Zen & pfSense

Sorry if this question has bene asked before but I have search the forum and found few threads that were showing possible solution but none of them worked for me.

I have just moved to Zen and I would like to use my own router. I run pfSesnse and WiFi mesh network at the moment so FritZ is not a solution that I'm looking for.
I tried to plug my pfSesnse box directly to network socket in the Zen wall box and configure pfSesnse WAN interface to obtain IP address from Zen via PPPoE. But what every I do I can't seem to get IPv4 address from Zen DHCP server. Only way to connect to internet at the moment is to plug my pfSense route to Fritz box and got IPv4 address from there. That works but I'd rather remove that unnecessary stage and not to mention the WiFi network that I don't use.

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Tom

Have you tried what's suggested in this thread
https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/zen/f/4721871-zen-...

Thanks for the pointer but I have already tried those suggestions and still no luck.
What ever I do I don't get IPv4 address I only see IPv6 address.

You said you have Zen but what type of broadband do you have, is it via CityFibre or Openreach infrastructure and if its via Openreach is it ADSL, VDSL or FTTP?

I have zen fttp (backup) on opnsense (fork of pfsense) Works fine for both ipv4 and ipv6. I also ran fttc before this with no issues.

What connection are you using?

Edited by choppersrock (Tue 15-Aug-23 20:01:27)

Sorry,I’m a complete newbie, as far zen goes. The broad band is provided by city fibre.

Tom

I’m sorry but what do you mean by connections in this context?

Tom

In reply to a post by mrter:

Thanks for the pointer but I have already tried those suggestions and still no luck.
What ever I do I don't get IPv4 address I only see IPv6 address.

This doesn't make sense as getting the IPv4 address is normally the easy part, getting IPv6 which you say you're getting is normally the more complicated part.

I have noticed something I'm not sure if this is significant. But FRITZ!Box came sealed but when I logged in I could see Zen user name and password already there. I'm not sure how that got populated. The password field has only 4 '*' but my Zen password has 8 characters so I would expect 8 '*'. It is possible that Zen is trying to obfuscate the password but I'm not sure if this standard practice in such case.

Tom

As per another thread

https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/zen/t/4722078-re-z...

"CityFibre require VLAN ID 911 under the PPPoE connection... So setup a VLAN on the WAN port with VLAN TAG 911, then set the PPPoE interface to use the VLAN interface rather than the WAN interface"

Zen have a custom image on the FRITZ!Box 's they provide so will have your data in already, the number of *'s shown dont relate to the length of the password

In reply to a post by RichTea23:

Zen have a custom image on the FRITZ!Box 's they provide so will have your data in already

IIRC Zen use TR-069 autoprovisioning, the custom image contains default PPPoE credentials plus whatever URI/certificates/credentials they use for TR-069. When first connected the FRITZ!Box will establish a PPPoE connection using the default credentials, connects to the TR-069 server and reports various data including the device serial number. The server looks up the user account based on the serial number and reconfigures the FRITZ!Box with the user-specific credentials, plus any additional settings such as DV if the user has opted for it.

Just to be clear, what exactly have you tried from that post?

Cityfiber based FTTP connections use VLAN ID 911 (I presume thats the only one they use?!) so it is essential that you apply a VLAN to the WAN port that connects to the ONT.

And then apply the PPPoE connection to that VLAN, not the WAN port.
I'm using OPNSense (and Giganet not Zen) but there should be little difference given that OPNSense was forked from pfSense and both ISP connections operating over cityfibre.

Physical WAN Port -> VLAN 991 -> PPoE is the key, or in OPNSense terms...

So basically, for IPv4 (lets forget ipv6 till you have v4 working!)

I have a main external OPNSense interface called WAN (its just a name), this interface's (parent) "device" is PPPoE (ip4v type PPPoE) in my case its called/labeled "ppoe3" and has the pppoe credentials applied.
: : :
pppoe3's interface's link type is PPPoE and link interface (parent) is a VLAN named igbe1_vlan911
: : :
igbe1_vlan911 is a VLAN I/F with VLAN TAG (ID) 911. It's parent i/f is igb1
: : :
igb1 is the physical port on my Protcli VP2402 that is connected to the ONT via ethernet cable.

Of course the pfSense terminology may be slightly different but it should work - I did have it working before I switch to OPNSense which I have found superior and updated more frequently than pfSense.

Thank you very much for your help I have finally managed to get it to work. Well, it was a bit more challenging than I thought originally and it was well above my level of understanding of network topology.
But following your lead I created a VLAN in pfsense with TAG ID "911". Then under Interfaces/PPPs section I created PPP interface with VLAN port and supplied user name and password. Next under Interfaces/Interface Assignments section I assigned that PPP interface to pfSesnse WAN. Connected my router to the Zen box on the wall and it all worked as expected.
Once again thanks for you help

Tom