Virgin XGS-PON thread

[aaronyuri]

I wanted to create a separate thread to the general Virgin thread that focuses on XGS-PON as there are so few of us and there's a lot of noise in the other thread.

XGS-PON is a 10Gb symmetric capable (XGS) passive optical network (PON). It's an industry standard for optical(/fibre) networks and not specific to Virgin. It's installed and operated by Nexfibre with VMO2 as resellers of the Nexfibre wholesale network. Nexfibre's only current resellers are VMO2 and Giffgaff.

In short: if you start seeing Nexfibre branded vans and workers, you are going to get Virgin XGS-PON rather soon.

For me, the time from their install to order was around 3 months.

-----
Price and package
-----
I currently pay £25 for the Gig1 package, and have added on symmetric upload speeds for £6 extra. 24 month contract but the symmetric add-on can be removed and readded at anytime.

My initial price was £32 per month but I contacted their retentions team in my cooling off period and they offered me this. They did remove Netflix with adverts but I care not.

-----
Symmetric upload add-on
-----
Standard upload is 10% of your upload speed. There is an add-on to match the upload to your download speed.

There is, however, a second benefit of the symmetrical upload and that is improvements to latency. See my charts below showing when the symmetric upload was added:

These are to the BNG and Virgin's core router:

I'm not entirely sure why the latency has jitter due to the upload policer. The latency improvements were immediate as soon as it was confirmed on their end; I was still limited to 110Mb up. A soft WAN interface restart increased it to 1000Mb.

-----
Using your own router/bypassing the 5x
-----
There is a WAS-110 SFP PON available that can use the community 8311(/BELL) firmware. With a hybrid SC/LC adapter, you can connect the standard Virgin fibre cable directly into the PON.

The WAS-110 converts the fibre connection and presents it as ethernet on a sub interface. Your router will communicate with the sub interface as its WAN connection/uplink to Virgin. Logical flow:

Virgin internal termination box -> fibre cable -> PON fibre port -> internal routing on the PON -> ethernet sub interface of the PON -> [cable you choose] -> WAN port of your router with DHCP client capabilities.

In order to use the WAS-110, you need an SPF slot and a device that can be a DHCP client for WAN.

You can try to shop around for the WAS-110 but the Better Internet module is priced as good as direct from China and already has the 8311 firmware flashed. It's hard to argue against. You can purchase it here: https://store.betterinternet.ltd/product/x-onu-sfpp/

Side note: auto negotiation on the WAS-110 is a bit ropey. Most get 1G or 2.5G. Force it to 10G on your equipment.

That's about all I can brain dump for now. Please share or discuss anything else you would like.

 

[wonko]

A similar experience here. I put up with the Hub 5x for 18 months but as VM are still the only FTTP provider here I recently renewed. With free initial months the cost averages out at about £22.90 for the M500 package. Knowing I'd be signed-up for a while, I also bought the X-ONU-SFPP (WAS-110) from Better Internet along with the direct mount cooler which fits and works well.

They configured it with the ONT serial number (from the 5x label) and enabled the 'ISP Fixes' option (so you don't have to mess with VLANs) and it basically works out of the box. I can't fault the service from Better Internet - they answered queries immediately (and out-of-hours), configured and posted it the next day (tracked 24) and are active and helpful on the 8311 discord channel.

The main thing I changed in the config was the spoofed software version, and set it to what was currently on the Hub 5x in case VM do any checks. I also set the MAC of the WAN port on the router to be the same as the Hub 5x, though again I'm not sure this is checked.

I also got a new MikroTik hEX router and it took me longer to get my head around setting that up than the X-ONU-SFPP itself. The router also has a USB port which makes it easy to power the fan.

I left the X-ONU-SFPP management interface on 192.168.11.1 and set a static route so its accessible, and have also disabled auto-negotiation on the router as it seemed a bit flakey.

One thing I'm a bit cautious of is that there isn't a hard-reset on the module, so if you mess up the configuration in a way that stops you getting to the management interface it will be a pain to bring it back to life again.

 

[aaronyuri]

A similar experience here. I put up with the Hub 5x for 18 months but as VM are still the only FTTP provider here I recently renewed. With free initial months the cost averages out at about £22.90 for the M500 package. Knowing I'd be signed-up for a while, I also bought the X-ONU-SFPP (WAS-110) from Better Internet along with the direct mount cooler which fits and works well.

They configured it with the ONT serial number (from the 5x label) and enabled the 'ISP Fixes' option (so you don't have to mess with VLANs) and it basically works out of the box. I can't fault the service from Better Internet - they answered queries immediately (and out-of-hours), configured and posted it the next day (tracked 24) and are active and helpful on the 8311 discord channel.

The main thing I changed in the config was the spoofed software version, and set it to what was currently on the Hub 5x in case VM do any checks. I also set the MAC of the WAN port on the router to be the same as the Hub 5x, though again I'm not sure this is checked.

I also got a new MikroTik hEX router and it took me longer to get my head around setting that up than the X-ONU-SFPP itself. The router also has a USB port which makes it easy to power the fan.

I left the X-ONU-SFPP management interface on 192.168.11.1 and set a static route so its accessible, and have also disabled auto-negotiation on the router as it seemed a bit flakey.

One thing I'm a bit cautious of is that there isn't a hard-reset on the module, so if you mess up the configuration in a way that stops you getting to the management interface it will be a pain to bring it back to life again.

Same boat here. There was FTTC when we first moved (Aug 2025), but Virgin were first to lay fibre here, and it seems OR will not get here anytime soon as there is no ducting. According to an OR guy I spoke to in the street, Virgin can use the OR ducting but OR can't use theirs. Unfortunately, if I want anything over 55Mb, Virgin are my only option. £22 for 50Mb or £25 for 1Gb was a no brainer. Virgin will have me over a barrel for years to come, it seems.

I also set my MAC address to match that of the 5x as they definitely watch MACs on the HFC network and I didn't want to have to deal with any of those shenanigans.

My switch is actively cooled and I have the SFP PON in there. It keeps it nice and cool. What temps are you getting with the fan, out of curiosity? Mine sits around 55C with the switch fan cooling the module.

To remove the needs for static routes: I have the PON mgmt interface on the same network as the rest of my LAN, but use port isolation to confine it to the WAN interface of my router. The auto negotiation was pants. Mine negotiated at 2.5G and no ethtool speed settings could get it to budge. I had to force it to 10G on my switch.

Here's a fun one, actually: it took me abour an hour on the phone to get the symmetric upload add-on added. Initially, the CS agent was saying that this option didn't exist, and my only option was to upgrade to Gig2. We went back and forth for quite some time; I insisted that this is a thing. I spent around 45 mins of that call on hold until I was put through to the retentions team who were able to add it in about 2 minutes. It was a painful experience. During the call, I discovered this article: https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.p...ruggle-to-add-symmetric-broadband-speeds.html | It seems that nothing has improved in ~2 years.