Vodafone Sure Signal and PPPOE on BT Infinity

[imichael]

Hello

I have been through every check possible with you guys (check my message history if needed) and the final outcome was that PPPOE might ocassionaly work with BT Infinity but on the whole not and you cannot support it.

In my case it will not work and the only option I have is to roll back to my old internet service which is not going to happen as I dont want to go back to a 3mb service when I can have a 30MB one

As things develop the majority of BT Broadband Services are through PPPOE and eventually everyone will be on this service.

Are there steps being taken to have the VSS Box work with some form of upgrade to its firmware or should I dismiss the hope of ever being able to use a mobile on Vodafone at home again?   Vodafone are supposed to be the biggest in their space and I am pretty sure that BT Broadband are the biggest in their market - Are you working on a solution for this?

Thanks

[Retired-Dave]

Hi imichael,

BT have tested for us and confirmed that the Sure Signal works with their service with the equipment they provide.

I can see that Wayne responded to your last post here but that we did not hear back, and your last few posts do seem to be a bit unclear. Can you confirm if you have tried what was suggested for me?

Dave

[LouO]

I have BT Infininty, VSS works fine here.

I did have to do some port forwarding but that may no longer be necessary.

[imichael]

Hi Dave

I started this journey with a VSS with the serial number 40123754984

At the time I gave you my ip

217.41.67.179 

Ran a speedtest

http://www.speedtest.net/result/2298709193.png  (ping is 5ms)

Tracing route to cluster4.vap.vodafone.co.uk [212.183.133.177]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  BTBusinessHub.home [192.168.1.254]
  2    15 ms    15 ms    15 ms  host81-148-0-1.in-addr.btopenworld.com [81.148.0
.1]
  3    15 ms    15 ms    15 ms  213.120.178.141
  4    16 ms    16 ms    16 ms  213.120.177.98
  5    15 ms    15 ms    15 ms  217.41.168.73
  6    16 ms    16 ms    16 ms  217.41.168.107
  7    16 ms    16 ms    15 ms  acc1-10GigE-0-1-0-6.l-far.21cn-ipp.bt.net [109.1
59.249.94]
  8    22 ms    23 ms    23 ms  core2-te0-7-0-5.faraday.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.2
49.15]
  9    16 ms    16 ms    16 ms  host213-121-193-109.ukcore.bt.net [213.121.193.1
09]
 10    20 ms    20 ms    18 ms  LNDGW2.arcor-ip.net [195.66.224.124]
 11    18 ms    18 ms    18 ms  85.205.116.6
 12     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 13     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 14     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 15     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 16     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 17     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 18     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 19     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 20     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 21     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 22     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 23     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 24     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 25     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 26     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 27     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 28     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 29     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 30     *        *        *     Request timed out.

Trace complete.

Then I opened all the ports opened as requested

Then your team told me it was a BT Problem – So I spent  many hours of life arguing with BT about this to then be told by your team that the VSS required a PPPOA connection

I had my BT Broadband connection for years and had upgraded to BT infinity a few months before the problem started and the SS Box had worked ok for a while until BT internet went down for an hour one night and it stopped working.

BT again told me my connection is PPPOE not PPPOA and Vodafone say this is at best an intermiittent service but likely not to work which is the case with mine.

I get another VSS box and it does not work either.

Again I am told by Vodafone that  the VSS will not work on PPPOE and that my only alternative is to revert to broadband pre fiber – I should remove it from my system

I check the original white VSS box (first serial number in this trail) at my office on a BT Broadband Connection (not infinity) – it works fine – so we know the box is ok  

I take this box back home follow your advice and de register  the box I wait 24 hours then register it again – red light

I then get told that there is a problem with a “Pathping”

There are apparent failures in hops between the VSS box (& computer) and the VSS servers.  I get told by Vodafone  

“The remit of our support is the VSS box and the VSS servers, any network infrastructure between them we cannot support as we cannot replicate the issue.
All we can do is advise with what we see from Pathpings and any other forms of diagnostics such as Tracert etc."

BT have said there is nothing wrong from their end – I have a perfect connection so I am stuck in the middle of this problem

I am then told by you

"imichael - The information that you've been given is incorrect and Sure Signal will work on a PPPOE connection.  Your Sure Signal still isn't showing as picking up a connection with our network.  This would mean that there's a problem with either the connection or equipment that you're using.  Can you confirm that the box is set up as shown here?  If so please try it on another connection to see if you have the same problem."

I call your team on this and again they tell me SSs box will not work on PPPOE. They have categorically stated this to me and told me to stop wasting my time in getting something to work that will not work

So next step is I put my original White Sure Signal back on - I place it in the DMZ as requested - Still red light.

It is not plugged in now – If someone wants to contact me to try and resolve this then please can you get in touch.

[Retired-PaulE]

Hi imichael, 

I think we need to investigae this in more detail.

I've sent you a PM with instructions on how to contact the team, follow these and we'll be in touch as soon as we can

You can find your PM inbox here

Paul 

[bobrayner]

Can someone tell me if this specific case was solved? I have exactly the same issue. Despite solid personal efforts by individuals at Vodafone tech support,my VSS is still a useless piece of kit and I'm obviously not going to ditch my BT infinity service and go back to the stone age, in order to get on to PPPoA. My only soultion is to move to a mobile provider who has any mkind of signal in the area were I live. Sorry Vodafone but this has been a major fail by you.

[stephensont]

@bobrayner

Hi Bob, this might be of some use to you - but your mileage may vary of course..

We recently switched from Plusnet ADSL to FTTC, using PPPoE via a HomeHub5. Different ISP but both services are delivered using the same underlying BT Wholesale infrastructure. The VSS worked fine with the Homehub5 when connected using PPPoA on ADSL, but as soon as the line switched to FTTC & PPPoE; it dropped the connection & died a death.

Despite trying every trick in the book, and of course following all the various recommendations by Vodafone, we simply could not persuade the VSS to work. Almost on a whim, I bought and connected an alternative router (currently a Billion 8800AXL but this will be replaced tomorrow with an Asus dsl-ac68 for better wifi performance); plugged the VSS in.... and it fired up and bounced straight back to working order in about half an hour. No specific configuration, no port forwarding... nothing. Literally plug & play.

VSS can definitely work fine with Infinity & other FTTC services; perhaps just not reliably with a HomeHub5 for some reason - so if you need a quick fix, try another router!

I'm sure someone somewhere has a working VSS, HomeHub & FTTC setup - but quite how you're supposed to get it going is beyond me.

Good luck!

[bobrayner]

Thnx Stephen. I'll give it a go! And I'll let you know if it works.

Cheers, Bob

[mstjwebb]

I would just like to add my bit since I have suffered similarly to you guys and am now working again.

Suresignal mk1 worked perfectly for years with BT adsl using a Netgear DG834 router no setup just PnP via PPoA.

I am fed up with waiting for infinity so I purchased an EE4G home router which is fab but expensive at £50 for 50GB and even more expensive for more. I decided to keep my BT adsl as well and purchased a dual wan router from Netgear. It works fine however no matter what I did the Suresignal would not work. ANd believe me I tried everything! Finally decided to bypass the firewall of the router by setting up a DMZ to the suresignal only.

What do know? Within 10 mins it was up and running again! Finally the DG834 has a hidden menu which allows you to use it as a dumb modem controlled by the firewall/router however PPoE only. It also works perfectly with MTU set to 1492.

So if your fireall/router supports it I would give the suresignal a fixed IP. Then DMZ to this IP only!! set mtu to 1492 which is the max you can have with PPoE and I would expect it to work! Just make sure that the dmz only goes to the suresignal as it completely bypasses any firewall!