Sky Fibre with own router

[GRR73]

After a lot of searching and trial-and-error I got it working and thought I'd post a summary to save the next poor soul the same frustration.

I have a Vigor 2927 load-balancing router, however, its the same for any. I use both a 5G and Fibre line, mainly for redundancy.

I've read articles about VLAN tagging, and DNS lookups, PPPoE config, VDSL - some newer, some older.

I found that if I used anything other than the correct client identifier username/password - I would get a connection speed of 90Mbps despite paying for the 900Mbps connection. (using fast.com for connection speed).

If I installed the sky homehub, and connected to its wifi, I'd get around 800-900Mbps. When I switched back to my router, 90Mbps.

To be honest, I hadn't noticed this for a few months which was a little frustrating.

I didn't use PPoE, just a Static Internet connection.

The only way I got it working properly was to sniff the traffic. But for those less technical, its not actually that complicated.

1. Install Wireshark on your laptop (removed)

2. When you run it, it will show you all your network adapters (real and virtual). 

3. Connect your laptop using a standard ethernet cable directly to the sky homehub (mine was the SR203) port 4 (whatever port should normally connect to the fibre terminating unit - normally with OpenReach written on the wall unit)

4. Now, in wireshark, double click on the Ethernet adapter

5. Reboot the Sky hub - the Sky box will start looking for the server

6. The sky hub will start sending a lot of data, so you don't have to look through hundreds of records you can define a filter in the box at the top of the screen (udp.port == 67)

7. After a few minutes you will have captured your specific sky credentials (don't share these with anyone)

8. In WireShark, click Edit, "Find Packet", then in the panel that appears choose the following drop-down options "Packet bytes" "String" and for the value enter "@skydsl" but without quotes. It should take you directly to your username password in the bottom box.

9. The format is [Mac address of your home hub]@skydsl|[password]

On my router, I found I could specify the entire string e.g 3c89943f9b33@skydsl|FdaNuKTS (example)

My vigor has specific fields for Option 61 DNS, however, you may need to add them depending on your router.

Hope it helps.

MODERATOR NOTE: Third-party URL(s) removed.

[GD1]

@GRR73  You aboslutely don't need to use wireshark for the Sky DHCP Option 60/61 login details as the login details are freely available within this very forum.

The string you need is in the form of anything@skydsl|anything 

Thats it, no need to faff about with wireshark and connecting a hub etc.  What you've posted is a waste of everyones time when the details above takes seconds to add to a users  own compatibale router including drayteks

[GRR73]

Hi Sam,

I tried - it works but you don't get your full bandwidth allocation.

It would only download at 90Mbps. 

There is a specific username/password used by the Homehub (which can be seen via WireShark).

When I used this specific credentials - I got 900Mbps.

My guess, its running on OpenReach network, I'm assuming to lookup your correct tarrif it needs to be able to associate your connection to your account. 

Gavin.