Unifi Setup with FTTP BT SH2

[Garan]

Hey everyone, I've been on the BT FTTP 900 Fibre with Halo 3 (3x Discs, Hybrid Connect and Digital Voice) for a while. I've recently upgraded to the Ubiquity Unifi G2, UXG Lite etc.

I initially plugged my FTTP WAN into the Unifi gateway and it worked a treat, realised that I've lost my BT Wifi Discs, Hybrid Connect and Digital Voice.

I cannot put the router into bridge mode so for now I've set it's IP to 172.16.0.1 and then disabled DHCP and Wi-Fi on the unit. Hybrid Connect and Digital Voice now work but I realise I've got a bit of a bottleneck going on as I believe the LAN ports on the SH2 are 1gbps maximum. Ideally I'd like to run it direct to the Unifi kit.

I don't want to port my number, so I'm looking on eBay for a Business Smart Hub 2 to allow bridge mode, my question is will DV still work, Hybrid Connect? I'm assuming the wifi discs can go back to BT or relegated to a cupboard as my Unifi AP Pro's will do the heavy lifting?

What have other people done who may have a similar setup? 

Right now my topology is: 

FTTP > WAN Port of BT SH2 > Unifi Gateway from LAN 1 of SH2 > Unifi setup as fixed IP with the gateway set to the BT SH2 > POE Unifi Switch > POE AP's and Gateway 

[licquorice]

The business hub won't work with Digital Voice.

As Digital Voice is VoIP, clearly any device in bridge mode isn't going to have access to the IP layer in any case.

[naylor2006]

I know its not really a helpful post but if you want to unleash the power of the Unify kit just ditch the hybrid and voice, if you are going to spend the money on Ubiquiti gear then to me it seems a little silly to still use an ISP provided router at all.

Currently I have an ER-X taking the ONT's output directly then that plugs into a 2.5Gbit Core Switch, then I have everything off that Core Switch which avoids an LAN bottle necks...or LAN traffic getting in the way of the 900 service as there is always bandwidth left for it. Other things connected to the ER-X are a Pi-Hole for DNS, an OpenVPN (Pi) Server and lastly the BT TV Box utilizing IGMP proxy on that port alone.

Off the core switch all my LAN devices run around the house, I have Unify U6+'s covering my WIFI and a CloudKey Gen2 to manage them, its bloody lovely. All local traffic just passes around me 2.5Gbit network and never has to return to the router unless it needs the internet.

I just think the entire reason we buy Unify is to go our own way....and you sir should be going with that kit:

ONT -> Unify Gateway WAN -> Unify Gateway LAN -> Unify POE Switch -> Unify AP's

In fact id put a 2.5Gbit switch between the Unify LAN and Unify POE Switch and just run the POE switch off one of its ports, that way you can run other ethernet devices off the switch too.

It is possible to get the voice working with your own gateway first but you have to do some insane config and then still have the hub after your gateway and then the phone connected to that, I dunno about hybrid though.

Kinda pointless having a fancy Unify Gateway if you intend to keep the BT Hub in the loop especially as that Gateway doesnt even have the controller built in for Unify.

[Garan]

That's an amazing idea, I really appreciate you breaking it down for me. I think I might try and off-load the VOIP package or just forget about it for now if we can forgo the digital voice, and then get rid of the hybrid connect and have that as a seperate backup in a TP-Link router that can also feed into the unifi in the event that the main WAN goes down.

The core switch before gateway is definitely a smart idea too, love that! 

[Garan]

I think you're right there, looks like it's time to ditch the digital voice and run the Unifi directly off the WAN instead! 

[TimCurtis]

@Garan 

I still have Digital Voice but I just use the answer phone service to pick up any voicemail left for me having ditched the SH2 and using my Asus instead.

It saved losing my number for now as we've had it for nearly 50 years and not all our contacts have our mobile numbers.

If I lost the phone service now I'd have to enter into another 24month contract & probably lose my discounts so for now just paying the PAYG cost until the contract is up and will then lose it.

[naylor2006]

Hello mate...

Nah you want the gateway before the core switch, core switch before the gateway would just split out the ONT and then you could I guess get two routers, but really thats pointless unless you operating a high availability firewall config and have one internet line...anyway, about your gear....

Broadly speaking there is no point having the UXG Lite as well as the BT Hub, the UXG only has the one in and out ports, WAN in LAN out, sure the UXG can have some features if you utilise a DMZ but I just cant see the point in doing it that way, aside from keeping VOIP etc...which again, personally I dont care about that either, thats me though.

You have a Ubiquiti UXG Lite right, which has one WAN port and one LAN port, this will be the router of course, remove all BT kit and plug an ethernet from the Openreach ONT into your UXG lite's WAN port I am assuming you have the PPPOE config already done because you said you've already done this. 

Right so now your UXG Lite needs to feed a LAN and you want to avoid bottle necks, without insulting you I assume the Ubiquiti POE Switch you have is only 1Gbit, the 2.5Gbit ones are crazy expensive and for most home WIFI setups unnecessary. Maybe its 4 ports, you didnt say what model it is, but using this as your only switch 'could' be a bottle neck if you are hammering some heavy wired content through that switch whilst also trying to utilise the WIFI.

Soooooo, get another switch, but a 2.5Gbit one, doesnt need to be managed unless you want it to be but plug this one into your UXG LAN port, lets say this 2.5Gbit switch has 4 ports too, one port is taken by uplinking it to the UXG LAN and one other port is now taken by connecting it to your POE switch, hook up your AP's to the POE....and if you have the Cloud Key you can power that from the POE switch also.

Now returning to the 2.5Gbit switch we now have 2 ports free, you can connect one to a NAS with a 2.5Gbit network card and the other power can perhaps connect to another 2.5Gbit switch somewhere else that you can run more devices off. Just because the majority of devices are only 1Gbit doesnt mean you cant benefit from 2.5Gbit links between switches.

This is just an example of how you could utilise the gear you have.

I went a bit crazy at home because I work in the field and it was alot of fun but I have all my AP's off a 2.5Gbit POE switch but that switch has a 10Gbit uplink to another switch which hooks back to my core switch via 10Gbit, completely pointless (2.5 would thave been fine) but all my AP's can rinse at 700Mbps or so and this doesnt effect someone else trying game with good latency from the internet...or someone else trying to pull something from the NAS.

Home network is alot of fun, far less jeopardy than at work.

[Garan]

Super helpful mate! Thank you so much.

I just ditched the BT kit, I don't think I care about the landline thinking on it, nor the hybrid connect. I could just as easily swap it back to the config if the FTTP link went down.

The switch I have is the Ubiquiti UniFi Switch 8 60W - So it's 8x 1 gig ports with one POE passthrough (handling the AP Pro atm) then that also goes into a TP Link 8 Port POE switch to power the cloud key, though I may have overdone it slightly as I dont have any other POE devices at the moment, maybe I can use it for cameras down the line.

I'll invest in a 2.5gb switch to go straight from the gateway to my home PC and NAS to allow internal LAN traffic as fast as possible, and then split that off into the other switches. 

Thank you for the advice mate, really appreciate it!! 

[chrisjp]

"I still have Digital Voice but I just use the answer phone service to pick up any voicemail left for me having ditched the SH2 and using my Asus instead."
How do you get to hear your DV answer phone messages if you have nowhere to plug in a phone handset?

[naylor2006]

Perfect 🙂