Category: Networking

Sky Fibre Unlimited Pro on a Cisco 887VA

I recently decided to look for a replacement for the crappy white OpenReach modem that was installed as part of my Sky Fibre Unlimited Pro FTTC connection. The problem was that I didn’t want to fork out for an expensive VDSL2 modem to find I couldn’t get it working with the silly MER authentication used by Sky to try and prevent you from using your own router.

Luckily, a Cisco 887v a became available to test with before I took the plunge and bought one. I started googling and couldn’t find one success case of using this router with Sky’s service. Undeterred, I started to tinker and eventually got it working….

Before you begin you will need your mac address,  user-id and password. I won’t cover how to obtain these in this post as I provided steps (steps 1 to 7) to obtain them in an earlier post.

Once you have your mac, username and password, you will need to use them to create three bits of information.

MAC:             <0000.0000.0000> (remove the :’s and place a . after every four characters)
Hostname:    <username>|<password>
Client-ID:      <hexadecimal string of Hostname> (A converter is available here.)

I won’t go into any other configuration in this post, just the interface configuration.

First of all you want to disable the ATM interface as it shared a physical interface with the VDSL controller.

interface ATM0
no ip address
shutdown
no atm ilmi-keepalive

The VDSL modem should automatically connect to the DSLAM. You can check it’s progress by using “show controller vdsl 0”.

When the VDSL modem connects it brings interface Ethernet0 up. Eth0 is a virtual port but is used as your outside interface. OpenReach encapsulate traffic for different ISPs in Vlans. In the case of Sky it is Vlan 101 so you need to use a sub interface of Eth0.

interface Ethernet0
mac-address <mac>
no ip address
!
interface Ethernet0.101
encapsulation dot1Q 101
ip dhcp client request classless-static-route
ip dhcp client client-id hex <client-id in hex>
ip dhcp client hostname <username>|<password>
ip address dhcp
no ip redirects
no ip proxy-arp
ip flow ingress
ip flow egress
ip nat outside
no ip virtual-reassembly in

Thats it. I’ll post my full config below which includes some basic NAT. It doesn’t include any security though. And no, you don’t need a dialer interface!

version 15.1
no service pad
service timestamps debug datetime msec
service timestamps log datetime msec
no service password-encryption
!
hostname Router
!
boot-start-marker
boot-end-marker
!
!
!
no aaa new-model
!
memory-size iomem 10
crypto pki token default removal timeout 0
!
!
ip source-route
!
!
!
!
!
ip cef
no ipv6 cef
!
!
multilink bundle-name authenticated
license udi pid CISCO887VA-K9 sn FCZ1633C05Z
license boot module c880-data level advipservices
!
!
!
!
!
!
controller VDSL 0
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
interface Ethernet0
mac-address <mac>
no ip address
!
interface Ethernet0.101
encapsulation dot1Q 101
ip dhcp client request classless-static-route
ip dhcp client client-id hex <client-id>
ip dhcp client hostname <username>|<password>
ip address dhcp
no ip redirects
no ip proxy-arp
ip flow ingress
ip flow egress
ip nat outside
no ip virtual-reassembly in
!
interface ATM0
no ip address
shutdown
no atm ilmi-keepalive
!
interface FastEthernet0
switchport access vlan 1
!
interface FastEthernet1
!
interface FastEthernet2
!
interface FastEthernet3
!
interface Vlan1
ip address 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0
ip flow ingress
ip flow egress
ip nat inside
ip virtual-reassembly in
!
ip forward-protocol nd
no ip http server
no ip http secure-server
!
!
ip nat inside source list NATACL interface Ethernet0.101 overload
!
ip access-list standard NATACL
permit 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.255
!
logging esm config
access-list 1 permit 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.255
dialer-list 1 protocol ip permit
!
!
!
!
!
control-plane
!
!
line con 0
no modem enable
line aux 0
line vty 0 4
login
transport input all
!
end

 

Sky Fibre Unlimited – pfsense

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.

Installing / Configuring and Administering pfSense as a multi-tenant firewall

I am about to embark on a mission… A mission to provide uncontested but limited Internet connectivity to our tenants. To do this I have decided to deploy pfSense, and I will be documenting each step for both our reference here at work, and in the hope that it will help somebody do something similar in the future.

To start with, we needed a specification of what we need the system to do. Here it is.

  • The firewall must serve multiple tenants (up to 50+)
  • The firewall must give each tenant their own external IP
  • The firewall must prevent each of the tenants from seeing each others’ networks
  • The firewall must allow us to limit the amount of bandwidth each tenant can utilize (otherwise they have free reign of our dual redundant gigabit fibre connections)
  • The firewall must allow us to filter out certain traffic such as p2p
  • The firewall must allow us to set data caps for each tenant
  • The firewall must let us create a DMZ for each tenant if required
  • The firewall must allow us to configure network services for each tenant (DHCP, DNS, etc)
  • The firewall must allow each tenant to have their own VPN connection if required
  • The firewall must allow us to report on bandwidth utilization and data transfer usage on a per-tenant basis

This may seem a tall order for one box, but with pfsense it is absolutely possible providing the hardware is capable of it. for our firewall we are going to re-deploy one of our old servers which was decommissioned during our virtualization project. The server used to be one of our domain controllers and it performed well while it was in service. I believe it will perform well as firewall as well. Its spec is below.

  • IBM x3550 1u Server
  • 2x Dual core Xeon processors
  • 4GB Ram
  • 2 x 76GB SAS disks in a RAID 1 (mirrored) configuration
  • 2x On board Intel Pro/1000 Gigabit NIC’s
  • 1x Dual port Intel Pro/1000 Gigabit NIC
  • N+1 Power supplies

As you can see the server isn’t wanting when it comes to specs for the purpose it will be used for. It was slightly higher speced but parts have since been “pinched” for other projects. If this project goes well then we will be looking to build another similar firewall using our other domain controller of the same spec and cluster them for both resilience and load balancing.

I will be starting this project this afternoon so check back for updates, step-by-step guides and images of the entire process during “Project FireServer”.

Part 1 – The Hardware and Topology ->>>

Xbox Live and PlayStation Network with pfSense

Many people sem to be having a problem using pfSense with Xbox Live or PlayStation Network to game online. I have both and both of them are working fine through pfSense, without opening up UPnP up to all devices on the network. This also works with the game that seems to cause the most issues… Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

So here is what you need to do to make it work.

  1. Assign Static DHCP mappings to the console(s)
  2. Enable UPnP and restrict it to the console(s)
  3. Modify Outbound NAT rules for the console(s)

Each step should be repeated for each console. I should probably point out that the WAN interface on my setup is called EXTERNAL and the LAN interface is called TRUSTED.

1. Assign Static DHCP mappings to the console(s)

For this step the MAC address of the console(s) will be handy. Login to your pfSense box and go to Status > DHCP Leases in the navigation bar. Find the line that contains the MAC address of your console and click the icon to add a static mapping.

The MAC address field should contain the MAC address of the console you are configuring. IP Address is the IP that will be assigned to the console and must be outside the DCHP range of your network. Hostname can be set to PS3 or Xbox depending on the console you are configuring and Description is optional.

Click on save to save the mapping.

Click Apply Changes to set the change in stone.

Repeat this step for the other console if required.

2. Enable UPnP and restrict it to the console(s)

Go to Services > UPnP & NAT-PMP on the navigation bar.

Enable the following options.

  • Enable UPnP and NAT-PMP
  • Allow UPnP Port Mapping
  • Allow NAT-PMP Port Mapping
  • By default deny access to UPnP & NAT-PMP?

Make sure you select the Interface that your console(s) are connected to.

You can enable the “Log Packets” option to troubleshoot if you like.

Enter “allow 88-65535 192.168.100.7/32 88-65535” into the User specified permissions box(es), one for each console. replace 192.169.100.7/32 with the IP address of the console you are configuring. The /32 limits the subnet to a single IP address and is important.

Click change.

3. Modify Outbound NAT rules for the console(s)

Click on Firewall > NAT in the navigation bar and select the the Outbound TAB. Change your NAT type from “Automatic Outbound NAT” to “Manual Outbound ANT”. Click Save.

Click the icon at the top of the table to create a new outbound NAT rule.

In the Source: Address box enter the IP address of the console you are configuring. Select 32 from the drop-down menu next to the address.In the Translation section check the box called Static Port. Enter a description if you wish but it is not required.

Click Save.

Repeat this step for each console if required.

In the Outbound NAT table select the check box next to the row(s) you have just created and click the icon next  to the line containing the “Auto created rule for TRUSTED to EXTERNAL ” row in the table.

Click theApply Changes button.

You should now be good to go.

My setup consists of  the following for reference.

  • pfSense 2.0 WARP running on a Watch Guard Firebox 700
  • Xbox 360 slim running latest firmware
  • PS3 slim running latest firmware

Let me know in the comments if you have any problems.