replacing Vodafone router with DIY pfsense pc

[awediohead]

So in anticipation of switching from FTTC to FTTH with Fibre 500 I've been setting up a DIY PC (Fujitsu Futro s920) with pfsense the last few weeks.

Once it went live yesterday I went online with vodafone chat and got them to send me my login details: username and password.

After several such online chats and hours of reading on this forum and elsewhere I'm completely stuck. I'm really hoping I'm doing something so obviously dumb that someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong!

Simply connecting an ethernet cable from the ONT to my desgnated WAN physical port gives me a green up arrow on the pfsense dashboard. This presumably just means it's registered the physical connection.

So this port on my hardware is em3 - so next I create a VLAN with 911 with em3 as the parent port.

Then in Interface Assignments with VLAN 911 on em3  ( WAN (em3.911)  )selected in the Network port pop up menu I click on the WAN interface link so I can enter my user name and password - I'm selecting PPPoE, None for iPv6, entering an MTU of 1492.

I'm putting in an idle timeout of 0 as per the instructions from web chat

Host-Uniq I am also leaving blank - I assume this is the right thing to do as I haven't been advised differently.

I click save and the dashboard green arrow turns to point down and red.

Is there something obvious I'm not doing?

Is there any chance (since I know I'm one of the first to get CityFibre FTTH in my local area of Leeds) that there's a different VLAN id being used? I know that Openreach uses 101 but I assume there's no point in trying that given I was with the Cityfibre guys most of yesterday afternoon, there's no question the fibre has anything to do with BT/Openreach

Any ideas or things to try?

Thanks

J

[awediohead · Accepted solution]

I don't know what to be angrier about: The fact that I was given wrong information by vodafone on two occassions, with webchats that lasted for well over an hour each time, or the fact that it took me hours and hours of futile effort to notice the stupid thing they'd done!

My username was given to me as: dsl*********@broadband.vodafone.uk   copied and pasted from the SMS I was sent by Vodafone services.

I spent a very long time assuming it was my broad ignorance of the complexities of pfsense configuration, reading and studying and going down a ridiculous number of pointless rabbit holes. Blinding headache later . . .

Guess what was wrong?

.co. !!!!!!! as in the SMS missed out the co from @Broadband.vodafone.co.uk

Funny how you can be bloody annoyed and profoundly relieved at the same time!

Hope this helps someone else.

[CrimsonLiar]

It seems to happen quite often.  I think the last time this was posted someone had been given "brodband" rather than "broadband".

[awediohead]

It's sad to hear this sort of thing is happening regularly. When I contacted them the second time, by a process of elimination I had a hunch that I'd been given the wrong dsl*********@ part of the username - I mean that it was maybe off by a number. So that's the only part I checked to make sure it was the same from two different advisors. The third adviser did actually include the .co.uk correctly - looking back through the SMS messages, though again I didn't think to check the suffix. Well not for some hours.

Despite the above I was impressed by how hard the advisers TRIED to help, even apologising for their lack of technical knowledge. Fingers crossed I'll not have to bother them again!