Connecting to Sky Fibre Broadband using my own router

[VWatt]

Dear all,

I just received my new Sky Fibre Broadband package and everything seems to be working fine. However, I do have a serious issue:

I would like to use my own router as I need VPN access to my home network when I am abroad and the Sky hub does not provide this functionality. I also prefer to use my own mesh wifi network. With my previous provider I could put the modem to bridge mode such that my own router was managing the internet connection. 
The Sky hub that was delivered with my package cannot be put into bridge mode, resulting in cascading routers and a failure of my VPN connections.

Searching this forum I learned that it seems possible to not use the Sky hub at all and connect my own router directly to the OpenReach ONT. Apparently a certain VLAN number (101?) needs to be put and I could not find consistent information whether authentication would be required or not.

Does anyone have experience in connecting a Fritz!Box 4060 directly to the ONT?

I attach two screenshots of the configuration pages and would be thankful for help in which options I need to choose and which date I have to fill in...

Thanks you very much in advance for your help!

[wheller59]

You can use your own router, however itf anything goes wrong, sky will insist you plug there router back in, i use my own router connected to my ONT on the wall, the best way is to ensure that you have a router that has a wan port, plug ethernet in to said wan port, and look in router page for DHCP option 66, which is what sky uses to authenticate, you can fill this with anything but it must be like this:

iamrandom@skydsl|mymadeuppassword

the dhcp 66 can be anything but must be @skydsl (NO .com or anything like that) and then a pipe which is a vertical line like this | then a completly made up password, most times what i do is take the mac of the router you was sent and do MACADDRESS@skydsl|skybroadband just to make is easy, however you could just copy and paste that example into the dhcp 66 field and it would work, the only other option would be to mac spoof however im not sure if that would work without dhcp option 66, that is when you set up the router, when it gives you the option of setting a custom mac address or use the default, you would enter the mac of the sky hub, again not sure if spoofing the mac of a sky router is a good idea, i myself have never done it and can not confirm if that would work, i use the DHCP option 66 to set up my router

[FLC]

https://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Broadband/Fritzbox-7590-as-third-party-router-on-Sky-Superfast-Broadban...

[Chrisee]

@wheller59 slight correction it is DHCPv4 Option 61 not Option 66 that Sky use and Sky do not use the mac address at all so that step is redundant given the line id identifies the customer you need nothing specific.. Not all routers supportj DHCPv4 Option61 if that applies try DHCPv6 PD which works on most but not all Sky UK connection

The reason Sky require one of their hubs to be connected to manage faults is they run the diagnostic systems used to identify failts.. 

[VWatt]

Thanks to everyone who replied so far!

I did try a couple of the suggestions in the meantime but, unfortunately, without success.

The authentication with the sky network seems to be an issue.

Try 1: I activated IPv6 in my router, hoping that this would authenticate me. But it appears that the router does not get an IP address:

Try 2: I filled in username and password in the fields available on my router and tried with IPv6 switched back to "Native IPv4 connection". In this configuration my router manages to get an IP address but I do not have internet access. The message: "PPoE error: Timeout" appears in my log which seems to imply that the username/password field is not used to authenticate via DHCP option 61 but via PPoE, which is not supported by the Sky network?

For me this looks like I cannot use authentication over IPv6 as my OpenReach connection doesn't seem to support it and I can't use authentication via DHCP Option 61 as my router doesn't support it?

Meaning I'd need a different router to make it work?

[VWatt]

Thank you very much for this!

I tried to replicate the settings in my Fritz!Box but, unfortunately, it did not work. In the log file I could only see an entry saying:

"Could not establish IPv6 internet connection: No response from DHCPv6 server (SOL)"

Does this implicitly mean that my OpenReach connection doesn't support LDRA and I would need a router that supports authentication using DHCP option 61? My Fritz!Box 4060 doesn't seem to be one of them, like all other AVM routers apparently...

Swapping my 4060 for a 5790 would also not be of any help then I guess?

thanks again...