FTTP and Residential number porting

[#1]

" hopefully thru the holes I have pre drilled to avoid wiring in the house"

This is the bit I want to hear how it went.  The one thing putting me off changing my product is what sort of mayhem might be caused by installation.

[#2]

In my installation I hadn't pre drilled any holes, but the installer drilled exactly where I wanted it (and checked there was nothing in the way!), but was happy to install it anywhere I requested.

[#3]

@IngeJones 

There is little in the way of drama during an installation - unless things go wrong.

Someone needs to be at home and space cleared for where you hope to bring in the cable. The engineer should work with you if this not where your phone cable comes in. If it's possible then they'll usually do it.

Might take 3 to 4 fours with about an hour inside - but the engineer will be in and out.

Brian

[#4]

My installation was straight forward. ONT placed next to existing master socket.
Drilled a new hole through the wall, was inside for about 15 minutes.
Total install time about an hour I guess.

[#5]

Mine was similar to @dvorak's.  The ONT is about 2ft to the side of the Master Socket, in my upstairs office, and is under a desk, so limited room.  Probably about an hour in all for him to complete it.

[#6]

All went easily 9:15am 1.5-2 hours, outside box up on woodwork on balcony and a drop cable into house, thru the hole I drilled, ont about where I wanted it so happy days. I only drilled the hole as I know pretty much where cables are and I knew that there was no cables where I was drilling. stable 300mbs down 47-48 up Downside is Sipgate have experienced a major power outage where the servers are located and voip is currently offline. I can dial out but no incoming. I can use the sip trunk thru sipgate at work, more of that in a minute.

Up until Plusnet offer voice on FTTP, If voice is paramount, setup a small freepbx exchange PC using a trunk. Its more expensive than the basic at £4.95 pcm for 1 line in 100 out plus 1p per minute UK landline, but the telephone server is under your control and is MUCH more configurable, AND you can setup call forwarding between different extensions, and forward calls between extensions, with the abilty to setup IVR`s (press 1 do this, press 2 etc). To setup a PBX, set aside £250 for a decent silent low power quad core atom based micro pc with 4gb or so of ram and 128gb ssd, which uses around 15w of 12vdc power and the aforementiond £4.95 

[#7]

Oh and a goosed router, another is on the way from PN.

Managed to configure my old router (TP LINK archer VR600 v3 iirc, currently £80 new Argos) to work, whilst it hasn`t got WiFi6, it does do split 2.4/5ghz ssid and site to site IPsec VPN, something I use a lot working from home, plus a whole host of other features NOT on the Smarthub 2 (does lack whole home wifi tho)

[#8]

For those wanting to use their existing router, it MUST have a dedicated lan/wan port, not just a VDSL socket.

I just deleted the old VDSL setup by initiating the quick setup routine built into the router, chose PPoE, entered login username that you login to the Plusnet website with a bit added, I.E YOUR_USERNAME@plusdsl.net, with your login password, and it worked for me .

The TP LINK VR600, is ok, not the best definately not the worst. Good bang for buck

[#9]

@notcloud 

Do I understand that after ordering the upgrade to FTTP from ADSL with PN you WERE able to port your number through sipgate the day before, and the changeover went ahead anyway, and you now have FTTP.

[#10]

Yes. Now whether this was a fluke is anyones guess, but it worked out dandy for for me, other than the power outage in Germany and Sipgates servers going offline  

[#11]

Not anyone's guess!

Care to share your lottery numbers? 😀

[#12]

Two questions

1. If the supplied Hub Two router is found to be faulty after FTTP is installed will my Hub One router work with FTTP as it has a dedicated WAN socket?

2. Can I use the nice new Hub Two router I received as part of my now cancelled FTTP order (actually postponed until PN offers the feature to new customers) with my existing FTTC connection, using the RJ11 ADSL socket rather than the RJ45 WAN socket?

[#13]

I cannot see why it shouldn`t work. See post below about firmware tho.

In theory if it has VDSL modem then yes, as long as PN hasn`t cobbled the firmware to exclude it as it was supplied as a FTTP setup.

Adding the relevant ppoe settings username and password and all should be ok

[#14]

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@notcloud wrote:

Up until Plusnet offer voice on FTTP, If voice is paramount, setup a small freepbx exchange PC using a trunk. Its more expensive than the basic at £4.95 pcm for 1 line in 100 out plus 1p per minute UK landline, but the telephone server is under your control and is MUCH more configurable, AND you can setup call forwarding between different extensions, and forward calls between extensions, with the abilty to setup IVR`s (press 1 do this, press 2 etc). To setup a PBX, set aside £250 for a decent silent low power quad core atom based micro pc with 4gb or so of ram and 128gb ssd, which uses around 15w of 12vdc power and the aforementiond £4.95 

---

@notcloud 

All a bit over the top and expensive for the average Joe new to VoIP don't you think?  That might be the way to go for some small businesses, but why over complicate matters if someone simply needs a VoIP 'landline' service?  It's far simpler and cheaper to go with one of the options suggested in various threads in this forum recently, and my personal recommendation for someone new to VoIP in a domestic type situation would be one of the Gigaset DECT IP base stations, e.g. N300, and compatible handsets from the same manufacturer.

Congratulations BTW in defying the odds and getting your FTTP installed after porting your number to Sipgate.  

Edit:  added 'DECT'

[#15]

I`m pretty sure the Gigaset is what Trooli gave my sister when she signed up with them.

Yes it is a convoluted setup, and a tad more expensive, but my first foray into PBX was 512mbram 32gb storage Raspberry PI running a freePBX distro, iirc at he time I paid £69 preinstalled. Now we run dl320e gen8 with an i3 4gb ram and 120gb ssd, which by coincidence cost £69 off a well known auction site more power was required than the PI for 20 phones over multiple sites with 4 trunks and 6 incoming numbers.

Lucky for me freePBX once punched thru the router it doesn`t require a fixed IP for phones, just the one PBX for the phones to connect to, so that I can still work on. I "could" enable PPTP to allow me to remotely work, however this opens a can of worms security wise, so might look into implementing IPsec for remote use