Rube Goldberg would be proud ...

Rube Goldberg was a cartoonist who has a character that invented fantastic chain reaction machines. I may have been channelling his muse for inspiration in getting around my latest NBN failure:
  1. We moved house (Note: there is no such thing as an NBN relocation … its a fiction … its a cancellation and a new connection)
  2. When people order a static IP they really want the same one when they relocate it (see 1)
  3. The Sparkies came, the modem was turned off for a couple of hours … things didn't come back
On the Friday afternoon before a long weekend …

And so it begins …
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Internode FTTC NBN on Mikrotik

Introduction


Having a shiny new Internode FTTC NBN service I am writing a quick series of articles covering how to configure a number of routers that are missing from the Internode guides.

One other reason for writing this set of articles is that it is really helpful to KNOW that someone else got a particular piece of hardware to work as there are a number of not terribly obvious from the package features that are required. For anything at all to work:
  • PPPoE must work over VLAN ID 2 - otherwise you are going to have to put a smart switch in to tag and untag the traffic between the router and the NBN Connection Box (NBC)
For IPv6 to work:
  • PPPoE daemon must be IPv6 capable
  • DHCPv6 daemon must support Prefix Delegation - and not all of them work1

The general instructions from Internode are:
  • VLAN ID 2
  • PPPoE over VLAN ID 2
  • DHCPv6 to get a dynamic IPv6 Address and a statically allocated /56 subnet

Today's configuration is a MikroTik Routerboard hEX RB750Gr3.

MTRB750Gr3


This article will cover setting up via the Web GUI on the RouterBoard: WebFig. There are at least 2 other configuration approaches which tend to be preferred by MikroTik aficionados - but both of those can be derived fairly easily from a WebFig configuration.

And it was pretty easy.


1. Currently the Ubiquiti Unifi Dream Machine (UDM) does not support IPv6 from Internode out of the box - a future release is expected to rectify this.

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NBN: Australian ISDN Revisited?

Simon Hackett’s fascinating talk (http://simonhackett.com/2013/07/17/nbn-fibre-on-a-copper-budget/) on the NBN and reducing the cost of it whilst retaining the fibre reminded me of some Australian telecommunications history - Australia’s ISDN overlay network. Read More...

Broadband: Consumption vs Production

The Coalition has launched its broadband policy (from a technical perspective little more than an update of its previous fibre to the node copper to the home policy) and from a technical point of view it has only 2 advantages it is deliverable for a lower price sooner.

Why should Australia stick with our existing fibre to the home strategy rather than go with something less expensive we can have sooner? Read More...