Sky Fiber Broadband with a Cisco Router (897VA)

Problem:

I've written a post previously of how to get sky ADSL broadband working with a Cisco router HERE however this particular implementation just got upgraded to Fiber (or VDSL).

So, I've had to update the configuration on the router to get VDSL working. The model of router I am using is a Cisco 897VA which supports both ADSL and VDSL and will automatically switch between a logical ATM and Ethernet interfaces.

Solution:

Sky seem to like locking their configuration down so it's rather difficult to get it working. Many ISPs lovingly provide details on how to get their services working with 3rd party routers - not Sky however!

First things first, you'll need to figure out your username and password. Not an easy feat.

I've only dealt with a Sky SR102 router which was being used before hand.

You'll need the MAC address of the LAN port. Now I believe that is written on the back of the hub as in the picture above. However I would check either by logging into the GUI of the router and taking a look, or performing an arp lookup on your PC to see what the mac of your default gateway is. It's imperative that the next step you use the MAC of the LAN port.

Next, use the following tool: http://www.ph-mb.com/products/sky-calc and enter your information. If you're using the SR102 you can choose the Sagem F@ST option and that seems to work.

Plop in the information the tool requests and it should spit out something like the following information:

Username: lanmac@skydsl (Obviously with your mac address in here)
Password: QpAwo2EXxpTmNQ8

Required Info:

LAN MAC
Hostname: lanmac@skydsl|password (Note: The pipe symbol must be included in the configuration)
Client-ID: A Hex version of hostname. Converter here: http://string-functions.com/string-hex.aspx

Now we have our username and password here's the actual configuration we'll need:

interface Ethernet0.101
 encapsulation dot1Q 101
 ip dhcp client request classless-static-route
 ip dhcp client client-id hex 345273058723645872356983745698374569834576349586734956345634
 ip dhcp client hostname lanmac@skydsl|QpAwo2EXxpTmNQ8
 ip address dhcp
 no ip redirects
 no ip unreachables
 no ip proxy-arp
 ip nat outside
 ip virtual-reassembly in
end
!
!
interface Ethernet0
 mac-address lanmac !I'm not sure how important this is - but I set it anyway.
 no ip address
end

There's a few other bits worth mentioning that I hit when migrating from ADSL to this configuration:

• Don't forget to remove any default static routes you might have had towards the old dialer interface
• Remember to change over your NAT overload rule to the new E0.101 interface.
• ALWAYS use E.101 with .1q encap for 101. This is the VLAN used for sky to encapsulate the traffic, it's not going to get far without it.
• I'd recommend ACLs etc to prevent the nasties getting in...I've omitted them here but rest assured they are there!
• Just check for any references to any old instances of Dialer0 (or whatever else you're using) and replace it with E0.101. I had one in my DMVPN configuration for the tunnel source interface, best not to forget that!

If you want to be really fancy I guess you could set up an Event Manager script, or an IP SLA to track different interfaces (Dialer vs E0) and set these different options accordingly, but given this is a one-off switchover it didn't seem worth the effort.

Big thanks to Arun for providing his configuration, and Billy for constantly letting me tinker with his router.

References:

Most of this information was taken from here, with some of my own ideas mixed in: https://danjmcintyre.com/2014/03/01/sky-fibre-unlimited-pro-on-a-cisco-887va/

This tool may be useful to those trying to extract usernames and passwords (I have NOT tested it): http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/extracting-sky-router-passwords/59028-simple-tool-extracting-username-password-your-router.html

There's also good information on the sky forums: http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/extracting-sky-router-passwords/51163-how-get-username-password-sky-hub-sr101.html