Draytek Vigor 130 + PFSense constantly reconnecting via PPoE

[#1]

This seems to have fixed it! Removed all of the interfaces then rebooted the pfSense box.

I then re-added all the interfaces back and added the firewall rules back. I then rebooted the pfsense box again for good measure and brought the PPoE interface up and everything is looking happy in the PPP logs in pfsense. Now no entries in the logs referring to OPT3 at all.

Thankfully this was a pretty minimal config- this would have been a massive hassle if this was a more mature setup with lots of vlans!

Once again thank you both for your input and help with this one- very much appreciated.

Next on my list is figuring out how to monitor the Vigor 130 stats with this configuration. I may be back posting on the forums over the next few days once I’ve had chance to evaluate all the options in detail. I know SNMP is an option when configured with pass through but not sure if possible to get this working with bridge mode? Alternatively the Draytek has the ability to broadcast the stats over its LAN port with the “ Broadcast DSL Status to LAN”. Failing getting these to work there’s always the option of writing a script to SSH in and run vdsl stats on a schedule. Anyone got any experience with any of these methods?

I think ideally I would also like to pass through VLAN 101 back to the router rather than the Draytek handling this. Did you have any success with this @Anonymous or were you happy with leaving the VLAN to the modem?


I also think flashing the ESI alternative firmware to the draytek was pretty much moot- I think the issue here was just with the pfSense box so may experiment with those to see if I can squeeze a bit more out of the line.

[#2]

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@oakteryx wrote:

Once again thank you both for your input and help with this one- very much appreciated.

👍  you're welcome !  👍

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@oakteryx wrote:

Next on my list is figuring out how to monitor the Vigor 130 stats with this configuration. I may be back posting on the forums over the next few days once I’ve had chance to evaluate all the options in detail. I know SNMP is an option when configured with pass through but not sure if possible to get this working with bridge mode? Alternatively the Draytek has the ability to broadcast the stats over its LAN port with the “ Broadcast DSL Status to LAN”. Failing getting these to work there’s always the option of writing a script to SSH in and run vdsl stats on a schedule. Anyone got any experience with any of these methods?

I used RouterStats back in the day when I was on ADSL and needed to regularly tweak the modem target SNR, with various Netgear and Billion modem/routers.

Since upgrading to VDSL, my line stats hardly ever move, so I've never had the need for continuous DSL monitoring.

I've just downloaded and tried the latest RouterStatsLite, but there is no obvious way to get it to work with a Vigor 130.

Whenever I want to check my Vigor 130 stats or make adjustments, I Telnet and use the command line, e.g -

$ telnet 192.168.130.1
Trying 192.168.130.1...
Connected to 192.168.130.1.
Escape character is '^]'.

Account:admin
Password: ************

Type ? for command help

Vigor> v s
  ---------------------- ATU-R Info (hw: annex A, f/w: annex A/B/C) -----------
   Running Mode            :      17A       State                : SHOWTIME
   DS Actual Rate          : 79997000 bps   US Actual Rate       : 19998000 bps
   DS Attainable Rate      : 80213548 bps   US Attainable Rate   : 21007000 bps
   DS Path Mode            :        Fast    US Path Mode         :        Fast 
   DS Interleave Depth     :        1       US Interleave Depth  :        1 
   NE Current Attenuation  :       19 dB    Cur SNR Margin       :        4  dB
   DS actual PSD           :     7. 7 dB    US actual PSD        :    14. 0  dB
   NE CRC Count            :     1457       FE CRC Count         :    16097
   NE ES Count             :      412       FE  ES Count         :    10164
   Xdsl Reset Times        :        0       Xdsl Link  Times     :       11
   ITU Version[0]          : fe004452       ITU Version[1]       : 41590000
   VDSL Firmware Version   : 05-07-06-0D-01-07   [with Vectoring support] 
   Power Management Mode   : DSL_G997_PMS_L0 
   Test Mode               : DISABLE 
  -------------------------------- ATU-C Info ---------------------------------
   Far Current Attenuation :       25 dB    Far SNR Margin       :        6  dB
   CO ITU Version[0]       : b5004244       CO ITU Version[1]    : 434dc190
   DSLAM CHIPSET VENDOR    : < BDCM >

Vigor> v s more
  ---------------------- ATU-R Info (hw: annex A, f/w: annex A/B/C) -----------
                  Near End        Far End    Note
 Trellis      :      1               1
 Bitswap      :      1               1
 ReTxEnable   :      0               1
 VirtualNoise :      0               0
 20BitSupport :      0               0
 LatencyPath  :      0               0
 LOS          :      2               0
 LOF          :      0               0
 LPR          :      0               2
 LOM          :      0               0
 SosSuccess   :      0               0
 NCD          :      0               0
 LCD          :      0               0
 FECS         :      0            482268 (seconds)
 ES           :    412            10164 (seconds)
 SES          :     39             103 (seconds)
 LOSS         :      0               1 (seconds)
 UAS          :     29            15549 (seconds)
 HECError     :      0               0
 CRC          :   1462            16097
 RsCorrection :      0               0
 INP          :      0             190 (symbols)
 InterleaveDelay :      0              16 (1/100 ms)
 NFEC         :     68              32
 RFEC         :      4              16
 LSYMB        :   5343              16
 INTLVBLOCK   :     68              32
 AELEM        :      0            ----
Vigor> 

I have my Vigor 130 in 'bridge mode', as I've always had a /30 WAN IP address range.

I don't know whether this helps with your quest to find some monitoring software,  but someone on Kitz Forum wrote a Perl script to extract the stats from a Vigor 130 every minute and put the results in a csv file.  That could be a good starting point for taking the .csv file as a data source for a graphical interface, maybe into Excel ?

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@oakteryx wrote:

I also think flashing the ESI alternative firmware to the draytek was pretty much moot- I think the issue here was just with the pfSense box so may experiment with those to see if I can squeeze a bit more out of the line.

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I've tried every version of firmware, but the default release gives the best performance on my Huawei cabinet.

[#3]

If anyone is interested this is the approach I went with.

https://www.draytek.co.uk/support/guides/kb-vigor-130-dsl-status#modem-configuration

By enabling this setting on the Vigor 130 you can get the DSL stats from a UDP broadcast on port 4944 every 10 seconds. 

These stats are encrypted but after some pain I managed to figure it out via some trail and error.

The UDP broadcast is 116 bytes in total, first 4 bytes are a "magic byte" just need to be checked they match what you expect and then these first 4 bytes can be ignored.

The remaining 112 bytes are encrypted by AES128 CBC using a SHA1 of the Source MAC address of the broadcasting Vigor 130 as the key (key is also copied into IV as well)...

Once you have decrypted the 112 bytes the first 4 bytes of the 112 can be ignored- I couldn't figure out what these are supposed to be. Then the 4th-8th bytes are downspeed in bits per second, 8th-12th are upspeed in bits per second. (both 32 unsigned integers). I'm not interested in anything else for my needs but it should possible to reverse this further with some further experimentation. The state, profile, SNR Up, SNR Down and firmware version must be in that packet somewhere as from the screenshots in the above link they are show under the "remote VDSL2 Information from WAN2"-  so it's just a matter of some experimentation.

I'm logging these into a InfluxdB at the moment but might look at creating a pfSense plugin for others if I get some time to figure out how that all works.

[#4]

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@oakteryx wrote:

... it should possible to reverse this further with some further experimentation.

Have you considered asking DrayTek technical support email UK, for the format of the broadcast ?

I've usually found them to be helpful, even when asking questions that I thought they might avoid responding to.

For the sake of a quick email, you might save yourself a whole lot of time if the info happens to be readily available

.

[#5]

I found a message from Draytek on the Whirlpool forums where they were unable to provide further information which led me to dig a bit deeper into this. I think if it wasn’t encrypted I’m sure they’d be happy to help.

https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/34k6kqzk

[#6]

Think I've managed to get all the VDSL data I expected to find in there out

 

Here is a very rough proof of concept in C if anyone is interested for now. 

It requires cloning the https://github.com/kokke/tiny-AES-c into lib/ subdirectory.

https://gist.github.com/sgarwood/c60883ad2921893d1e9def4bd22b0728

I do still plan on adding a first-party UI plugin for this in pfSense similar to the Draytek router one at some point.