Future Fibre fail - can anyone confirm VLAN & protocol

I _knew_ going with TT just because they were the cheaper of the two ISPs currently signed up to CityFibre in my area risked going pear shaped - I was too optimistic I suppose.

Install day was today - all lights on the ONT so optical path presumably OK, installers (Kelly) seemed to have zero detailed technical knowledge of the service - I guess their training is strictly join the dots.

Can't get broadband up & running. OK I'm making it harder for myself in not wanting to use the bundled router/mesh thingy - any router/AP which needs an online account to be "activated" is bad news in my book.

From Googling it seems that DHCP and VLAN 101 or 911 should be the magic sauce but no dice.

Phone tech support (an experience in itself) but chocolate teapot territory - not least because they can't find my account. I don't have the number because TT haven't sent me an account number (so, also, can't register with the TT customer account management either). I suspect it's not working because it hasn't been activated.

Rant over - the actual question:

Has anyone got a 3rd party router running on TT/CityFiber "Fibre 500". If so what are the WAN settings?

To follow up on the above:

1) definitely a mistake speaking to the regular support team, I spoke to the Future Fibre team today and they were much more helpful and clued up.

2) It looks like the WAN parameters might be DHCP and VLAN 981

3) Chances are the service wasn't activated yesterday - disappointing that the dots weren't connected but I think I'll forgive them if the above info is correct and the service actuvates in the next 24-48 hours.

Sorry, mine is on OpenReach, which is a little easier (just DHCP, no VLAN setup).

Hope they sort yours soon

In reply to a post by mr_bean:

To follow up on the above:

1) definitely a mistake speaking to the regular support team, I spoke to the Future Fibre team today and they were much more helpful and clued up.

2) It looks like the WAN parameters might be DHCP and VLAN 981

3) Chances are the service wasn't activated yesterday - disappointing that the dots weren't connected but I think I'll forgive them if the above info is correct and the service actuvates in the next 24-48 hours.

DHCP/IPoE protocol and set VLAN to 911

Thanks for the confirmation

The guy I spoke to was helpful and - the fact that I asked and he responded immediately with "it's VLAN 981" did give me some confidence he was not messing me about but no dice this evening (even with the suggested 30 mins downtime on the ONT).

911 seems to be consistent with other CityFibre deployments, I've tried both though without any luck

Distasteful though it is, I might have to configure the eero - at least if I don't get a connection with that I will know the problem is not the router and I might be able to dump the traffic with Wireshark to see what it is trying to do.

Edited by mr_bean (Sat 15-Jan-22 08:03:10)

Does the bundled router connect and test out OK?

Edit- sorry just read your note about the Eero. That would be the thing to try first.

Edited by Pheasant (Sat 15-Jan-22 00:22:03)

There is certainly no vlan parameters required for the TalkTalk Cityfibre service. It's DHCP from the ONT.

As advised by others try the supplied router first, if there's no service raise a call for it.

I'm currently using a UDMPro connected the ONT and the service works perfectly.

Looking around the 'net TT Future Fibre using Openreach fibre has no VLAN tag but there are claims CF use 911 for TT & several other ISPs

Interestingly the guy I spoke to said you could just plug a laptop in to test things - which would imply/be consistent with DHCP with no VLAN tag (at least without fiddling with the device settings), but then he was quite clear than it was VLAN 981. I checked with untagged frames as well last night BTW, in addition to VLAN 911 & 981.

He also seemed quite unphased when I said I was using a 3rd party router - even asked me what model so he could check if it was compatible - it's a D.link DIR-882 but I did point out that his chart might not be much use as it is running OpenWRT (an adventure in itself involving phone jailbreaking levels of faff - downgrade firmware to one with a known vulnerability, exploit that to get a shell, further exploit the fact that the stock firmware update code does not tidy up after itself in case of an error and finally manually flash the OpenWRT image).

The other claim was that there was a definite problem with service activation - he'd put the request through and that and that it could be another 24 hours before things would work - I'm going to take that as business hours in case there is manual intervention required so that takes us through to Monday afternoon - which, in turn, means it's likely to be Tuesday afternoon before I get the next opportunity to call TT owning to work commitments.

If the service does not magically start working today I will hold my nose and try the eero - though I can say that, unconfigured, it is putting out DHCP discover packets with no VLAN tag AFAICS.

In reply to a post by gordonsuk:

There is certainly no vlan parameters required for the TalkTalk Cityfibre service. It's DHCP from the ONT.

As advised by others try the supplied router first, if there's no service raise a call for it.

I'm currently using a UDMPro connected the ONT and the service works perfectly.

Are you on TT Cityfibre based FTTP or Openreach? If Openreach then you do not need to change any VLAN parameters on your router.

You could potentially be wasting your time if TT/Cityfibre haven't correctly provisioned your service, ie the fault is outside your control. First port of call (as others have already suggested) would be to connect the TT router to the Cityfibre ONT to see if the service works as it should. If it doesn't i would leave it connected and then let TT future fibre support know.

Re: VLAN tagging on Cityfibre, I'm pretty sure its 911. Have a look here (ignore PPPoE settings as TT use DHCP/IPoE)

https://support.giga.net.uk/hc/en-gb/articles/360010...