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[Virgin > EIR] FTTH install and transfer experience

macplaxton

My experience of moving provider and fibre installation.

I have been a UPC/Virgin Media customer for over ten years and I'd been putting off switching for some time. I knew I could save money, but I also knew an install might be hassle. Last paying €72.50 to VM for 360 Broadband and Anytime World Phone (If you can call 'World' a mere 28 countries). Happened to have the Eir men on the doorstep back in April offering Eir Fibre Extreme 500Mb + Eir Broadband Talk on a 24-month contract for €39.98 and thought I'd sign up (yeah, I know).

It was made clear that it could go up by the usual inflation +x% usual after 12 months. It was also advised not to cancel the existing contract until I had the fibre up and running to avoid a gap in service.

I indicated that I wanted to transfer my existing home phone number, and that I would prefer to have the ONT (optical network terminal) placed where my existing Virgin cable line terminated as I have a few wired devices and I didn't want the hassle of doing a load of re-configuring of things.

This was the 27th April.

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macplaxton

Installation appointments

After signing up, Eir got in touch with an appointment date for the installation visit. This was initially the 17th May, but was brought forward to the 12th May, so within a couple of weeks of signing up.

The guy that came round was from KN Circet on behalf of OpenEir and I received a call ten minutes before hand of his impending arrival. Once here, a brief discussion took place about location of the ONT. I explained where I wanted it (in the middle of the house) which was a no. I then asked could it be where the old existing telephone master socket was in the middle of the hall and that was a no too. His offer was to run it from the ETU externally upwards next to the gutter downpipe, along the eaves and drop down beside the living room window. Drill an entry hole low on the wall and place the ONT the other side. I said no to that. I then asked what size ducting I would require to keep things internal and was given the answer 20mm and that the fibre line was 6mm diameter.

All this discussion took place inside 10 mins and it was agreed to put the visit down as a cancellation and I would consider my options.

I was contacted by phone a day or two later to make a further appointment or else the order would be cancelled, so I stalled for time and said I'd do it online. Looking at the online appointments calendar, the latest date I could pick was the 12th June, so opted for that. Then for various reasons I postponed it to 28th June, then 4th July, and finally 5th July.

Two to three days before an appointment (or if they have cancellation slots come up) they will contact you to make sure someone over 18 will be there (or try and bring it forward).

Things got confusing at the end of June because I had to postpone the appointment on the 28th June at just less than 48 hours notice, so the left hand didn't know what the right was doing and I received four calls in one day. Each time I had to explain that I'd already informed them my unavailability.

Apart from that glitch, everything else about the arrangement of appointments went okay.

macplaxton

Preparation work

My proposed ONT location was in the middle of my home. The house is a semi-detached bungalow that was built around 1994. On the front corner of the house to the side is a large ESB box with two smaller ETUs below, one for Eir and the other for cable TV.

I had to put some loft boards down so I could traverse the loft space safely. In order to not compress the insulation up there, I fitted these boards on loft legs. There isn't much room to get around up there, but it's much easier with something solid to slide across.

https://ibb.co/L9cRd8p

First problem was to get some ducting down to the ETU outside. This required drilling another hole adjacent to where I found the mains, telephone and cable coming up. It was a thick piece of wood and took a while to drill through. With a flat plastic fish tape I still couldn't get to the ETU, so in the end I cut one of the redundant copper telephone lines and used it as a pull cord. Once that was achieved it was easy enought to pull the ducting down.

https://ibb.co/nrycQ3N

I then ran the ducting across the loft to the other end (party wall) and then had to find where the Virgin cable dropped down. I knew this was underneath some flooring a loft storage room, I wasn't too sure exactly where it was, so I skipped forward to the dining room side of the wall where it drops down and cut two holes in the stud partition to a) find out where the hole in top rail was and b) where the hole in the noggin mid-way was. Once I worked that out I cut a hole in the floor at the turn and got everything threaded through.

https://ibb.co/zZMHhp3

https://ibb.co/RYx9JC9

It was a great idea on paper, but in practice there was 15m of ducting and a few too many turns. I cut the entire middle out and left myself with just the two ends, One 2m or so straight drop down from the loft to the ETU and at the other end of the loft a 3m section that went 1m or so under flooring and turned down to drop down the middle of the wall to where I wanted the ONT.

Just worry about the drops and get a 6mm rope down them. Make it easy for them and be nice.

macplaxton

Installation day - 5th July

This was the second visit by KN Circet. A different guy came round this time and was most sympathetic to my request. He listened to what I had done and was happy to go along with my plan. I had a pull rope ready (at the last minute) on both sections of ducting.

He started at the footpath NTP (network touch point) and fished the fibre from there first to the ETU. Then he fed me the fibre with me pulling it up into the loft. Then I pulled the fibre across the loft with plenty to spare before he pulled the fibre down the second section of ducting down to the living room.

https://ibb.co/DMwGCk5

https://ibb.co/86XvyKw

Then he intalled the ATB (access terminating box) and ONT adjacent to my old Virgin socket. He set up and checked the Eir F3000 gateway before leaving.

Less than a couple of hours later I received a text to say my home phone number was up and running. This had been successfully transferred from Virgin.

Very happy that everything is in the right place even though I've some holes to patch up the other side of the wall.

https://ibb.co/wzsVWBn

https://ibb.co/2WqjKWN

I've even bothered to hang up 4 and 6 gang extension leads, all nicely hidden under the telly in a fitted unit cupboard.

macplaxton

Teething troubles

Not really had any trouble with the internet, but initially had an issue with the phone. All I was hearing was an engaged tone intermittent beep on pick up. A call to Eir and after navigating the input and menus, I subsequently got to speak to someone very quickly. It was quickly resolved with a bit of fiddling their end and a remote reboot of the gateway. The call lasted less than 11 minutes.

After that I was on my own. My previous set up consisted of a Virgin Hub 3 in bridged mode and my own ASUS RT-N66U router. What I didn't know about the Eir F3000 (Sagemcom F5366S) gateway was that unlike the Hub 3, when you put it into bridged mode, it also kills the phone. So I had to work out how to get it working.

Here is how you do it. You can either get a ethernet switch and plug the F3000 and you own router into the ONT as per this post: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118708020/#Comment_118708020

Connect your own router to the ONT and the WAN port of the F3000 to a LAN port on your router so it sits after. e.g. ONT > WAN (own router) LAN > WAN (F3000) If you do this you need set a couple of firewall port forward rules up.

My DHCP IP Pool range is 192.168.1.30 to 192.168.1.252. I have load of stuff on fixed IP addresses under 30. The F3000 is fixed to 192.168.1.254. After that I've turned off the F3000 WiFi. I might not have it set up strictly correctly, but it works.

The ports I forward are 5060 both TCP/UDP and 10000:10100 both TCP/UDP.

What puzzled me at first was that incoming calls were failing 15 minutes after initial registration, even though the light was green on the gateway. I eventually solved this by increasing the

"UDP Timeout: Assured" value to 300 (Default: 180) in the ASUS router Tools > Other settings.

The default timeout amount closes the port on incoming packets too soon and stops incoming calls after 15 minutes. I've only had one outage after that when there was a short period of no internet and had to reboot both routers to get the phone functioning properly again.

When plugging in your own router to the ONT directly, to set the VLAN to 10 on the ASUS, you need to go into LAN > IPTV > Port and have "Select ISP Profile" to "Manual" and "Internet" VID 10 / PRIO 0

I initally made the mistake of having "WAN - Internet Connection" set to PPPoE, but after 6 or so hours it was disconnecting from the internet and mucking up the phone. After I set it to "Automatic IP" it has remained stable and connected.

macplaxton

Billing

On the 16th May I received an email from Virgin advising of a contract change. From the 7th July my broadband would be increasing by €4.00.

"however, if you do not accept this change you have the right to cancel your service without penalty before your effective date of July 7th 2023"

On the evening of the 7th July, I went to virginmedia.ie/contactchange and completed and submitted the online form.

A few days later I received a bill for €80.45! (The reason for the increase was probably the removal of the phone package when the number was transferred to Eir.) I wasn't happy at all. However without any contact, another final bill was issued on the 14th July, this time crediting €79.05 leaving a closing balance of €1.40.

Now I've got deal with Eir... When I signed up, I signed up at €39.98 for the package although since commencing the service it seems to be €2 more. The discount is the same (€31 off normal price), so I'll have to see the proper bill breakdown to see what that is all about.