BeFibre

I've decided to go with BeFibre for internet and there doesn't seem to be much talk about them on these forums or elsewhere (other than some hit and miss reviews on TrustPilot) so I thought I would record my experience with them as it happens, good and bad, from order to installation to daily use.

Some background:

A good 18 or 24months ago, Full Fibre and Virgin media vans started showing up around our estate and continued to turn up, on and off ever since.
I googled Full Fibre (aka Fibre Heroes (FH)) and saw that they were bringing FTTP to more rural towns and villages and put myself on their notification list.
On 7 Apr I got an SMS message from Squirrel Internet to say that 'ultrafast speeds' were now available and on checking the FH website our estate looked to be live

FH partner with a number of smaller ISPs and BeFibre were doing the best offer on their higher-end packages - £25 for 500Mb/s or £30 for 900Mb/s with free install. The other ISP were typically around the £45+ mark for 900Mb/s. That offer expired 12/4/23 so I plumped for it. Their next offer, now running to May, was on the lower 150Mb/s package so I got in just in time.

I emailed BeFibre with a query on which router they supplied. There are press releases about them going with Linksys routers https://be-fibre.co.uk/new/befibre-commits-to-upgrad... but at the moment they confirm that it is still the much maligned Adtran 654v6. I submitted my query at 10pm on 9/4/23 and they replied back 10/4/23 at 10am - pretty good response time I think.

After reading these forums my next query was over the IP addresses they use. Some reporting that they were behind CGNAT shared IPs and others saying they got a 'foreign' IP. I got a reply within 9 minutes - they use public dynamic IPs but not shared CGNAT addresses.

So I signed up on their website, completed the Direct Debit request and got taken to a page to choose an install date. The dates ranged from that day (12/4/23) through to June but on my phone I couldn't select any date. Below this was a link to request a date via contact form so I used this which offered dates from 7 days hence. I opted for 19/4/23 am, pm and 20/4/23 am.

I received an automated email back from the BeFibre Installations team thanking me for contacting them. The message number leads me to believe they may have around 9000 customers/installation to date.

Last night on a bike ride I noticed that the FH cabinet still doesn't look complete. There is one small grey cab and the bigger yellow trench that I'm told they have to crane the cabinet on top of.

FH cab

This morning I got a call from BeFibre to say earliest install date would be 28/4/23 which I've agreed to and they say the router has now been shipped.


I am likely to just double-NAT the Adtran with the existing Deco M4 router setup I use, but may invest in a TP-Link media converter as I have seen others say they've had some success getting BeFibre working with their own routers using a media convertor.

I probably won't have much to add for the next fortnight, but will post pictures of the Adtran when it arrives.

Cheers

Mike

Got a knock on the door this morning. Fibre man had arrived to run the fibre cabling up to the front door. Took about 30 mins and lost my internet for about the same. Presumably the same route was used for the existing copper cable.

Fibre cable

Fibre man advised that the next fibre guy, on installation day, will run the cable wherever we ask within the house (subject to length I guess) and confirm all working with the router etc.

Router has not yet arrived.

10 days to install date

Pulling another cable through the duct shouldn't have affected your FTTC, it would indicate a faulty conductor or poor joint somewhere. Probably not worth worrying about if FTTP is about to go in, though.

Yes, I'll be binning TalkTalk once the fibre is in and working. Fibre guy knew it was off. The minute I opened the door to tell him he said he knew but it would be back on before he left. And it was

Received an email from BeFibre - "Just 3 more days until full-fibre broadband"

Still no router received so emailed them.

Received 5 SMS message to my landline number at 09.30 onwards. Not sure they came through in the right order but I get the gist.

I have no way of replying back to them from a landline

1st "[BeFibre]?? Heroes we are due to attend your property and install the"
2nd "reply if this is still suitable by replying Yes or No"
3rd "24hrs before installation appointment"
4th "equipment for your full fibre bb on friday 28th on ...."
5th " hi mike, this is a message from Full Fibre home of TH" 0934

Router arrived 10 mins ago, signed for delivery. Posted out yesterday

Address was hand written so I wonder if it was a bit lastminute.com due to my email saying I had no router yet.

It's a chunky thing and the SFP port is on the underside of the box and comes with world's largest power adapter and a flat ethernet cable.

https://ibb.co/jLNSL1v
https://ibb.co/F83Ys4Z
https://ibb.co/X4WjhMf
https://ibb.co/Y7QfQpq

No manual.

Let's see what Friday brings.

So the day of reckoning arrived. Fibre Heroes arrived just after 9am and asked where I needed the ONT. It was a Nokia ONT supplied and he did say it was one of the better ones.

https://ibb.co/b6rRnNs

https://ibb.co/vD9M0cP

As I was the first in the street to be connected there was some additional cabling required in the cabinet that he couldn't do so there was a delay while someone CBT authorised did the cabinet connection

By 1030ish he was pretty much done and dusted and the PON light was flashing. He said it could be up to an hour before it established on the network and would turn solid green. It did so after about 45 mins.

I connected to the ADTrans router with a Dell laptop and hit a snag - it would only connect to the LAN port at 100Mb despite being a Gigabit NIC. I tried a different LAN port and this, briefly, connected at 1Gbs then fell back to 100Mbs.

I tried with my Pixel phone and an ethernet adapter and this connected at 1Gbs. Speed tests showed 650Mbs down, 920Mbs up - Wow!!!

The ADTran speed test in the GUI showed 920Mbs/930Mb/s

IPv6 is enabled by default on BeFibre and this caused some issues. The attached devices were now getting an IPv6 address and using IPv6 for their DNS server. DNS was a bit hit and miss. Sometimes it would resolve, sometimes it wouldn't but ping tests showed the internet was up at all times.

https://ibb.co/WtCDNwL

I disabled IPv6 to force IPv4 but found still DNS issues with the IPv4 server. Possibly the DNS server(s) they use on the network isn't the greatest. I was able to assign my own DNS on the ADTran router (8.8.8.8 and 1.1.1.1) and have had no issues with DNS since.

https://ibb.co/Vt1Sc2q

Next problem - CGNAT IP address was being given out so couldn't port forward. BeFibre quickly resolved (within minutes), internet briefly dropped, and I was back up with a 'proper' IP address.

I did find that I can't just plug the ethernet cable from the ONT in to my existing router (expected), so I am double-natted at the minute.

I also can't find what the VLAN ID should be for the network (in another thread someone said they found it on the router but I'm not seeing anything like that) as I plan on getting rid of the ADTran if I can and I believe I'll need the VLAN ID.

The Deco M4 units I was using as the router are proving to have terrible throughput and I'll need to dig in to that. On wifi, connected to the M4 the highest I got was 130Mbs/110Mbs, via ethernet connection it was a ridiculously poor 60Mbs/15Mbs (I thought I was back on the VDSL line for a moment). So that's the weekend job :/

So the poor performance was a result of poor memory by me. I'd set QoS up yonks ago with the VDSL speeds. Not sure why only wired was affected though. With QoS reset it's a respectable 500Mbs up and down on Speedtest.

I've used a third laptop to connect and now seeing gigabit connection on the ADtran LAN ports so was two duff laptops in a row (same model)

Then hit an odd issue. I could ping out through the Deco, resolve DNS, but couldn't surf. Page timeouts on every page. Rebooting the Deco appeared to fix it, but only temporarily and it returned after a few minutes.

Rebooting the ADtran got everything working again.

I also kept the same IP and before, so looks like that's sticky (if not static)

You can probably fine the VLAN ID by running Wireshark on a PC directly connected to the ONT also if you have been provided with the GPON SFP Module you could try connecting that directly to a router like a Mikrotik as they have the ablity to sniff the VLAN ID.

also if you can setup static route on the befibre router you could work around double nat that way

please update if you have any luck with 3rd party hardware

Hi Mikey - I am also with BeFibre, and am stuck on the CGNAT system. I am in Worcester, how difficult was it to migrate over to a real public IP? This CGNAT is incredibly annoying!

Hi Mike,

I was reading your thread with interest as I've just signed up and been connected with BeFibre.

I've had some initial issues getting and staying connected as my router was getting no IP address from the network, but now they have resolved that.

I'm now getting some issues where every 12-24 hours the DNS stops working similar to what you mentioned.

I have the same Nokia ONT on my wall and I have the Adtran router cabled to my Deco X20 mesh system (access point mode). I tried changing my DNS manually as you suggested hoping it would stabilise, but a few hours later I've had to reboot the adtran again to restore connectivity - very annoying!

I have seen others that have got rid of the Adtran router altogether and put the VLAN ID into their Deco and set it on router mode. I believe you would also have to spoof the MAC address of the Adtran on the Deco settings too as the MAC lock the network. I've not found out full instructions on how to attempt this yet anywhere.

I dont think I'm getting the best of performance from my Deco's either but I'm working my way through various tests on that too - I just need things to be stable for a few days first.

As our setups are so similar, I thought I would let you know my experiences too - maybe we can find some solutions between us!

Thanks,

Jon

Just some further news from me that may help others. My Adtran router was slowly losing service every 12-24 hours and eventually needed a reboot to get full service restored again.

I got sick of this today and converted my Deco to be the main router and took the Adtran out of the loop. This was suprisingly easy, but I did have to spoof the MAC address in the Advanced settings. As soon as I did the internet came straight up! I'll see how this goes for the next few days but hopefully its a lot more stable than the Adtran!

I tried doing exactly this and found that no vlans were involved and that they were locking the network down by mac address instead.

I was expecting to be connected up with an SFP module direct to the Adtran so was pleasantly surprised when they fitted an ONT.

For the CGNat issue, I had confirmed before ordering that they didn't use CGNat so had something in writing for when it turned out they did. They resolved issue within minutes of my email to support.

Apologies for the late reply but the email notifications have been going to my junk mail.

As i think you've now found out, no Vlans are used and it's just the mac address that's required.

I only had the Adtran in situ for a couple of days so didn't get to play with it much but was seeing some weird issues where DNS was working and I could ping a website but couldn't open same site in a browser. Then DNS wouldn't work. Then I was getting an Ipv6 address despite BeFibre not using Ipv6. Nightmare.

What speed are you seeing through your Deco? I was seeing it capped at roughly 250Mbs but eventually got it sorted and now get 850+ on occasion when wired and 550Mbs wireless.

Edited by mikeycrawford (Tue 09-May-23 23:58:17)

Mine has been very stable this past week. The Decos were one of the best IT purchases I've made. No more kids complaining about wifi.

When I was seeing poor speeds with the M4s I was ready to upgrade them but it looks to have been a combination of the QoS settings and an odd issue involving the wireless backhaul.

I posted about it over in the Deco forums. Search M4 capped at 250Mbs.

Hello,
I just thought I'd jump on board this thread and share my experience with them now I've had it a couple of months, as I'm aware information out there is a bit thin on the group for this ISP in terms of feedback.

The Service:
I've got the full speed package and independent speed tests from my Raspberry Pi acting as a home server hardwired to the router tend to show about 900Mbps down stream and 750-800Mbps upstream most of the time so the speeds are good, as is the latency. Connection reliability is now solid, the first two weeks were very ropey with repeated drop outs but support have told me there was an issue with some hardware in the area that has now been fixed. Since then, I have experienced no drop outs.

IP Address / CGNAT:
They did confirm with me that I was on a public facing IP address which I have since confirmed now that my Raspberry Pi is up and running as a server (including VPN), it wasn't static however which was fine as I never expected that. I know others have reported being behind CGNAT, I wonder if this depends on what package you sign up to.


**

The Router:
This is what lets the service down. The connection is an ONT connected to the wall and then the Adtran router connects to the ONT using a CAT 6 (or higher) cable. The router is basic at best. It supports 802.11ax but in terms of functionality is very limited. My suspicion is the router is capable of more but the Be Fibre firmware they have flashed it with really limits it.

I tried connecting my own router to the ONT however, Be Fibre can't/won't provide credentials for authentication and I can't find a way to get it to work. The Adtran router does not support Bridge Mode so you're stuck with it. I have to use my Asus wireless mesh setup in AP mode which is frustrating as it is capable of delivering so much more functionality as a router than the Adtran (or at least, what the Adtran is being allowed to do).

Their website says they are partnering with Linksys to use the Velop as a router instead but this hasn't entered the testing phase yet. Hopefully it will soon.

**
Support:
The bulk of their tech support is done through a ticketing / email system which is absolutely fine for non-urgent issues / queries and a couple of the people I've communicated with through this platform are very helpful.

If however you have a more urgent matter and need telephone support, that is truly lacking and they need to work on this significantly.

**
Overall:
I'm happy with the service but they really need to sort that router out or allow you to connect your own TP router.

Edited by ManTimes (Mon 15-May-23 20:06:25)

Thanks for the input. Still early days for me but was glad to be able to get rid of the ADTran router. Did you try using its MAC address in your own router? Not all routers let you, but the TP Link Decos do. No credentials were required, just DHCP on the Wan with a known Mac address.

We had BeFibre successfully installed last week. First installer was a contractor and had not used a drill before. Totally messed up the installation and it took about 2 weeks for a competent engineer to fix the issues.

Now we are up and running but also getting into intermittent dropouts and DNS failures. BeFibre have flashed the router but the errors are still occurring.

Support have identified an issue with the assigned IP and have raised a ticket to get this resolved.

I have also purchased the Deco XE75Pro mesh system and will attempt to follow the advice on here to set this up to replace the BeFibre stock router.

I've found support by phone and email to be fast and responsive.

Mikey, I cannot thank you enough. I have spent hours trying to configure my own router without joy and had subsequently resorted to using my own mesh in AP mode. I had completely overlooked the obvious of cloning the MAC address in the DHCP settings until you put this.

Sure enough I tried it and am now Adtran free using my own mesh back in router mode. Big thanks for making this suggestion.

It’s worth pointing out the installers work for Full Fibre Co (FibreHeroes) and you would get them regardless of which ISP you picked on this altnet.

The DNS drop outs though sounds very similar to what I experienced to begin with which was eventually fixed. Best of luck to you.

In reply to a post by mikeycrawford:

Thanks for the input. Still early days for me but was glad to be able to get rid of the ADTran router. Did you try using its MAC address in your own router? Not all routers let you, but the TP Link Decos do. No credentials were required, just DHCP on the Wan with a known Mac address.

Hi All, im getting Befibre installed next week and was looking for info on the router,
Can anyone advise on if im best to get the TPlink Deco as mentioned.
I have a standard talktalk set up at the moment apart from a workshop 30M away that I have ran a cable to with a TP link hub on the end to give wifi in the workshop.

house is three story so also have a talk talk booster on middle floor.

What would you reccomend i get for setting up with befibre?

Thanks all

Would definitely be interested in hearing more from people who are with BeFibre. They look like they are about to be the first to deploy fibre in my area having at least put their box on the pole so it looks like I will probably end up with them.

Had BeFibre installed on Thursday (I'm in Heswall on the Wirral). Really hassle free, got an accurate update on arrival time a couple of hours before my afternoon slot started.

Also pleased to receive a Linksys Velop router, rather than the Adtran.

Early days, but speeds seem excellent so far.

Only weirdness is that there's no online customer account/portal, but not a major thing.

Edited by TopToffee (Mon 17-Jul-23 14:00:16)

Good to hear. I'm in the Cleveleys area (near Blackpool). The connectors are slowly going up on the poles but from what I'm hearing that probably means a few months out

Oh one additional annoyance - I'm paying £29 p/m for 500mbps (£10 off the "normal" price) but in the last day or so they've started doing 900mbps for £30. Bad timing

I had the same. I was second in my town to connect to the FF network. A month on they're doing £5 off per month, free installation instead of £50, and a £100 Amazon reward voucher. I'm very happy with the service however considering my only option before was FTTC over aluminium.

For those mentioning installation experience, it's worth noting that Be Fibre work off of the Full Fibre Co network (Fibre Heroes) and it's these that complete the installation. Regardless of which ISP you choose on their network, you're going to get the same installers.

The only way that would be different is if you went with a different network (OpenReach, Gigaclear, VM etc...)

My install is tomorrow, just had it confirmed the enginer is bringing an MX4200. Thank god im not getting the Adtran!

Some ISPs allow an upgrade mid-contract (typically setting a new contract term). It might be worth asking if you haven't already.

So hit my first blip with Be-Fibre tonight. Noticed that streaming was a bit laggy so ran some speed tests and speeds were down to between 3 and 6 Mbs down and up. Packet loss also being seen of between 8 and 15%

Am checking with a neighbour, also on be-fibre in same cab to see what he's getting.

Reboot of router and ONT did not improve things. Will check again in the morning to see if it resolves itself.

Hi Mikey,
Not sure where you are but I’m in Hadfield. I have been seeing slow/laggy internet for the last week or so. When I run MTR tests I like you see packet loss as soon as I hit BeFibre’s Network. My packet loss varies between 10-30%. I raised a ticket with them this morning about this issue but not had a response yet. I’m glad I kept my FTTC which is rock solid.

Edited by jw65201 (Tue 08-Aug-23 22:54:32)

Forgot to mention the packet loss seems to be apparent from early evening until midnight.

Getting exactly the same issue. Connection is perfect during the day, slows down to a crawl at night.

Are we being throttled?

I've recently become a BeFibre customer after my previous ADSL contract expired and I saw their £29/500Mb deal (though now upgraded to £30/900Mb), and also based on the feedback in this thread. And though he doesn't know it, I'm also one of mikeycrawford's neighbours (I recognised the photo of the new fibre cabinet he posted).

After the ONT installation and having to wait an extra two days for the router to be delivered, I'm online but the speeds aren't quite matching my expectations: I've done a good few tests on speedtest.net, and while I can mostly hit 850-930Mb down, I struggle to get more than 500-600 up - is this to be expected for a new connection? I've also had big issues this evening with up and down speeds (under 1Mb up).

And do BeFibre do any shaping on torrent traffic? I've had mixed results with downloads.

In reply to a post by sicjoke:

Getting exactly the same issue. Connection is perfect during the day, slows down to a crawl at night.

Are we being throttled?

I would have thought that you are suffering from contention arguably due to inadequate backhaul. Complain to BeFibre and see what response you get.

Speeds slowly began to improve from 11pm onwards. 8Mbs, 15Mbs, 20Mbs. Was seeing full speed again by about 11.30pm albeit some small packet loss (1.5%).

This morning, full speed still and no packet loss.

So it resolved itself, which is good.

My experience would suggest that the speed will drop again during peak hours. At least this is is what's happening to me.

During the day I am getting a comfortable 850Mbps both ways. After 6pm it starts dropping until it becomes unusable (less than 5Mbps up and down).

I emailed their support 2 days ago and am still waiting on a response, which itself isn't brilliant. I have asked them directly if this is a result of throttling during peak hours or if their network is unable to give me the speeds I pay for.

Glad i've seen this.

EXACTLY the same issue for me. Been back and forth a few times

I sent off a load of evidence this morning that i gathered last night, including massive amount of packet loss being witnessed

Summary of what i found: (i also sent a ton of screenshots)

16:03 - Speeds nice and fast, as they are all day. No issues whatsoever
18:07 - Speeds beginning to drop
18:32 - Speeds dropping further
19:32 - Speeds and performance have nosedived. Service unusable 8% packet loss over 100 hops. Issue
20:17 - Speed and performance continuing to be abysmal. Service unusable 8% packet loss over 100 hops. Issue
21:15 - Speed has dropped to a magnificent 3mbps down and 2mbps up. Service absolutely cant be used now. 29% packet loss!!!!!
22:07 - Speeds continue to be poor and service continues to be unusable. 18% packet loss
23:35 - Service has begun to ramp back up and be close to normal. Packet loss no longer an issue (although 1% seen)
07:00 - Service back up to 100% speeds, no packet loss, no issues


Their response was this, so hopefully now being sorted for all

Thank you for sending these over.

This morning we have been made aware that there maybe an issue that is ongoing across the network.

We are looking into it as a priority. If we need any more information we'll be in touch otherwise we'll resolve asap.

We appreciate your patience while this is investigated.

Edited by mrpands (Wed 09-Aug-23 12:53:58)

Update to this one

Night and day tonight compared to the last 3 or 4. No issues whatsoever....so can only presume they fixed it. Hoorah!

Kudos to them for fixing so quickly

Anybody else had a total internet drop out via IPv4? It started for me about 30 minutes ago - lights on the ONT are green (and still green post-restart) but I'm not getting an IPv4 address on the Linksys router troubleshooting page. Doing some testing and I have got an IPv6 address and have got connectivity using that (on my few devices configured to use it).

edit: of course, immediately after posting that, IPv4 connectivity returned. I have to say I've never had these speed issues or dropouts with previous ISPs.

Edited by Matt99 (Thu 10-Aug-23 00:39:53)

Hi
Sadly I'm a Be Fibre customer as well, and suffering with the early evening very slow speeds.
Normally get close to 720mb and am lucky to over 5mb after 9pm, reported it last week on 2nd August, get a reply 5days later, then it happened again Tuesday night so rang them yesterday morning, and started saying there wasn't an issues then yes we are aware of some slow speeds lol
Got to say in my 12 months with BeFibre, I have never had so many problems and dropouts.
Support are close to useless, they replaced the adtran router due to constant dropouts with another adtran but sent it out with the wrong firmware installed, then support couldn't do anything cos they couldn't see the router, yet another day of service lost.
Reported them to the ombudsman yesterday, as they clearly have no intention of dealing with my ongoing complaint which was lodged back in December 2022, and promised to be looked at after they installed the new linksys router, but still after regular reminders, nothing since January.
I've had problems from day 1, non uk ip addresses leaving all streaming apps not working and some gaming too. I even got the same ip address from day 1, again 6 months later with the same problem.

Never had so many problems in 20 years of having Internet services, all problems from the other ISPs are dwarfed by the problems in the first few months let alone the first year.
Roll on leaving day

I've had the linksys since March this year. They don't provide any extra nodes, but they may do in the future lol

These last few nights with the slow speed issues, accessing the router with app or webpage takes forever.
The UI is terrible, much better features on the Adtran, but the linksys seems to have less wifi coverage but far less drop outs, shame they don't want you to use your own equipment, and being that I really don't like the linksys, I won't be buying any of their units or nodes.

I'm sorry for link quoting or whatever, I've never used this site before and just created an account to post as this thread popped up for me in my searches and I sorted something that other people may find of use.

Like a few in the thread, I suffered with extensive packet loss and poor performance. I have an Adtran also but with the GPON module installed. I decided to order a Mikrotik Hex S to replace the adtran as I was sure this was the issue (and support was basically non-existent)

To get this working I had to (some steps here may not be necessary but this is what I did):

Set SFP1 to automatic (dhcp).
Set SFP1 MAC to that of the Adtran.
Added VLAN10, bound to SFP1. (I found that I needed VLAN 10 using the packet sniffer tool and a hex decoder, looking at the rx packets)
Disabled the SFP1 entry in the interface list tab.
Added VLAN10 as a WAN list.
Added a DHCP client on VLAN10.
I had 5 minutes or so of rebinding DHCP addresses but now 20+mins in the connection has been solid.

Had it installed on the 9th. An hour later it completely dropped. Not had anything since, even though the lights are all on, nobody is home.

I've had it installed this morning. It took the engineer a few hours to install the ONT but it's a very tidy job, so no complaints there.

I'm happy to say I got the Linksys router and the engineer told me that they're putting new customers on the Linksys now.

I've been able to get 945 download and upload even on Speedtest.net, although that varies a bit. The engineer claimed the speed test on the Linksys which talks to their kit is more accurate, which is nonsense, but I get good download speeds out of it so no complaints yet.

I took a cable out of the Linksys and put it in to the WAN port of my Ubiquiti kit and it's been smooth sailing so far. I also wired my PS5 directly in to my UDM and that got around 730 which is much better than I had before.

I've spent most of the day on a desktop running on Wi-Fi until I can get some ethernet to my office so I haven't really tested the full 900 but I've been running a ping from UptimeKuma and haven't seen any dropouts yet.

I'll report back if I see any issues, especially the congestion in the evenings. I think I'm one of the first customers in this area so it'll be interesting to see if it is a nation wide issue which I see straight away, or if it's more down to local contention.

sorry to say be-fibre is terrible at the moment

IWe had our BeFibre fitted last Wednesday. Ive had/and have a few issues.
Instalation went well, with the engineer telling us what he was doing. MY issues lie with the Linksys Velop.
I cannot set a static ip as it refuses to use the gateway address assigned (192.168.1.1)
Cant port forward to set up our game server
Wifi seems to only want to link with certain items. I can link fine with my phone, tablet and ipad, but not our ps4 or my grandson's pc. I hope it will be something simple but I suspect a problem with the Velop.
On the wifi side of it I think the problem is linked to whether we are using 2.4GHtz or 5. Suggesting this as the PS4 uses 2.4 where as my ipad is using 5.

Hoping we will get some resolutions tomorrow. Apart from those niggles, the speed is a terrific improvement on our BT line.

In reply to a post by AntoynVW:

Cant port forward to set up our game server

Worth double checking you are on a public facing IP address and not CGNAT? I do not think port forwarding works with "local" CGNAT ip address.

Going off the replies above it is not clear if you get a normal public dynamic IP address as standard or you are provisioned on a CGNAT ip address. It seems to be pot luck.

Not really a solution but are you forced to use the provided router could you swap to something that works a bit better for your circumstances?

Judging from the fact I cannot ping the ip from outside my network, Im assuming its CGNAT. Ive asked them for a static ip so that should be active in a couple of days.

Not sure how you can check for CGNAT there must be a way? Do the usual ip address checkers that appear when Googling not help?

A static IP is chargeable though?

I guess there would be 2 ways of determining if you were on CGNAT.

Go to https://www.whatismyip.com/ and note what your public ipaddress is and then login to your router and see what it thinks your public address is. Different? you are on CGNAT.

Using the public IP address found using https://www.whatismyip.com/ traceroute to it. One hop to your public ip address means no CGNAT, 2 hops means your router passed the packet to your ISP ie CGNAT.

be-fibre ip
166.x.x.x range won't work with Sky and Disney channel
154.x.x.x range is ok
100.x.x.x range is CGNAT it will say 100.x.x.x in the router and then if you type whats my IP in Google you get a different IP normally 94.x.x.x. on the web
95.x.x.x range are ISP proxy which can be a bit iffy using amazon prime videos. it will tell you that you are using a VPN and won't always work on prime

and be-fibre is currently down again . so glad I have backup

any update ?

Update from my post.
So the static ip went live yesterday. First thing I checked was whether I could ping from outside my network. Happy to say I can.
Next was to test whether my game server was reachable. Again yes. I tried from my grandson's pc and later in the day my son tried from 2 different conections from his home. Both were able to connect.
so as far as that is concerned, I can now port forward, and I am no longer behind a cgnat. I still have one issue however. When trying to change the router from dhcp to staic ip, I am unable to enter my default gateway address. I constantly get an error stating the ip address is invalid.
I assumed this was a router issue so I contacted Linksys. After some lengthy discusions, they said the fault lies with the isp. Although I have an internal ip (192.168.1.1), which allows me to connect to the web interface, it appears to have a problem when used as a default gateway. Im now waiting on a response from Befibre on that issue. I will update when I have an answer, hopefully today.

Where exactly are you changing the DHCP setting? Is this on the client PCs (in which case the gateway would be 192.168.1.1) or is it on the router (in which case the gateway would be the ISP IP address of the first device) - but it is very likely you shouldn't change the router to static as although the ISP is giving you a static IP it will be applying it to you via DHCP - it will just give you the same address every single time).

I would doubt that a static WAN IP address would work.

If you use DHCP the remote system will know where to find the IP address as it will have provided it.

The same happens if you use PPPoE

Is it all still smooth sailing, having taken the Linksys out of the equation?

Wanting to give it a go myself but unsure if there's any fiddle required.

Static IPs weren't a 'thing' when I ordered but I can see for £4 they say it will improve the speeds. Not sure that's true

I was originally on CGNAT and I think one of the whatsmyipaddress sites actually said it was 'likely' CGNAT (although they used a different term).

Now on a 154.x.y.z address with no issues with streaming services although I do get the odd Cloudflare challenge on some sites.

I'm still seeing the odd slowdown of an evenings (10PM - 12PM). 27/212Mbs, 16/187Mbs are typical speeds, gradually getting better as the clock ticks to midnight.

The Virgin Media cabinet next to the Full Fibre cabinet on our estate looks to be completed. Haven't heard great things about VM and their coax connections, maybe the fibre will be better.

Hi Mikey,
What did you do with your landline?

I've been with BeFibre for a couple of weeks now and, after a couple of teething problems, the service is great. I've just cancelled my Vodafone broadband which took my landline with it (it finally goes in a month).

I'm looking at getting VoiP and porting my current number; have you done this?

Cheers.

Yes, i ported my landline number with TalkTalk to Soho66. They were the cheapest I could find. You'll either need to buy a voip phone, or something like a grandstream ata to make your old phones work over voip. I went ATA route so my Alexas can still announce who's calling me.

I was advised to do the port before cancelling Talktalk (the port effectively cancelled the contract anyway)

Thank you.

I've just signed up with A&A who seem to be a similar price to Soho66.

Now time for more shopping (VoIP kit)- my wife is going to kill me 🤭

I also signed up with A&A for VoIP after switching to BeFibre.

Very pleased with the service, they cancelled my service with Vodafone (out of contract) for my old FTTC broadband when I requested the number port. Didn't even have to talk to Vodafone. Went very smoothly.

Annoyingly one of the things the Adtran router does do well is support VoIP. I plugged my DECT phone into the first RJ11 port on the back, entered the details supplied by A&A on the VoIP setup page of the router, and it all just works. Incoming and outgoing calls work perfectly.

But having read this thread and relating to all the issues I'm seeing I think it's time to invest in a TP-Link mesh system.

Busted! Despite the mac cloning, BeFibre can tell it's not their router connected.
I was up and down (mostly down) on Monday, as were others with BeFibre on our estate. The ONT was in an alarm state.


"Hi there Mike,
Are you using your own router?
I'm afraid we cannot see a connection to the device we provided for some time.

Can you also let me know if your connection is still down and I'll escalate further.

Kind regards"

Still seeing a lot of slowdown from 9pm onwards of an evening but not sure they'll be interested unless I plug the ADTran back in to prove it's not my equipment.

Edited by mikeycrawford (Thu 21-Sep-23 22:12:58)

Hi Mike - just wondering if you've had any luck getting your setup back up and running?

I've been following this thread with interest as I'm currently considering a move to a FTTP arrangement from FTTC (Plusnet). BeFibre have the best value packages by some margin, but I really don't want to use their provided router.

From reading this thread, the mac-spoofing solution seemed to be the way forward and I was about to sign up for their 900mbps package. However, since BeFibre can apparently still see what it's not their router, I'm now wondering if they're likely to lock things down further.

Hi,

Made an account to comment. I've been a beFibre customer since November and up until recently had no issues. The last month however has been torture.

Every night from 6/7pm until midnight ish my 500mbps connection drops to as low as 0.3mbps I called and spoke to an engineer on Friday that assured me my router needed an update. He supposedly fixed it and I had to monitor it over the weekend. It is now Sunday and there has been no change.

I have a call back with them tomorrow to discuss the outcome and will post the results here after.
On another note their technician did mention to me that I can use my own router and just to let them know the mac address so they can add it. They were happy for me to use my own hardware.

Just had a response back from BeFibre after I inquired about the use of 3rd party routers:

"It is possible for you to use your own router if you want to, however, it will need to be set it up a certain way for it to be allowed on our network.

Unfortunately, we will also not be able to help with support on the routers we cannot see third party routers. Therefore, if a fault occurs our technical team cannot support unless our router is plugged in."

I don't know if this is a change in their stance or if they've just been unclear in the past about people being able to use their own equipment, but it seems as though they're not that opposed to it.

I notice the slowdown most from around 9pm until midnight. There are no latency issues, no packet loss, just terrible speeds. They gradually get better as the night goes on.

Spoke to the support team who gave me the support login for the router, I checked the updates and none have been installed since December so it seems that is something they say to people just to fob them off. Kind of like telling the customer to hit f5 when something isn't working on the computer..

He also let slip that something happened in one of their data centres that has had a dramatic effect on the lines nationwide and they are fixing them as they go along. He has passed me to their tech team now who are asking me to gather more evidence whilst they investigate the issue.

I will post results here once I get somewhere, speeds are still awful every evening.

Also if you can get the support log In for your router I would do so as you get so many more options. They did disclaim that if you break it using one of the "locked" options then it's tough luck.

I had my 900mbps connection installed on 12th of September. The engineer was really good and did a very clean and tidy job.
Since then I've been lucky I suppose, as I've had no issues at all. The speed does vary between 600 and 870mbps but most of the time is at the higher end of the spectrum. Overall, so far, I'm impressed.

Our connection (and neighbours) is down again - 3rd time in the couple of months. Last were resolved within a few hours without (me anyway) reporting. I've contacted support this time as it's been a few hours.

There's no status page and beFibre aren't on downdetector yet - though several neighbours have it now so at least it's easy to check its not an equipment fault. Hard to gauge the scale and frequency of outages though which is a concern.

Speed/latency is good 850+ <20 when it does work.

The Linksys Velop is basic but OK - loses about 50% signal per brickwall so we've setup (cheap tp-link not Mesh) extenders to handle 2.4 & 5Ghz central in the house for the upstairs/rear - limited to around 150, but that's the extender really - the Mesh are pricey. My home office is wired.

It's the only FTP provider here and quite cheap, but on reflection I'd have kept a copper line up (I had two before) with cheap ADSL for backup - as mobile data charges are racking up for work.

Mine was down too. Tried phoning them but got 'please call back later'! Not good enough! It came back up at 9am.

The was a complete outage in Worcester (WR3) this morning. Not sure if the others mentioning it here are in the same postcode area.

Luckily someone mentioned it on our local Facebook group so I then knew it wasn't just my equipment. It cam e back up just as I got back from the dentist and was considering having to travel to the office for the day so the timing couldn't have been better. Got a text from them as well apologising for the outage.

They could really do with some sort of service status page on their website though. It would benefit them as well as us because they would have so much of an influx in customer service calls during such an event either.

I thought it was more than just me as I can normally see a neighbours SSID, but that wasn't showing either. They seem to have handled the issue well, it's the communications with customers that I have a problem with. If I know what's going on, I'm more disposed to be lenient. This is where they need to learn from the likes of Plusnet. And I agree with you totally. King regards, Geoff.

I got a text from a neighbour (Be-Fibre subscriber) on the 12th around 7am asking if our internet was down. When I checked (around 8am) it was working fine so unclear if only some users were affected and others not.

Are you in the Worcester area?

Shrewsbury

Almost certainly a totally different issue. Do you know of other people in the area having the same problem?

Hi everyone,

[Moderators - please let me know if this needs to be posted in a new thread instead of here]

I'm new to this forum and not yet signed up to Be-Fibre - but I got a leaflet through my letter box saying Be-Fibre was now live on my street. My existing contract with Plusnet ends in December and Be-Fibre would cost less for FTTP than FTTC from Plusnet. Setting up FTTP and then (once its working) porting my Plusnet landline to VOIP with A&A seems like the best way to avoid the possibility of losing my landline number, and having both Plusnet alongside FTTP for a month or two gives me time to sort out any teething troubles.

My only other FTTP provider is Virgin - but having experienced their price increases and service (through another family member) I'm not inclined to go to Virgin. The other option is to pay a higher price to stay with my Plusnet FTTC/landline until they force me to move to VOIP.

So, I'm considering joining BeFibre but I'm worried about the posts about poor speeds in the evenings. I can't seem to get a handle on how prevalent this might be and how serious or long-term an issue it is.

So:

1. Have any of you NOT experienced serious speed problems in the evening?

2. For those that have experienced serious speed problems, how often have you had these problems and for how many weeks? Do you still get enough speed to stream something like Netflix on a single device and to browse the internet? Have the problems been fixed and if so how long was it before they were fixed?

Everyone - if you're willing to indicate what area you're in and how long you've been with Be-Fibre (and what speed package you have) that would be helpful - I'm wondering if the problems are limited to certain areas, or certain packages, if problems are eventually fixed, and if the problems start to happen after people have been with Be-Fibre for a few months.

Note - I'd probably be OK with the 150Mbps package - currently get 40Mbps and mostly that's fine except for occasional buffering.

Finally, if you were me, would you avoid BeFibre altogether?

Edited by adrianpaulwood (Sun 22-Oct-23 21:20:58)

Just a bit of background for my decision and the process I went through. I've been waiting for years for some sort of broadband upgrade, I had FTTC with Vodafone, nothing wrong with the service but because of line length from my house to the cab it struggled to get much above 20Mbps download. When I heard about BeFibre coming to the area I got excited at the potential to have near Gb broadband so I signed up, selected a 720Mbps symmetrical upload / download speeds and got an offer where I think the first 6 months were half price.

Secondly, as you also want to, I use A&A to keep my landline number. Something to note is that your landline number is tied to your existing (ADSL/FTTC) broadband provider so when the number gets ported your contract with them ends and your old broadband gets turned off.

So to your questions:

1. It has its ups and downs but I pin a lot of blame for that on the router (though it has improved so maybe firmware upgrade), planning to replace it soon. However we often stream TV in the evenings mainly iPlayer, ITV and Channel4 and I've never had an issue with that. The bulk of the issues with the router seem to be Wifi and I have my TV connected over wired / powerline Ethernet.

2. Speed problems that there may have been have never lasted for more than an hour or so. Worst issue was a total outage across the area a few weeks back, I don't know when it went down, we noticed about 7am, but I had a dentist appointment and as returned around 9am it came back up with was fortunate as I wanted to work from home.

To the final bit, I've been with them about 8 months now, package 720MBps, in Worcester.

Few things to add which is well documented in this thread. The Adtran router they supplied and I unfortunately have is dreadful. I think they now ship a LinkSys device as well as fitting an ONT to connect to it. The Adtran uses an SFP module connected to the fibre. The ONT is a better option if you want to use you own router hardware down the line. May be worth getting in writing (email) as to what they will supply.

Secondly I got an IP address which is CGNAT - the router connects directly to some bit of hardware at their end which then provides the routing function (I think) which means your hardware is not directly accessible from the Internet. If you run any web servers at home or things like NASs that you want direct access to then this is a pain. They now offer a paid option of a static IP address so not CGNAT, but again maybe when signing up tell them you need an accessible IP address (not necessarily static) to avoid paying for this (again get it in writing).

TDLR they're not without issues but based on the improvement on what I had before I wouldn't avoid them.

Edited by Graz279 (Thu 26-Oct-23 14:26:56)

Thanks. I've had the Linksys MX4200 router confirmed in writing from Matt in support. I did ask about the CGNAT but didn't get a reply - but I wasn't too worried because I think it's possible to check this after install and ask them to give me a dynamic public IP at that time if it proves to be CGNAT.

In reply to a post by Graz279:

Secondly I got an IP address which is CGNAT - the router connects directly to some bit of hardware at their end which then provides the routing function (I think) which means your hardware is not directly accessible from the Internet.

Out of interest has CGNAT causes any issues for you? Do websites/streaming etc all work as expected? No captchas just trying to view webpages and other problems that can be caused by CGNAT? Thanks

I was with Befibre briefly. I found their Customer service one of the worst I have experienced. It was almost impossible to speak to them, I never got to speak to Technical support, Customer support were not able to ask Tech support to call me back.

On the 900Mbs package, most evenings the download speed dropped to less than 10Mb.

Even when the speed on the router was reported as good, browsing was very 'laggy' as I still had the BT ADSL I compared some popular sites on two laptops, pages loaded much quicker on the BT service.

Technical Support only contacted me after I posted on Trustpilot

I had already realised I was on a shared IP address as the DNS client in the router didn't know the IP Adress, they did issue a dynamic IP address, which was slightly lass 'laggy'

The quality monitor showed dropped packets and a great increase in the ping time.

Speed issues continued. Worse between 19:00 - 21:00

Using a different DNS server made things slightly better, I was surprised they seem to use Google DNS.

I Couldn't see things improving so made the decision to migrate to another ISP on the Fibre Heros network. A 500MBs packge for more than the Befibre. Things improved immediately browsing snappy and consitant speed tests of around 475MBs It's been stable for three weeks.

Befibre don't have a minimum speed guarantee. Their 14day 'cooling off' is from you accepting the contract, not from the start of service.

I went with them because they offered 900Mbs for a great price, reasoning that all the ISP's on the Fibre Heros network would be the same - they are not ! If it's Fibre Heros providing the Fibre have a look at the other ISP's on their webpages.

Thanks. What router did you have from Be-Fibre? Were those low speeds over wifi, wired connection (ethernet) or both? Were you able to leave under the 30 day satisfaction guarantee (avoiding leaving penatlies)?

Did you try to email technical support ([email protected]) - if so how did that go? When I emailed [email protected] with pre-order technical questions I got no answer, but a technical support person (Matt) contacted me quite quickly when I emailed [email protected]

Unfortunately the only other FTTP option I have is Virgin Media, it's not via Fibre Heroes.

Interesting reading the above.

I’ve had the 900mb service for about a week.

We already have a Netgear Orbi mesh system, so have not installed the supplied router. Spoofed the MAC and it just worked.

Happy with the ultimate speed, even though it’s not hitting the heady heights of 900, I accept there will be Wi-Fi and other issues which prevent the full speed.

However, I am also getting awful lag when first clicking a link or entering a url. Like it’s struggling to resolve the connection in the first instance.

The details around DNS makes me think this is the way to solve it. Could anyone provide a more detailed way to address this so I can be as impressed as I should be?

Any help would be much appreciated.

I'm wondering the same - what DNS would be best if not Google?

I have to say I'm concerned about the lag in opening URLs if that is a general issue - though I don't recall anyone else mentioning that.

I wonder if you have a CGNAT IP address and somehow the fact that goes through Be-Fibre's servers slows it down. (Note - I have no expert knowledge here so I could be completely wrong). I also wonder if there are some settings on your router that are impacting this.

Perhaps have a look at some of the suggestions here

So I’ve changed the dns to the cloud flare settings and it appears to have improved the situation.

Seems to have introduced a weird artefact on some web pages, like bbc sport for example, where it almost seems to be waiting for an advert or something, and leaves a blanks space between the menu bar at the top of the page and the content below. About a third of the screen, left blank.

If you have been provided a shared IP address request a Dynamic IP, that certainly made it a little better for me.

You can change the DNS on your PC via the network and internet settings, or in the settings of your Router, the Befibre Router is hobbled by their firmware.

I used Cloudfare.

I honestly don't know if CGNAT has caused issues. Early on I was getting a lot of DNS lookup failures when trying to browse the web. This is a lot better now though not completely perfect. I don't know if the router to CGNAT hardware link plays a part in this but in my mind sticking something like this in the way has got to slow things down a bit perhaps.

I don't get any of this when using my work laptop connected to a VPN whereby the DNS lookups would be away from that process.

But yes everything works as expected as far as I can tell.

It just makes me wonder that they advertise having a static IP address (at £4 a month) will somehow improve your experience for gaming, downloading, streaming and so on. Really it shouldn't, the main benefit should be that it enables you to access your own hardware from the public Internet because it's not behind NAT and the IP address is known to you. It seems to suggest that they know their CGNAT system isn't the greatest and that getting away from it will make it all better.

Edited by Graz279 (Mon 30-Oct-23 15:27:18)

Internet was due off this morning until 2pm for some '3rd party damage' issue, but was fine until 3 when it went off. Checked emails

"Hello Mike


Due to adverse weather conditions and planning road closures our emergency repair work is taking longer than expected. This will continue this afternoon and is now likely to continue into this evening.

Please do not switch off any of your BeFibre equipment during this time.


We're sorry for any inconvenience and thanks for your understanding.

Kind regards,
Your BeFibre team"

At least they keep you informed.

Came back on before 6pm.

In reply to a post by Graz279:

It just makes me wonder that they advertise having a static IP address (at £4 a month) will somehow improve your experience for gaming, downloading, streaming and so on. Really it shouldn't, the main benefit should be that it enables you to access your own hardware from the public Internet because it's not behind NAT and the IP address is known to you. It seems to suggest that they know their CGNAT system isn't the greatest and that getting away from it will make it all better.

Had my install today - fast but I'm also on CGNAT in Shrewsbury. Seems like others have had success getting off CGNAT, was hoping someone could confirm the process they used?
Looks like they have a support email, is it just a case of emailing them saying you've setup port forwarding but you can tell you're on a CGNAT and game servers etc are not working?
Have they been trying to charge extra for the static IP? I don't need a static IP, I just need to be rout-able. As far as I'm concerned having a static IP and not being behind an additional NAT layer I have no control over are two separate things. Dynamic DNS will solve one but not the other!
If it had said "you need to pay for a static IP to be accessible from the internet" I might have made a different decision with who I signed up with!

In reply to a post by fletch986:

Seems like others have had success getting off CGNAT, was hoping someone could confirm the process they used?

If you are successful please post what wording/process you used as it will be useful to know.

CGNAT is what puts me off many AltNet providers.

Thanks

In reply to a post by fletch986:

I don't need a static IP, I just need to be rout-able. As far as I'm concerned having a static IP and not being behind an additional NAT layer I have no control over are two separate things. Dynamic DNS will solve one but not the other!

In practise with always-on broadband services these are the same thing, the ISP would still need an IP per customer.

Is this a common issue then? Ie the same on Squirrel, Community fibre etc?

In reply to a post by jpm:

In reply to a post by fletch986:

I don't need a static IP, I just need to be rout-able. As far as I'm concerned having a static IP and not being behind an additional NAT layer I have no control over are two separate things. Dynamic DNS will solve one but not the other!

In practise with always-on broadband services these are the same thing, the ISP would still need an IP per customer.

Completely agree, but you've got to be quite deep inside networking/provider business model to appreciate that. Practically the IP I share now through CGNAT is unlikely to change (static), just like back in the early days of home ADSL if you powered off your modem for a while and powered it back on you would get a brand new routable but different (dynamic) IP.
My frustration with them is more about the way it's presented.

In reply to a post by fletch986:

Is this a common issue then? Ie the same on Squirrel, Community fibre etc?

I am purely looking at options for myself and family so it is a limited set of different ISPs, none that are live yet and different depending on the area of country but broadly speaking the "cheaper" ISPs that can offer a FTTP connection in the £20/month price band tend to be ISPs that use CGNAT. So if it is a good deal it is worth checking in my opinion.

I am sure I have read somewhere that BeFibre does have a 30 day guarantee though so if you are not happy talk to them and see if they can do something?

I wouldn't be too happy with a CGNAT connection but I have no experience of one apart from when using a mobile phone connection which quite often uses CGNAT.

Have you had any problems since your connection has gone live? Does general browsing, streaming and banking work as expected even though you are on CGNAT? Have you had any slow downs like of people are reporting?

Thanks

Issues yesterday and again today but during work hours. ONT showing a red light. Others on the estate also affected. Was dropping out for maybe 20 secs at a time (3 times in a 1hr meeting in the afternoon) and then a longer outage of around 40mins.

Same again today but morning time :/

On a more positive note, can't remember when the last evening slowdown occurred.

An update on how mine service has been going since the install.

tl;dr - Very good once I got off the CGNAT

The first few days were a bit hit and miss, I saw fairly constant but very short outages. Maybe 3 seconds every hour.
I got swapped over from the CGNAT to a different range which has an IPv4 pool and it's been much better since. Almost no drop outs.
The people in customer service were trying to be very helpful but I don't think they knew much at all, They also wouldn't put me through to their level 3 guys, so presumably it's a very small team and they're trying to ring fence them for real issues which is fair.

I've never seen any issues with speed in the evenings.

I still have the Linksys connected directly to my Ubiquiti kit, but I did manage to run some Cat 6A to my office, so I now have the full 900Mpbs to my desktop and I think I've only had one drop out since then.
A few people mentioned DNS, mine is pointed at CloudFlare and I use a Pihole with Unbound for recursive DNS so most of it happens in house.

I'm not sure anyone needs the full 900Mpbs like I have unless you have multiple people who really want connections of around 300Mbps each at the same time. Most websites and services don't offer anything over 300 from what I've seen.
The PS5 wired in directly can get about 700Mpbs as said in my last post, but if there wasn't an offer on then I doubt I could justify paying for more than 500.

Here's my BQM

My Broadband Ping

In reply to a post by manclab:

I've had it installed this morning. It took the engineer a few hours to install the ONT but it's a very tidy job, so no complaints there.

I'm happy to say I got the Linksys router and the engineer told me that they're putting new customers on the Linksys now.

I've been able to get 945 download and upload even on Speedtest.net, although that varies a bit. The engineer claimed the speed test on the Linksys which talks to their kit is more accurate, which is nonsense, but I get good download speeds out of it so no complaints yet.

I took a cable out of the Linksys and put it in to the WAN port of my Ubiquiti kit and it's been smooth sailing so far. I also wired my PS5 directly in to my UDM and that got around 730 which is much better than I had before.

I've spent most of the day on a desktop running on Wi-Fi until I can get some ethernet to my office so I haven't really tested the full 900 but I've been running a ping from UptimeKuma and haven't seen any dropouts yet.

I'll report back if I see any issues, especially the congestion in the evenings. I think I'm one of the first customers in this area so it'll be interesting to see if it is a nation wide issue which I see straight away, or if it's more down to local contention.

Would like to hear views on:

1. How best to get off CGNAT?
2. What success people have had using their own routers and process?
3. Service and speed - still seems to be people reporting poor speeds and service?

Thanks

I was only with them a couple of days, I posted on trust pliot because I couldn't contact them to discuss, something like the dynamic DNS client in the supplied router didn't work seemingly because the IP adress reported wasn't the public IP. They gave me a dynamic IP but the service was still terrible. I moved to another ISP who a fantastic.

That BQM mentioned by manclab is useful. Another outage today. Received notification via text just after it went off. I now have an automatic backup in place so I'm less likely to notice.

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

The BQM also shows minor packet loss most nights for me from 6pm or so through to midnight which is when I see the speeds drop.

The 4th and 5th weren't great

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

6th and 7th painful in the evening as well

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

Edited by mikeycrawford (Wed 13-Dec-23 22:45:15)

Seems wrong creating a new thread for BeFibre so I am going to reply to a couple of posts from recent BeFibre customers - if anyone can help with recent information on any of the following it would be appreciated.

1. How best to get off CGNAT without having to buy a static IP? A dynamic IP would be fine do support just give you one if you ask?
2. Service and speed - still seems to be people reporting poor speeds and service?
3. What success people have had using their own routers and process?

Thanks

1. I just emailed support. It was done within the hour. They had told me before signing up they didn't use CGNAT, so that probably get helped.

2. Mine has been better this past fortnight, though still see some latency in the evening (8pm - 11pm)

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

3. If your router can clone/spoof a mac address then you should be able to use your own router with be-fibre.

I've noticed that the nightly slowdowns between 8pm and midnight seem to have disappeared for me over the last 4 weeks. Hope I haven't jinxed it by posting that.

Had Virgin Media at the door earlier trying to sell their package as they're now live in this estate. 1Gb/s for £33 month. Not a bad price.

I am in my 2nd year using befibre now and I will probably change when my contract up especially since Openreach has gone live near me now with their 1gb service.

Befibre has definitely been better than the shoddy 4g connection I had to put up with.

On the 900 package.

I setup my own router, bought a tp link media converter and a netgear raxe500 router. Setup was pretty simple. Took the SFP out of the Adran trash router put it into the TP Link MC220L box and then connected that to my Netgear. Set VLAN ID to 10 and DHCP for the WAN and up it went. No MAC cloning needed at all.

The service from befibre seems very up and down with regards to speeds. Get the usual slowdown in the evenings around 8pm to 11pm. Back to back speed tests can give very varied results. I have a friend on an Openreach 1gb service and that seems to test at full speed any time of the day.

I ended up putting the static IP on for the sake of £4 a month to see if it made things more stable. I'm not sure if it did or its a co-incidence. I found before the static IP web requests seemed slow almost like it was taking time to look up the DNS, this was even the case by setting google dns and cloudflare in my router. This laggyness went away with the static ip.

Cloud gaming, which I don't do but I have tried is appalling what ever route befire has to use to the cloud servers must be bad, its so laggy its unplayable, however at my works on Sky broadband SOGEA 80mb it runs perfectly.

I have had more down time with this company than I have had with ANY ISP in the last 10 years. It feels like the infrastructure just isn't strong enough yet.

Edited by danielshaw (Mon 15-Jul-24 20:51:56)

Also.. I think they're throttling traffic. When I download game from the Xbox Game Pass pc app speeds are very slow, like 10-50 MB/sec when I connect NordVPN they seem to then saturate the connection over 100 MB/sec. Bit naughty this I am going to email them to see what they say.

There is the potential there is transit issues for the non VPN connection. But good idea to report it regardless. As downloading games is one of the main drivers behind gigabit internet demand.

I also ran my own test having been a 900Mbps customer since February using the Arch Linux ISO from the University of Kent Mirror Service and I am getting 7MB/s download speed on BeFibre's connection yet on ProtonVPN's free Dutch server it only went as slow as 50MB/s. I wonder if it is also throttling or an issue with the subnet I am on? It's been an issue for the last few weeks and it happens at all times of day on every day of the week.

I've just gone live on the same network (FullFibre) via a different ISP, and having just run a speedtest I'm getting a full 940 mbit in both directions using the command line version of speedtest.net.

$ ./speedtest

Speedtest by Ookla

Server: Talk Straight - Ilkley (id: 23604)
ISP: The Cent.re Group
Idle Latency: 8.08 ms (jitter: 0.07ms, low: 7.92ms, high: 8.19ms)
Download: 941.36 Mbps (data used: 832.6 MB)
14.52 ms (jitter: 0.62ms, low: 7.44ms, high: 14.09ms)
Upload: 941.04 Mbps (data used: 751.9 MB)
10.72 ms (jitter: 0.54ms, low: 7.66ms, high: 11.77ms)

Edit: I'm in a GPON area (not XGS-PON) as it's one of the older builds originally part of Digital Infrastructure

Edited by summat (Fri 26-Jul-24 21:16:46)

I know of a work colleague who is also on BeFibre and he tells me that everything is fine with his connection. From what I can fathom it only seems to affect a select group of individuals. Why that select group of individuals is a mystery at the moment. All I can ascertain is that it isn't congestion related as this is happening twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.

I wish the BeFibre reviews on TrustPilot included a general location. This would allow potential customers to see if there is a problem in a specific area.

BeFibre also provide a 30 day guarantee so it would concern me that after that time they could do what they like - they do not specify any minimum acceptable speed the last time I looked so you could be stuck for 23 months with a very poor connection.

My IP address changed tonight and I am back on 900mbps download and upload speeds even on a single connection speed test. Nothing else has changed. Something at BeFibre's end is not working right.

Yesterday I had BeFibre 900 installed (replacing VM 1Gig with a mesh extender). Sitting next to the router on WiFi the speedtest was brilliant with almost the full 900Mbps in both directions. Move away and that drops quickly due to no mesh extender so our smart outdoor lights can't pick up the WiFi at all.

The Heights HT-360AXE-V2 router is awful. The user interface looks like an internal build not ready for public release. You can't change the default login password (it just fails).

I read that BeFibre will soon be releasing a WiFi 7 Heights router. Is it worth pushing for them to replace ours with this or will that model also be rubbish?

Edited by nssimpson1 (Sat 03-May-25 09:23:03)

If you’ve got the appetite (and budget) roll your own WiFi solution. Plenty of good options, like Ubiquiti that offer multiple solutions in different budget ranges.

Most people that live in good old “two up, two down” can just about get away with a single integrated router / WiFi access point as supplied by the ISP, but it’s not a universal panacea / has plenty of shortcomings if your home is not average or at least a bit different.