HOW TO: Use a third party router on Vodafone VDSL

[jonnywombat]

On Firday afternoon Vodafone UK sent a corporate email telling their support team that they can now give out Broadband username and passwords.

I have now set up my own router, and here's what i did.

Step 1 Ring VF on 08080034515 and get your username and password. The support team member then emailed me my Log in info.

Step 2 Swap your router. Keep your VF router in case you ever get an issue and need tech support as they will not support your 3rd party device

Step 3 In your routers web interface access the WAN settings. Set connection type to PPPoE, enter username and password and leave all settings as default EXCEPT enable 802.1Q and set Vlan tag to 101.

Step 4 Save settings and apply. Your router should now connect to VF. Mine took a couple of minutes to get a connection and another couple from the router showing it was connected to actually being able to access the net

Step 5 After a few minutes the connection dropped, and it would not connect again. After investigation I was told this is to do with VF registering your router on there network. Hard reset your router. Power it down remove the power cord for 30 seconds and power back on.

Step 6 Enjoy

This is just based on my experience of setting up my router ASUS DSL-AC68U, YMMV. However the ASUS is syncd at 73.6meg, when the VF router syncd at 72.1 and I have noticed a marked improvment in performance.

HTH someone

Jonny

[MSV]

Yes wifi was turned off. If I enable I only connect 1 device - my iphone, for troubleshooting to test when the internet comes back before connecting my network lan in stages. 

[bofh5]

My contract with Sky is up so after seeing this in google thought great i can swap to VF and use my own kit.

Not according to their support dept though

Jon

 at 22:06, Jan 18:

 and you will provide the username and password?

May

 at 22:08, Jan 18:

You can use your own router in parallel with Vodafone router in the bride mode, as due to the security policies we do not provide the username and password.

 May

 at 22:09, Jan 18:

*bridge I mean to say

 Jon

 at 22:09, Jan 18:

 so you don't provide the ppoe username and password ?

Jon

 at 22:10, Jan 18:

  i read on the forum that "On Friday afternoon Vodafone UK sent a corporate email telling their support team that they can now give out Broadband username and passwords."

Jon

 at 22:10, Jan 18:

 https://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/Broadband-Home-Phone/HOW-TO-Use-a-third-party-router-on-Vodafone-VDS...

Jon

 at 22:10, Jan 18:

 if this isn't true then it is no good to me

May

 at 22:11, Jan 18:

That's correct, we do not provide username and password

[aioderek]

They do provide you with your username and password as I have received mine from them no problem so I could buy my own router as their one is awful. All set up with new TP Link VDSL router and working like a dream.. use the live chat function you will get it. 

[bofh5]

thanks aioderek

thats good to know. guess "May" hasn't been told this yet

Cheers 

[aioderek]

No problem, May clearly doesn’t have a clue! You will get the username and password.. all the best 👍🏼

[eduardo007]

I had same question

[brutos08]

Am glad vodafone saw sense, I was one of the lucky few who got their username before this policy came in, if i didnt I would of moved to somewhere else simple because i need my own firewall(pfsense). I do not use any consumer router on my network firewall+UTM to protect my family the best i can.

[aioderek]

Good for you! Yes the VF router isn’t the best, that’s readily apparent by the amount of comments on here! Still using the TP link router and seems still stable. No speed improvement but I’ve had no issues in anything I want to do online so all ok so far.

[leniideas]

Hi

I;ve been with Vodafone for a year and now have a great "full" service with very few drop outs.

When I first signed up, the Vodafone fiber router dropped a couple of times and hour. I spent many hours on the phone to Vodafone support trying various settings, rebooting lines etc.

The upshot is the Vodafone router is rubbish. It cannot realistically support more than 5 devices wirelessly. I found this out but trawling through loads of user posts.

My solution (which allows me to still receive Vodafone support if I ever need it) is to use to use their fiber router as a "modem" only. So I have turned off wifi and DHCP and pass the signal via ethernet cable to an Apple Airport extreme (any decent router will do). The Aiport provides the DHCP and network addresses and can easily handle multiple devices. I rarely have any downtime at all anymore and it never lasts more than 5 minutes.

Alot of people are struggling with the vodafone router by the sounds of things... its the router and nothing else... change it, don't waste hours of time trying to solve this problem. Either use a third party router directly attached to your service entery point  (get the user name etc from vodafone) or if they do not support the device you want to use just daisy chain your router of choice onto the vodafone router, remembering to set your device to bridge mode. The settings of the vodafone router are easily change throught the web management interface.

By the way if you use the airport express and get a double NAT error, ignore it, it won't affect your set up.

Hope this helps.

---

wrote:

I'm suffering intermittant connection drops where all internet is lost so not just a WiFi issue. 

OpenReach have been out a few times, have found nothing wrong but squeezed a slightly improved speed on last visit.

Can people advise if changing the Vodafone router has resolved this type of issue as I'm getting tired of connection disconnects?

---

[jay_uk1]

So just to confirm that if I move from BT my current set up should work.  I currently use the openreach Vdsl modem (the one that isn't hackable) and connect to that with a TP link AC 750 cable modem. 

Do Vodafone supply your username and password when signing up? If so it's just a case of using this in the TP link instead of BT's.  I don't need to do anything with the Vdsl modem?