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Replacing a Sky ADSL router with a 3rd party router

ForestDave

Member
Morning all,

I live out in the middle of a broadband slowpsot. The best I can get is 6Mbps, although Gigaclear 900Mbps is on the horizon.
In the meantime, as two of us are "working" at home, I need to get better Wi-Fi.

I have the black router that came with Sky ADSL which is woeful. I have tried to plug an Eero mesh system in and got precisely nowhere.

So what I want to do is get a third party modem/router that can be put into bridge mode(?) and can also support DHCP option 61 (MER) so Sky can authenticate. I then want to plug the EEros in and then distribute throughout a large house and office shed complex.

Question: Is there a list of ADSL Modem/Routers that work with Sky ADSL please, or if not what have folks got working?

Many thanks in advance

Dave
 
This may help:


The only thing I'd say is that I don't think you need to use Wireshark to extract your VDSL login and password from Sky’s router anymore. Some routers can just authenticate themselves, provided they support Sky's MER method (covered in the article above).

I think when it asks for the ADSL/VDSL login details then you can probably just use this on MER supporting kit:
  • In the username field, enter: abcdefgh@skydsl (or abcdefgh@skydsl.co.uk)
  • In the password field, enter: 1234567890abcdef
 
This may help:


The only thing I'd say is that I don't think you need to use Wireshark to extract your VDSL login and password from Sky’s router anymore. Some routers can just authenticate themselves, provided they support Sky's MER method (covered in the article above).

I think when it asks for the ADSL/VDSL login details then you can probably just use this on MER supporting kit:
  • In the username field, enter: abcdefgh@skydsl (or abcdefgh@skydsl.co.uk)
  • In the password field, enter: 1234567890abcdef
 
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This may help:


The only thing I'd say is that I don't think you need to use Wireshark to extract your VDSL login and password from Sky’s router anymore. Some routers can just authenticate themselves, provided they support Sky's MER method (covered in the article above).

I think when it asks for the ADSL/VDSL login details then you can probably just use this on MER supporting kit:
  • In the username field, enter: abcdefgh@skydsl (or abcdefgh@skydsl.co.uk)
  • In the password field, enter: 1234567890abcdef
This isn't working for me with a Fritz!Box 3390. I have tried both this and the username/password extracted from Wireshark with no luck. Error messages vary but it's usually can't login with supplied credentials or ISP isn't responding to PPPoE requests.

Any Fritz!Box users out there with any ideas..? The only option I get is to supply a VLAN ID which is 101 by default. Nothing to select Sky, it's O2 or "other" so I'm now at a loss.

I used to use a Fritz!Box 7170 on Sky DSL and that worked, but the username/password for that is different and doesn't work on fibre anyway.

Thanks in advance,

Ria
 
If you're still on the same Sky account (i.e. you moved from ADSL to FTTC on the same ISP) then the login and password is probably still the same. But I'm not sure if the 3390 supports MER and I know AVM's more recent 7590 did have some connectivity issues with Sky. Have you tried asking AVM directly what they recommend?
 
Its been a good few years but I seem to remember having to ask Sky to turn on PPPoE authentication on the account, as they normally only do PPPoA.
 
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Thanks MarkJ and Rolandrat. The account pre-existed the switch to FTTC, but the username from the ADSL account is definitely different, I made a note of it before the switch, and the answer I got from Wireshark is totally different. I tried both with no joy.

I haven't tried AVM, but from what other people have said, they aren't very communicative these days, so given that our monthly payments have crept up, I think it's time to jump ship and find another ISP, we'll ask them before we sign up if the 3390 will work..!

Ria
 
I did use to have a contact in AVM but that was back in 2014. I'll check to see if he's still reachable, but suspect he isn't.
 
I managed to speak with my contact and he basically said that AVM have no plans to make the 3390 compatible with Sky MER. To quote..

Sky's MER is technically easy enough to get around, but AVM doesn't feel it is fair to customers to have to hack or spoof to use Sky Networks. Sky could add additional hardware identifiers in the future to further tighten their restrictions on hardware that would leave these customers stranded. So we have decided not to address this as a hack, but to try to address the overall governing against this compulsory router tactics with great success in Germany, Ireland, Italy, Finland, Netherlands and many other EU countries.

The effect is well documented in this link in German:
 
I managed to speak with my contact and he basically said that AVM have no plans to make the 3390 compatible with Sky MER. To quote..
Hi Mark,

Thanks for that, I suspected as much. However I have solved the problem by another route. I was checking out alternative ISP's and had heard good things about Zen, so on checking their website I found that not only can they give me a good rate, they also supply a Fritz!Box 7530 as part of the package..!

I should have done that before I bought the 3390, shouldn't I..! However that was only £25 on eBay so no great loss and I can always resell it..!

Thanks for your help,

Ria
 
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Hi i have the same problem im moving from virgin to Sky
I have Fritz box 7590
I contacted Fritz support they replied the router can support Mer DHCP otion 61 but isnt Accessible in GUI only if Isp Sky request it
Email from Fritz

Michael Ellguth (AVM) 20 Aug 2020, 12:25 CEST Dear Arthur

Thanks a lot for your reply. I understand that you want to use a FRITZ!Box 7590 with the Internet Service Provider Sky. I have heard that Sky expects the routers of their customers to register with their services using DHCP option 61 aka MER. With DHCP option 61, a signature can be transmitted to the Internet Service Provider can use to identify a specific router. This signature can be a MAC address, a serial number or something proprietary - this is not clearly defined in RFC 1533. Generally speaking, the FRITZ!Box supports option DHCP 60/61 (aka MER), yet this can only be configured by the provider, yet not be the user. If you had received the FRITZ!Box from a provider, you would have to ask them to enable DHCP 60/61 for you in the FRITZ!Box as this cannot be configured in the FRITZ!Box Graphics User Interface by the user. I regret that we cannot offer any other solution than this. Besides this, I have forwarded your wish for the manual configuration of DHCP 61 / MER in the FRITZ!Box as an enhancement request to our product management team. Best regards from Berlin, Michael Ellguth (AVM Support)

If you want to use sky
Asus router runing Merlin
Netgear R7000 DWRT
TP-Link most versions suport Sky
Billion.uk.com
 
Hi i have the same problem im moving from virgin to Sky
I have Fritz box 7590
I contacted Fritz support they replied the router can support Mer DHCP otion 61 but isnt Accessible in GUI only if Isp Sky request it
Email from Fritz

Michael Ellguth (AVM) 20 Aug 2020, 12:25 CEST Dear Arthur

Thanks a lot for your reply. I understand that you want to use a FRITZ!Box 7590 with the Internet Service Provider Sky. I have heard that Sky expects the routers of their customers to register with their services using DHCP option 61 aka MER. With DHCP option 61, a signature can be transmitted to the Internet Service Provider can use to identify a specific router. This signature can be a MAC address, a serial number or something proprietary - this is not clearly defined in RFC 1533. Generally speaking, the FRITZ!Box supports option DHCP 60/61 (aka MER), yet this can only be configured by the provider, yet not be the user. If you had received the FRITZ!Box from a provider, you would have to ask them to enable DHCP 60/61 for you in the FRITZ!Box as this cannot be configured in the FRITZ!Box Graphics User Interface by the user. I regret that we cannot offer any other solution than this. Besides this, I have forwarded your wish for the manual configuration of DHCP 61 / MER in the FRITZ!Box as an enhancement request to our product management team. Best regards from Berlin, Michael Ellguth (AVM Support)

If you want to use sky
Asus router runing Merlin
Netgear R7000 DWRT
TP-Link most versions suport Sky
Billion.uk.com
Ok, you want to move TO Sky..??? Fine, but their tech support is absolutely awful in my experience, so don't say you haven't been warned.

AVM are very helpful, I've had dealings with Michael before and he'll do his best, but they simply don't plan on supporting Sky's peculiar variant of VDSL, and knowing why I don't blame them.

We moved from Sky to Zen a few weeks ago and haven't looked back. Top quality tech support (from people in the UK who know what they're talking about and don't read from a script) and they supply a Fritz 7530, which while not quite as feature-rich as the 7590, certainly does what we need it to.
 
I believe TalkTalk also use DHCP client protocol for their VDSL connections, same as Sky, and naturally NowTV use exactly the same settings as Sky, so I'm surprised a router manufacturer would choose not to support it.

For what it is worth here are the VDSL settings that worked on an Openwrt flashed router when I was with sky and also NowTV.

config dsl 'dsl'
option annex 'b'
option tone 'a'
option xfer_mode 'ptm'
option line_mode 'vdsl'


config interface 'wan'
option ifname 'dsl0.101'
option proto 'dhcp'
option clientid 'anythingYouLike'

config device 'wan_dev'
option name 'dsl0'

config interface 'wan6'
option proto 'dhcpv6'
option reqaddress 'try'
option reqprefix 'auto'
option ifname 'dsl0.101'
option delegate '1'

*****
(old versions of Openwrt use ptm0 in place of dsl0)

I believe you'd select "DHCP Client" for the Wan protocol in the Openwrt user interface. The VLAN is 101, hence dsl0.101 in the custom interface name.

Sky stopped validating the Client ID some years ago, so anything in it works, although I never tried an empty string or completed omitting it.
(It used to have to contain a string made up of a Sky router's MAC address @skydsl plus a password generated by the router's firmware, which needed packet sniffing to obtain and encoding in hex for use in openwrt, fortunately none of that is now necessary. )

I also cloned the WAN MAC address of the sky router, while this isn't necessary, I've found with some ISPs in the past that you can just occasionally be locked out of connecting with a different router for up to a few hours until the connection expires if the MAC address changes, which can be incredibly annoying if switching back to the ISP supplied router before ringing support about an unrelated issue.

TalkTalk's VDSL settings are here:-
https://openwrt.ebilan.co.uk/viewto...lk&sid=de74e1ba361c26d66416e5ab8c351ee1#p3074

==========================================

Sky's ADSL service switched back from mer to PPPoA when I was last using it, I think a while after they took over O2 broadband, and uses standard uk PPPoA settings, and the username install@o2broadband.co.uk" with password "password" or "install" worked (probably any password would do).
 
Last edited:
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