I took the day off work today to wait in the house for an OpenReach engine to switch me to FTTC from Sky. The engineer turned up at the door at 8:10am… Perfect! Up and running by 8:30am… Sky router in the cupboard and pfsense doing the hard work by 8:45am.
The only complaint I have about the whole order process was that I couldn’t upgrade my order. By that I mean I ordered the 40-10Mb/s package initially and then called back to change it to the 80-20Mb/s package. The lovely lady on the phone said “no problem!” As it transpires, however, I cannot actually upgrade until I have had the lower package for a month. Gutted!
I know Sky don’t like people using their own routers / firewalls with their internet service but frankly, I don’t give a shit! Their router is utter pants. A quick iPerf to a known high speed network and I found the throughput on the Sky router was approximately 34.2Mb/s download and 7.6Mb/s upload. After switching to my pfsense box I was getting a consistent 39.4Mb/s download and 9.2Mb/s upload. Case closed!
Now. How did I get it working with pfsense? I’ll show you. Just follow the steps below.
1. Connect to your Sky router either via WiFi or Ethernet. Make sure its plugged in and switched on as well. Obviously.
2.Open your web browser and type in the routers IP address. The default is http://192.168.0.1.
3.Click on the Maintenance link at the top of the page. It will ask you to login. The default username is “admin” and password is “sky” without quotes.
4. Scroll down the page until you find the “LAN Port” section. You will see the following.
5. Copy the Mac Address into notepad for use later. Make sure it is the LAN Mac Address that you use otherwise you will fail.
6. Head to http://www.cm9.net/skypass/ and click the button for F@ST2504 once you have read and accept the T&C’s.
7. Input the Mac Address from notepad to the LAN MAC Address field and your Default WPA Key in the other field. The WPA key is the “Your Password” section on the little slip of paper inside the router box. It is also printed on the back of the router.
8. Copy and paste bother the username and password to notepad for later use.
9. Connect to your pfsense box and login.
10. Go to Interfaces.
11. Fill in the information as follows. Type: Set to DHCP. Mac Address: Copy and paste the LAN Mac from notepad. Hostname: <username>|<password> as copied from the cm9 site.
12. Click “Save”
13. Click Apply Changes.
14. Plug your OpenReach Modem (Lan 1 port) into your pfsense box (WAN port).
That’ it! Simple eh?
I believe the hostname field is DHCP option 61. Providing your router supports this option i don’t see why this wouldn’t work with any other “cable” router or firewall.
Dan McIntyre 
Thanks for this Dan, I’m setting up pfSense shortly and recently upgraded with Sky Fibre but I’ve been perplexed by all the posts on Sky BB (fibre) related forums with the amount of trouble people are having.
How reliable did you find this? Didn’t cause any connection drop outs etc?
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I’m still running the same setup and have had no issues so far. We usually average about 500Gb a month, sometimes hitting over 900Gb without any issues.
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Hello – Firstly great guide! Unfortunately I can’t get Sky FTTC so I’m on ADSL2+. Do you know if this would work if I put my own ADSL router (ZyXEL P-660R) into bridged mode and connect that to the WAN port of my pfsense?
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Hello. I don’t have any experience with Sky’s ADSL products. I have spoken to a colleague that uses an Apple AirPort Extreme with Sky though, and all he had to do was spoof the mac address of his new router on his ADSL – Ethernet bridge. He used a Draytek Vigor 120 as his bridge. I guess with it should work with pfsense providing you spoof your mac address with that of your original Sky router. Sorry I couldn’t be more specific.
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Thanks. Did he do the MAC address spoofing on his Draytek ADSL router or on the AirPort?
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It’s on the draytek modem.
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I am having massive trouble with this. I have got a sr102 with no open reach router. I have managed to get a spare one from a friend who was on bt and plug it in. following the above instructions has not worked any idea?
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Hi.
Did you use the online username/password generator or wireshark to obtain your username and password? I have no experience of the new Sky router with the built in VDSL modem, but a colleague has just replaced his with an openreach modem and Apple Airport Extreme following this guide loosely and managed to get it working.
Cheers.
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I used wireshark to get the username and password.
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Personally I would try the online calc just to verify. Select the Sagem f@st option, it still works with the latest sky routers.
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just used the online calc and it still isnt working. the password was different to the one I got via wireshark.
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what version of pfsense are you running I have an advanced option just above the hostname box and when I click in it it gives me dhcp options.
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