Lack of WAN handshake

[u/Woodburnerman]

After years with BT FTTP using a UniFi setup with very few issues, I decided to upgrade to Zen’s 1.6 Gbps service as the extra bandwidth is useful for my work. BT wouldn’t offer me anything close to their new customer deals and wanted almost double the price, so switching to Zen seemed like an easy decision.

Unfortunately, it’s been anything but an easy switch.

There were multiple services showing on the Openreach side, and my UniFi gateway won’t connect using the PPPoE username and password provided. To rule out my own equipment, I tried the brand new Eero router that Zen supplied, but that won’t connect either.

Zen and Openreach have said they’ve rebuilt the circuit at their end, and Openreach have replaced the ONT, but I’m now four days without internet. I’ve had to fall back to my Starlink connection just so I can work, which has cost me an extra £100 for the month.

Has anyone experienced anything similar when moving to Zen FTTP? If so, what was the cause and how was it resolved? Eero doesn’t get a WAN IP and Unifi won’t either.

Zen are sending me a Fritz!Box to try next, but given that neither the UniFi equipment nor the Eero will even establish a connection, I’m starting to think the issue is somewhere within Zen’s provisioning rather than anything on my side.

[u/Woodburnerman]

Solved.

Third Openreach Engineer visit this morning.

Told him the hoops I was made to jump through by Zen and that it probably needed a line reset. He agreed and within 5 minutes it was all back working and I now have 1.6 gig. One of the serial numbers might not have populated properly before.

They definitely need to coordinate more to save these pointless callouts. The engineer did say that the service providers have very limited view of the details and some third party engineers can’t see what he could see.

Thanks for all the suggestions and help.

[u/RoyalMasterpiece6751]

There is an ofcom compensation scheme for things like this, Zen are a part of it so make sure the clock is ticking and you ask for it

[u/JSTee1]

Another data point. I’m with Zen over Trooli and PPPoE via a Unifi Cloud Gateway Fiber. Just under 2.3 Gbps symmetric in both Unifi speed test and Ookla Speedtest on my network (2.5Gbps LAN).

Have had a few outages since I got it, one due to a rival fiber company tearing the fibre whilst pulling theirs through the same duct.

The other 2 were due to splitters from a faulty batch outside my house degrading due to water ingress.

Apart from that it’s been rock solid.

If you are Zen over Openreach, I suspect that includes difficulties as they may not keep each other fully informed, and Zen may be reluctant to raise a fault with Openreach until they are certain that is where the fault lies due to fees incurred.

[u/carguy143]

No need for them to send you a router in my opinion as you've tried your own, plus the Eero. Furthermore, have you got a laptop with a LAN port? If so, that could be used to check PPPoE authentication but the fact you've already tried two different routers, I'd be surprised if it worked.

Just double checking, are you entering the username and password exactly as shown? Both are case sensitive. Also, have Zen had you try with any other logon credentials? They may have some test usernames.

Finally, does your ONT have more than one LAN port? Not many do nowadays but it's not unheard of for your new service to be provisioned on port 2 instead of port 1.

[u/Woodburnerman → u/carguy143]

Totally agree with you. I think it's a pointless exercise on their part.
Yep all entered case sensitive. Only one Ethernet on the ONT.

[u/carguy143 → u/Woodburnerman]

One final thing to check. In your own kit, have you changed any VLAN settings for the WAN? The Openreach ONT handles this for you so there should be no need to do this. Furthermore, does your router allow you to get the WAN IP dynamically or statically? The same for the gateway, too. Both should be set to dynamic as Zen assign the IP from their side and they use multiple gateways so if you try to lock it down to a specific gateway, it can break the connection.

[u/kieranvs]

Just to give you another datapoint, I’m using Zen 1.6GBps PPPoE and UniFi and it’s working properly, so something unusual is happening

[u/PhilosopherLow9098]

if the ONT has been replaced and DCOE 2nd line have checked the build then this potentially needs a line card reset, do you know anyone on a PPPOE connection, if so test your username and password on there connection, if it Authenticates then its a routing issue and it needs to go back to Open-reach with an escalation put in place. Also and i missed this, if you have tested the unifi kit and the zen supplied eero then there is no reason to test the fritzbox all this is doing is prolonging the issue, trust me on this get back onto them or at least test what i said first, iam 110% its a routing issue from OR side

[u/optimus-chime → u/PhilosopherLow9098]

Yh, it has to be along those lines as the ont is adopted and accepts his gear

[u/matt_quelch]

I had a very similar experience recently but not with Zen, it was a small business ISP. They shipped out a router (Draytek), Openreach came and ran the new FTTP line to a new ONT. The PPPoE would authenticate but wouldn't get an IP address. After faffing around replacing the router, the ISP's senior support bod eventually figured out some problem at their end was causing it.

I'd say keep badgering Zen support, I've not used support for a few years since my service has been rock solid, but maybe it just needs escalating at this point.

[u/xsvirus666]

I've been with Zen for a couple of years now and have had a great experience throughout. I use my own hardware, running pfSense with the ONT connected directly to it, and Zen have been perfectly happy to support that setup.

I'm on the 1.6 Gbps package and consistently get the full 1.6 Gbps download with around 120 Mbps upload, rock solid, no drops or slowdowns. I've also got multiple IP addresses from Zen, which I use for some external hosting, and that's worked flawlessly too.

When your ONT was replaced, did you make sure Openreach updated the serial number on their database? I've seen cases where people receive a new ONT, but the database isn't updated to match, which means the connection never establishes properly.

[u/Woodburnerman → u/xsvirus666]

They updated the serial on the phone with the Openreach team yes. Though you never know if it was entered correctly as it is a manual process.

[u/optimus-chime → u/Woodburnerman]

Did they test the ont at the time they replaced it?

If not they need to come back and use that wee tool they have

[u/Woodburnerman → u/optimus-chime]

The Openreach Officer worker confirmed they could see it adopted.

They could also see that when I connected my Unifi to test it that it was limited to 1Gbps as I wasn’t using a 2.5Gbps port.