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!