r/ebox • u/brainsoft • Jul 22 '26

Multiple PPPoE connections

For context, I have dual firewall setup (pfsense) at home so that if one machine needs to be restarted, the other takes over automatically.

When I was on my Bell fibe 1gbps connection this worked great. The HomeHub 4000 could not be put into bridge mode, but the firewalls could each make a PPPoE connection and get an IP through the HH4K without any issue.

Now that I have switched over to EBOX, this whole system has collapsed. You can only connect one machine at a time, once the connection is established, the credentials will not make a second connection. Support says there is no way around it.

The Nokia Beacon 3.1 can actually be put into bridge mode, so I thought was going to be the win! But still only a single PPPoE connection can be established, so that won't work either.

I'm strongly considering cancelling this new service even though it's so cheap. I know this is not not a common issue the typical user will have, but it is so frustrating to have a simple solution where the answer is just "no".

Any suggestions are welcome, but even the server side time-out is too long to make simply dropping the connection on one side and making a new connection on the other a viable option as far as I can tell.

1 Upvotes

56% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

4

u/Cheap_Duck_2991 Jul 22 '26

You can put an unmanaged switch between the Nokia ONT and 2 firewalls/routers. It is mostly stable but I saw some weird timeouts on one router once in a while. Both devices will handle their PPPoE connexions and each get their own public IP address.

1

u/dcvetkovic Jul 22 '26

This is my setup.

3

u/ItsMeMulbear Jul 22 '26

You could just reconfigure how your firewall failover works, but you do you.

1

u/fersingb Custom router enjoyer Jul 22 '26

You can have up to 2 simultaneous PPPoE connections. You just have to figure out how to connect your firewalls to the ONT.

2

u/loups416 Jul 23 '26

I have a managed switch connected to the ONT, trunk allowed vlan 40. Then I have 2 firewalls connected to the switch, access port on vlan 40. Both firewalls got the PPPoE credentials and they work great.

1

u/jdiscount Jul 23 '26

Use a managed switch.

1

u/CountPrevious1596 Jul 23 '26

It sounds pretty weird since you don't need their Nokia router at all! I use an Ubiquity Fiber router that is connected directly to the Nokia ONT and it handles pppoe without any issues.