Sky fibre and alternative router issues

Duke_

Duke_

Duke_

Associate
Joined
23 Feb 2010
Posts
283
Location
Aberdeen
Morning All,

I have moved from BT Inifinity to Sky fibre unlimited. Speeds and connectivity with the included SR102 modem/router are fine (37Mbps /10Mbps). I am trying to set up my Openreach modem and Asus router so that I can remove the SR102 altogether.

So far I have extracted my username and password using wireshark and tried the calculation method. On both occasions the password comes out in a slightly different format to what I expected based on other posts:
Using wireshark: LNNLNLLNNNNL@skydsl|NNNLLNLN (all letters in this instance are lowercase)
Using the password calculator the password is displayed as: LNLLll+lNLLLLll Although the default WiFi Channel and SSiD are returned blank.
I have tried using ‘ around the username and password combination and using the password generated from Wireshark and the calculator (both the bit before and after the ‘+’ sign).


The MAC address from wireshark matches the address displayed in the SR102 settings. I have entered the MAC address of the SR102 into the Asus router and enabled MAC spoofing as it appears from the SR102 settings MER is active.

I have connected the Asus WAN port to the BT modem LAN1 connection and have a DSL light. I have not accessed or changed the Openreach modem whatsoever since it was used for BT. As a test I plugged in the BT modem and connected it to the SR102 (i.e. faceplate - Openreach modem - SR102 - PC). The BT modem appears to be working fine as I could connect to the internet no problem - could I be misinterpreting this?

I have tried setting up the Asus with the latest firmware from Asus and the Merlin variant – without success.

I suspect my authentications settings aren’t right or I’ve missed another step. I anyone has any suggestions I’d be very grateful. If you need any further information or clarification let me know. If there's anyone with an Asus router who's successfully swapped out their Sky modem/router it would be good to hear from you! Thanks
 
Thanks for both of your replies.
@Roy - I've tried this but keep getting an error 651 while setting up the connection via Miniport. It looks like the PC isn't getting an IP from the Openreach modem and despite assigning one manually it isn't playing ball. I suspect it might be because I'm on MER and in hindsight I think the Sky connections are sometimes PPPoA rather than PPPoE. That said I'm well out of my comfort zone so may have terminologies confused.This forum suggests what Sky call MER is DHCP and that PPPoA isn't possible.
@Deathjester - good to know. I've used Wireshark to capture the login attempts when connecting via Sky Hub / Sky Hub + OR Modem / Asus Router + OR Modem. Looking at the details of the two successful connections involving the hubs the details match and the format matches what you've written so I'm confident I have the correct details.

Looking through the logs in Wireshark both the successful connections involving the Sky Hub there is a difference in the transactions (if that's the correct term) compared to the OR modem + Asus router. With the two successful connections there are are 345 (length) DHCP Requests prior to 370 (length) DHCP Discover transactions. With the Asus router setup I can't see any DHCP requests at all.


It's 00:40 and I've been changing lots of options watching Wireshark all the time and it appears to have worked. At the moment it's a fluke but I've saved the setup and I'll start tweaking at a more reasonable hour to find out what the trick was for others....
 
I'm clearly not out of the woods yet - I can get a connection but it's pretty unstable. Ping varies from 15m/s to 30 and download varies from 37Mbps to 27Mbps. MTU appears stable at 1470 then the next ping it isn't stable until I drop it to 900, in a couple of minutes it appears stable at 1470 again.
This is all a bit of a learning curve - any recommendations welcome!
I'm wary if I leave this unstable connection my line characteristics will start to be altered by Sky and the speed will drop rather than reaching the ~37Mbps full potential using their hub (it's just as quick using the openreach modem and their hub - just not with the Asus).
At the moment it's just the PC hub and modem. No other devices are connected.
 
Good to know. I don't suppose it'll affect the linespeed / quality but I'll ditch the MAC spoofing and retry.
The modem is the ECI B-FOCuS V-2FUb/I Rev.B
As I mentioned before it connects ok when using the Sky hub in WANOE mode so I assume I don't need to do anything (having looked at the hacking sites I don't really fancy it either!).
Out of interest do you know why you need to leave the connection for so long? is this just to stabilise after the connection is established? When trying to set up the Asus router using the wizard it couldn't detect the settings despite rebooting the modem when requested - then halfway through playing with settings manually and keeping an eye on Wireshark for DHCP and identifiers which never came it connected.
 
Thanks Booyaka.
Do you know if your hub was previously using MER or PPPoA?
I don't appear to have a 'MER' setting on the authentication page so I selected 'Automatic IP' from the WAN connection type. If you or anyone else recommends a different setting please let me know. As I mentioned earlier the Sky hub appears to be showing MER rather than PPPoA.

Asus WAN page looks like this
 
Last edited:
Terrier_Jimlad said:
Do you have access to a HG612 BTOR modem instead of an ECI? Mine use to drop off all the time until I changed it.
Click to expand...

Funny you mention that, I was just eying one up on eBay. I take it there's no need for it to be unlocked unless you want the line stats? Also seems odd that using the SR and ECI modem is fine but it's worth a try for £20.
 
You're right, it's an awful lot of faffing around and it's taken a lot of time. On the other hand it should work and I'm wary that if I ditch the Asus router and try something else that may not work, incurring additional time, frustration and expense. At least if I succeed with this I'll have the multi client router performance I'm looking for.
It turned into a bit of an obsession and has definitely gone beyond the effort/price/performance point I was hoping for though!
 
Hi Sparx - thanks for the such a helpful post. Despite getting a connection the other night I've changed the settings to mirror yours. The connection is still slower than with the Sky Hub by ~5Mbps but the ping is much lower (10ms vs 30ms with the SR hub). I've got an HG612 modem headed in my direction which will hopefully sort the issues - if not it'll provide some entertainment checking with line stats and firmware.
 
Quick update for anyone in a similar situation.

Bought HG612 Rev3 - unlocked. I checked the line stats, I'm no expert but I compared them with others on forums and the stats look 'good'.
Digging further into the cabinet looking on telecom tariffs and running a command on the telnet interface of the HG612 both confirm the cabinet is ECI.
I was getting variable speed test results and was concerned that all this disconnection / changing of modems had started to introduce some sort of line management. Looking further into the test results it's down to what server Ookla chooses - Newcastle always gives 37Mbps with a ping ~40ms. The two in Carlisle often give 26Mbps which I had misinterpreted to mean the line was slowing down rather than considering the traffic on that particular server. When I manually select Newcastle as a server the results are consistent. BT wholesale speed test still gives me 27Mbps.

Any thoughts on the following appreciated:
Should I be concerned about the discrepancy between BT wholesale test and the best Ookla result?
I've plugged the ECI modem back in and am using that at the moment. Has anyone experience of line speeds dropping when using the HG612 on an ECI cabinet?
My ping is ~40ms, is there any way to improve this?
 
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