Moving from Sky Hub to DrayTek+Unifi Gateway -- need PPPoE parameters please!

[Alastair_M]

We have Sky Superfast Broadband which is their ~75Mbit/s download service which is FTTC and then provided as VDSL2 over copper to the premises. Works fine.

I've decided to move away from the Sky hub and I've replaced it with a Unifi Cloud Gateway device (with Network Manager on-board), and will use a DrayTek modem in bridge mode for the VDSL2. Spent the last week researching this and also a couple of (very frustrating and fruitless) chat support sessions with Sky (who basically told me what I know, that this isn't something they recommend or support, but didn't tell me what I need to know!).

I have all the hardware pieces and I am confident this is a well-trodden path for Sky customers who are also network-savvy. However despite my research it seems like there is no definitive answer to the parameters I'm going to need to set up PPPoE on my UCG. Can anyone help with the following simple questions please?

1. Do I actually need a username and password to authenticate myself to the Sky radius server? Most posts seem to suggest that any username in the format [anytext]@skydsl will work and that the password can be anything because it's going to be ignored anyway?
2. I've been told to expect an option to select MER authentication (specifically that I should select Sky(MER)_VDSL from a dropdown menu that pay appear)-- not 100% sure the UCG will prompt me for that but Unifi documentation says they do support it. Any experience with this?
3. Related topic again I've seen several references saying I need to select DHCP option 61, I'm not sure if this is correct and whether or not it is even a parameter (or just something the gateway either does or does not support -- apparently mine does).
4. Most posts I've found seem to suggest Sky use a VLAN and the ID most people have posted is 110, does that sound right?
5. One post suggested the MTU should be set to 1492 (versus 1500 max) because it works optimally with PPPoE?

Apologies to all if this is re-hashing overly-trodden familiar ground, I've found myself effectively curating a gathering of nuggets on this topic into a list of specifics -- if I could get these answered by an expert who reads this, my chances of success when I plug it in tomorrow are sure to increase!

Thank you,

Alastair

[GD1]

@Alastair_M  To use the DrayTek Vigor 130 modem with Sky Fibre Broadband, either with a DrayTek Vigor router or another manufacturer's router, set up the modem in Bridge mode. This allows the modem to pass-through the DHCP information to the router connected to it. The router connected to the modem needs to be set up for DHCP option 61 to receive an IP address from Sky.

You need to use Dynamic IP or similar in your router, there also needs to be a place to populate DHCP Option 60/61 details as below:

Option 60 anythinghere@skydsl

Option 61 abcd1234

ASCII character should be selected

[Anonymous]

And the VLAN is 101 not 110.

The two MTU figures are actually the same, it’s just one includes 8 for the header and the other doesn’t.  It depends on which format your equipment uses.

[Alastair_M]

@Anonymous thanks -- yes the VLAN was my fat fingers. I'm assuming the references to MER / Sky(MER)_VDSL are a red herring and I'll probably see no such prompt. Assume when you say I need to set it up for dynamic IP you're referring to the router getting a dynamically-assigned IP address for the PPPoE connecting to Sky (presumably from Sky's DHCP server at the other end of the link) -- yep that's also how the hub works so that would be my default. Once the UCG is in and running I am going to investigate using a more protected DNS that gives me some visibility into content my household are searching for (young kids etc) but one step at a time!

I'm a semi-expert so this is a little bit of a voyage of discovery but it should be fun finding out. Appreciate the quick and precise response thanks again.

Alastair

[GD1]

@Alastair_M  No you don't use PPPoE as that is not what Sky use,  it's got to be Dynamic or Static IP.

[Alastair_M]

Oh ok. Thanks. The image below shows the options I'll be presented with. 

So I guess I will select DHCP instead of PPPoE and look for references to MER and/or Option 61. Most of the other params I either know by now or can probably guess!

[Alastair_M · Accepted solution]

@Anonymous @GD1 guys, thank you both for your help. Ultimately the answer wasn't quite what you said but the info you gave me allowed me to solve it. I thought I would pay it forward by noting down here exactly what I did in case anyone in future tries the same.

As a reminder, I am setting up for:

- Sky Broadband Superfast (75Mbit/s FTTC service)

- DrayTek Vigor 130 VDSL2 modem

- Unifi Cloud Gateway Fiber router

I've attached some screenshots although, annoyingly, I failed to capture the final critical one - I will describe it.

Here's what I went through:

1. There are lots of videos online showing a UCG being connected to a DSL modem in passthrough / bridge mode and the DSL params being set up in the Unifi/UCG device so I assumed this was what I would do. You can see from the screenshots of the Unifi console that the options are indeed there to configure Option 60 and Option 61 DHCP. 

2. Since I was expecting to configure DHCP in the Unifi box I didn't pay too much attention to the configuration of the Vigor 130 other than to check it was in bridge mode -- it was.

3. I tried multiple combinations in the Unifi console: set up Option 60 but not 61, set up just 61, set up both, VLAN tag, no VLAN tag. None of it worked.

4. I reasoned that maybe I could put the parameters into the Vigor. So I did a factory reset and tried to configure the Vigor correctly. It wasn't obvious but the things I changed were:

  > Set VDSL2 for "Customer" to 'Enable' (it was previously disabled)

  > Made sure PPPoE was disabled

  > Ensured Bridged mode was set

  > In the Static/Dynamic settings, went to 'Advanced' and there I had the option to configure DHCP Option 60 and Option 61. In the Vigor you have to ADD these as DHCP services/options one by one (i.e. you add Option 60 then you add Option 61). 

  > I tried to save the options and it gave me an error saying I had not provided the "data". I noticed there was a field at the bottom that said you should provide data for each of the options. Since I only had one thing to provide (the generic "login credentials" provided by @GD1) I put anythinghere@skydsl  in the data field for Option 60, and abcd1234 in the data field for Option 61.

  > Then when I saved it, I seemed to lose the ability to access the modem through the WAN port, I think related to the bridge mode (but it should still work as I had configured my laptop with a static 192.168.2.x address).

Anyway. Figuring nothing to lose, I plugged the Unifi UCG router back in and boom! It just started working. It did not take me to the WAN configuration page. I was just online.

So I'm honestly not 100% sure whether the modem passed credentials to the router, or whether it was in any case necessary for the router to be configured even if it's in bridge mode. or frankly what happened and how. What I know is that my attempts to put the modem into bridge mode without configuring it and then trying to configure the VDSL2 using the router interface (passing through the modem) did not work at all; however when I configured the parameters in the modem, still with it set to bridge mode, it seemed to work and indeed is working now.

At the back of my mind, I am wondering if I am actually NOT in passthrough/bridge mode at all, maybe the modem is doing all the work it does in non-bridge mode and then providing my router with a WAN port so I've effectively got a cascade rather than a transparent passthrough...? Don't know. Anyway it works and I hope this is useful for someone in the future!

Alastair