Fibre being installed next week and I need a router. As the house wireless is handled by 2 x Airport Extremes, I’ll not be using the router’s wireless capabilities, so wireless doesn’t even need to be a feature.
Any recommendations?

Won’t your ISP be providing one?

Oh yeah….. I also have a ECI B-FOCUS V-2FUB/R REV.B modem that was left by the BT installer when he did another fibre installation for me.
Can I use this?

With fibre you need the modem AND a router, so I guess not. When I had a fibre install, the Openreach guy installed the modem and the ISP provided the router

On our first install (at another property) BT left the B-FOCUS V-2FUB/R REV. B and a homehub 4 but then the homehub 5 arrived an hour after he had gone and I just unplugged the modem and homehub 4 and plugged the homehub 5 in and off it went.

I should elaborate, all I need is a modem to connect to the fibre – all the internal network connections are dealt with by a sonicwall firewall.

If you don’t need a username/password for a fibre connection then I guess the B-FOCUS modem will do the job.

Ubiquiti do a good one for £80 or so. Else the Airport Extremes will do it nicely too.

Did you not keep your Home Hub 5?

You still need username and password AFAIK – the modem just terminates the connection and provides an access point onto the network, the router does the logging in to the service. AIUI that is.

@ Simon_g

How did you set up the airport extreme to work with a BT Fibre modem?

I can’t get my Timecapsule to work with my Openreach modem despite following sevral online “how to”s.

This may be ISP related though as TalkTalk don’t offically support Apple products with their fibre broadband

Currently connect via an airport extreme connected directly to the BT infinity modem- the settings are as follows:

Go into manual setup via the airport utility

On the ‘internet’ settings tab, make the following changes.

1 : ‘Connect Using’ select PPPoE
2 : ‘Account Name’ enter ‘bthomehub@btbroadband.com’
3 : ‘Password’ and ‘verify password’ enter a single space (as in press the space bar once). There is no password, but for some reason it will not accept no password at all, and won’t negotiate properly.

I don’t have a service name set, and ‘connection’ is set to always on’ with ‘disconnect if idle’ set to never.

Did you not keep your Home Hub 5?

No, that was at an installation at another property – this is a new installation with Zen who do not supply a modem.

You still need username and password AFAIK

Dunno, when the homehub 5 arrived at the other installation it just needed plugging in – no setup required. Same with the HH4 which the engineer brought with him, no setup just plugged it in and it worked.

No, that was at an installation at another property – this is a new installation with Zen who do not supply a modem

Ah thought you may have too it with you.

Dunno, when the homehub 5 arrived at the other installation it just needed plugging in – no setup required. Same with the HH4 which the engineer brought with him, no setup just plugged it in and it worked.

BT is a rare exception of not needing a unique username and password.

Ahhh, right. OK.

woody2000 – Member
With fibre you need the modem AND a router,

I got a new modem/router after taking the free upgrade to 50mb from virgin, it’s the one box, which was quite good, let me get rid of some of the clutter.

Zen support pages suggest that the BT engineer acting on their behalf will supply the necessary VDSL modem? So you shouldn’t need anything else fibre-specific. And if the Sonicwall appliance does routing and the Airports act as your AP’s, you should be all set.

Yes, just saw that they’ve got instructions on how to set up the old Netgear DG834 which I’ve been using for about 10 years to connect using PPPoE – so I presume it will work.
Just checked the Sonicwall also and it too supports PPPoE so I think I could just cut out the Netgear and go Fibre > BT Modem > Sonicwall > LAN.