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Anyone with PN have two fibre lines?

djbenson
Grafter
Posts: 79
Thanks: 3
Registered: ‎02-06-2015

Anyone with PN have two fibre lines?

In the absence of FTTP and cable broadband, I'm exploring options for boosting my broadband speed and one option is to have a second line installed with a second FTTC service enabled but I wondered if anybody had any experience of this?

 

My plan is to use something like pfsense (or other open source router software) to do the load balancing on my side - I know this will not double my speed but it will in effect double my bandwidth so for multiple download scenarios it will work well.

So some questions for the floor:

1) Will PN provision a second line and can this be on my main account or is it better for my wife to sign up so we keep the lines separate?

2) When I try and get a quote for the work from PN online, I have two options, enter only my postcode - which wrongly shows that fibre is not available in my area, or enter my postcode and telephone number, which shows me to be an existing customer so I can't proceed - assuming number 1 is possible, is this a job for a human at PN to sort out for me?

3) The BT line to my house seems to run from the pavement to the front door under the ground, with BTO install the new line, what will that entail? Will they need to dig anything up or can they pull new copper through or will BT have had the foresight to install two copper pairs when they installed the lines?

4) Is anybody else running such a setup and if so, are you experiencing any issues?

7 REPLIES 7
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Anyone with PN have two fiber lines?

@djbenson - I have two fibre accounts in my name with Plusnet, I also use a DrayTek 2925 router along with two DrayTek 130 VDSL modems and between them they do all the hard work as regards load balancing and VPN end points to the other offices.

If I recall correctly I just called sales and told them I wanted a second line, this was provisioned on their behalf by BT and then Plusnet added the broadband, and with the exception of one hiccup I’ve not had any issues with my service.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Anyone with PN have two fiber lines?

If you do decide to install another line remember to tell sales that you're recommending yourself so you can claim the referral discount. Assuming this is still allowed of course.

Darkfire
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 699
Fixes: 30
Registered: ‎17-10-2015

Re: Anyone with PN have two fibre lines?

Good Morning Smiley 

 

This is something that I've played around with for a while and have to say works quite well once configured.

 

In regards to getting the line itself, this will require a new account with us which I'd advise signing up over the phone, this can be in your name without issue, let the agent know you wish for a 2nd line and they can arrange a new line install for the new connection. This will cost £49.99 to send an engineer out however.

 

If the current lead in to your property has spare pairs(a lot of lines have 2/4 pairs), these can be used without any digging etc, if there are none you can discuss this with the engineer at the time, this could cause a slight delay if more work is required but we'll keep you updated as that goes ahead if that becomes the case.

 

I use PfSense myself on a Dell R210ii(yes this is overkill for this purpose) and it works great

 

https://community.plus.net/aptgm87544/attachments/aptgm87544/Fibre/31220/1/speeed.png

If you have any issues setting anything up, pop me a message and I'll see what I can do Smiley 

 

 

EDIT: @Anonymous you can indeed refer yourself, it is another account 

djbenson
Grafter
Posts: 79
Thanks: 3
Registered: ‎02-06-2015

Re: Anyone with PN have two fibre lines?

Thanks for the responses so far.

 

@Darkfire - I'm confused (and amazed) by your speed test - I thought (perhaps incorrectly) that to do what appears to be line bonding, it needed to be supported by the ISP - those speed test results indicate that you are getting double the speed which I didn't think was possible without specialist kit and ISP support.

How many lines have you got connected to pfsense and what speed are they individually to get those speeds?! Shocked

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Anyone with PN have two fibre lines?

@Darkfire - Yes I'd be keen to know more as well, as I am under the same impressions as @djbenson.

Darkfire
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 699
Fixes: 30
Registered: ‎17-10-2015

Re: Anyone with PN have two fibre lines?

That is 2 80/20 FTTC(Unlimited Fibre Extra) lines, these go from the socket to bog standard Openreach modems(ECI to be exact), from there these connect to a 4 port NIC in the R210, out of there it goes to my core switch and out to the rest of my home.

 

 

In PfSense the 2 WAN connections are setup as part of a gateway group that all LAN traffic uses to route out to the internet, if I lose a line it will just drop to using the other active line so there's always an active connection externally.

 

As far as I am aware, the reason speedtest.net gives such a high results is that it may be multi-threaded but I've not looked into this much to confirm as I've been too busy with life and work to play around with this much since it was setup, I've had to reboot the PfSense machine 4 times since it was setup around a year ago and it's been rock solid

 

 

djbenson
Grafter
Posts: 79
Thanks: 3
Registered: ‎02-06-2015

Re: Anyone with PN have two fibre lines?

Thanks for taking the time to reply - I did wonder if the speed test was multi-threaded.

 

I'm really tempted Smiley