very strange I know! But I did notice it over my time of testing their network with other routers in the past) I’m still yet to understand how it then authenticates but there is some magic going on there!

Sky routers I still feel are the worst. Locked down to Sky/Now only and their network will not run on a majority of other routers due to MER authentication. I have seen a couple routers work with Sky in the past as long as they can handle MER authentication but the setup was very complicated and required me to find an old O2 broadband username and password as Sky doesn’t use them and will never provide you with that sort of information due to their T&C’s.

Correct!

I get that question a lot! And there is 1 or 2 main reasons.

I never used to have 2 lines. Only got it installed when I found out it was thing but it’s been a big help! You see everything in my home is internet based, from TV channels to smart home equipment to multiple game consoles. And at my address the broadband speed has dropped quite a bit from recent years since our cabinet became more full. On a 76mbps download package with both it normally sits around 50 and I started to realise 1 connection at around 50mbps handling all this bandwidth wasn’t good enough. Especially when you’ve got multiple 4K Netflix streams running! So I took out the 2nd line to separate the consoles and PC’s so that bandwidth isn’t further draining our 1st line

Another reason is it’s actually became a really good back up! Before I switched to EE I had TalkTalk on my 1st line. I found every now and then some random fault would appear that only affected their wholesale network on the cabinet. Meaning whilst that was being fixed on I still had a completely working network on my other provider running on Vodafone’s backhaul. It was never necessarily intended to be a backup but damn it was so nice being able to just switch my mesh Wi-Fi gear to the other network and not have no internet throughout the couple hours it was down!

Suppose when you don't have the luxury of FTTP or a leased line you have to make the best with what you can get.

Exactly! It's quite a shame we don't have FTTP as Openreach, Hyperoptic and Youfibre have all been making efforts to roll out FTTP at my property for a while now. Hyperoptic were the first and haven't made any significant progress since 2018! Youfibre no longer say its coming on their site and their customer service says it's still listed to be done but they aren't as close as they thought. Then Openreach... Well I don't even know what they are doing. They started down the road about 6 months back then stopped and haven't done anything since.

*UPDATE*

I have since tried it but currently got no progress on it. It at first looks promising, attempts to connect and for a brief second does so successfully but then resets back to the original settings. I'm wondering if there is a piece of code that is making the router reset back to default settings and if so maybe I could turn that off.

I'm also looking to see if it's possible to update the list of accepted domains, maybe I could edit that list with my Vodafone based broadband provider to do it that way. All very much hard work but I'm not done with this project

I did consider a leased line. Maybe even a bonded connection?

At a guess / stab it’s running EE spec firmware which probably has some TR-069 auto provisioning functionality running within it.