Subj : FidoNews 42:18 [01/07]: General Articles
To : All
From : FidoNews Robot
Date : Mon May 05 2025 12:24 am
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GENERAL ARTICLES
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Configuring my own fiberglass modem/router part 1
By Michiel van der Vlist, 2:280/5555
It has been well over a year now that I have fiber glass installed in
my house. There is a lot of competition at the moment. Several parties
are trying to get a foothold in the market. As a result priority lies
on getting as many flags planted in as many households in The
Netherlands as soon as possible. Quality of the provided service comes
later. So I was a bit reluctant in canceling my subscription with the
cable company when the fibre connection was delivered. I thought let's
keep them both for the moment just to be sure. And while I had two
connections I figured I might as well get the most of it by providing
dual homing for my Fidonet connection. So I installed an extra network
card on my Fidonet PC. It took some tuning and I found it worked best
when I configured the same DNS servers for both connections. No idea
why, but that was my experience. It turned out keeping the cable
connection for a while was a good decision. The modem/router (Nokia
XS-2426G-B) from the fiber company has problems with port forwarding
and IPv6 pinholing. I reported these issues but after well over a year
it still has not been fixed. It does not seem to have priority. So I
decided it was time to take action. My first step was to change
providers. The company that installed and exploits the fiber is not
the same company that provides the connection. In fact there are
several companies that offer connection on the fibre network. One of
those had an interesting offer for internet only. So I changed.
Unfortunatley that did not solve my problem. They gave me the same
Nokia XS-2426G-B with the very same firmware version. And of course
the same problems with port forwarding and IPv6 pinholing.
Fortunately internet providers here are by law required to facilitate
customers that want to use their own modems and routers. So I decided
to go for the adventure and forget about buggy stuff from the provider
and get my own modem and router. And I have to give it to them, that
contrary to the cable company that fought legal battles for many years
to block it, the fiber internet provider, Delta, loyally cooperates to
facilitate the use of customer owned modems and routers.
There are a few snags though. For starters any change to the
admininstrative parameters in the connection can only be made with
the original modem/router connected. Think about upgrade to a higher
speed or... changing from CGNAT to having a public IPv4 address.
Apparently the new fiber companies have problems getting IPv4 addresse
for the fast growing number of their new customers. So about a year ag
they stopped issuing public IPv4 adresses to their customers. They
offer a CGNAT address in the range 100.64.0.0/10. That is OK for most
customers but not for those that run their own servers. Fortunately
they still have enough IPv4 to accommodate costomers thats need a
public routable IPv4 address. Just ask for it by subscribing to the
service "dynamic IP". Oddly enough they use the term "fixed address"
for a CGNAT address in the 192.168.100.0/10 range. That CGNAT address
is indeed fixed. Once issued it does not change any more. Whatever...
For now this service is free of charge. That may change in the future.
Anyway, I got a public IPv4 address in a few hours.
Next step is to have your own "modem" registered. They publish a list
of equipment that is compatible with their network. The list is quit
long but most of what is on the list is not available on the market.
Only a handfull remain. But if your "modem" is on the list all you hav
to do is connect it, call them and give then the PON-id. That is it.
My choice fell on the easy available Nokia XS-010X-Q which from now on
I shall refer to as the ONT. ( Optical Network Terminator )
Shortly after The ONT was connected the power led started flashing for
a couple of minutes indicating that a firmware upgrade is in progress.
That was one of the reasons for choosing the Nokia. It is the only one
of the available alternatives that automatically gets firmware upgrade
from Delta.
When the power and PON led are steady green it is time for the next
step. Connect something to the ONT and get data flowing. The ONT is
just a bridge, it has no router functions. But it has a user interface
accesable on 192.168.100.1. No DHCP server so to access it I configure
the laptop that I use for my point 1 and other experiments to have a
fixed address of 192.168.100.2. Then I could acces the ONT's web
interface. There is very little that one can do but I could check that
the latest firmware was installed and that the optical signal level wa
OK.
I reconfigured my laptop to get its address via DHCP and I configured
VLAN 100. The latter is required for an internet connection over the
fiber, They use VLANs to seperate the various services. Fortunately
this is easy in Windows with many network card drivers. Delta uses
VLAN 100 for consumer internet. VLAN 102 for TV and 105 for a bussines
connection. Other providers on the fiber use different VLAN numbers.
When I did that I got an IP address (4 and 6) and I had an inernet
connection. I made an outgoing binkp connection from my point 1. Then
I knew that the ONT and all beyond was OK.
Well, actually this is not exactly the order of things that happened
but for the sake of this article it will do. I will save the trial and
error steps that led to this result for the follow up article that
will be about the rest of my adventure. The part of connecting and
configuring a router.
