Sky Broadband & VPN

[Kyuuketsuki]

Hi,

I was with BE and BE has now been bought by Sky.

I use my broadband for work using a CISCO VPN connection but, since last weekend, have had very unreliable connections. I have now tested this VPN from my local hostelry so proving (I suppose) that my laptop config is AOK and implying that the fault is either with my home network or my ISP. I am also using a Draytek Vigor 2850 modem which worked fine under BE and, to be fair to Sky, seems to work AOK for all "normal" interenet functions just not VPN.

Does anyone know if there are any issues with Sky broadband and VPN's used for work purposes?

Thx

Keke

[Kyuuketsuki]

One of the things I heard is that Sky uses some kind of DHCP protocol to assign an external address to routers connected to their network but, because they have so many users (4 million plus?) the DHCP recycles IPs very rapidly ... it was usggested that this might cause disconnect type problems if someone were using a VPN connection.

Is this a possibility?

Thx

Keke

[Scubbie]

Using the WhoIS database I see that your current IP Address is still with O2/Be. Are you using the Be router still? From experience it is normally the router which causes issues.

Many VPNs do work with Sky's router but some people do report issues. Unfortunately No one has composed a list of those which do and those which do not work.

As for the IP Addresses on Sky's ADSL and FTTC connections, these are dynamic, but tend to be 'sticky'. I believe that I have had the same IP Address on my connection for a few months now. I could get it changed by powering off or disconnecting my router for an hour.

If you are interested in getting Sky Fibre, then there are various guides on this forum to help you use your own non-Sky router.

[Kyuuketsuki]

Using the WhoIS database I see that your current IP Address is still with O2/Be. Are you using the Be router still? From experience it is normally the router which causes issues.

Oh, so I'm back in the dark as to the cause

I'm using a Draytek Vigor 2850.

As for the IP Addresses on Sky's ADSL and FTTC connections, these are dynamic, but tend to be 'sticky'. I believe that I have had the same IP Address on my connection for a few months now. I could get it changed by powering off or disconnecting my router for an hour.

I realise that happens and no doubt will with mine as it on 24/7 but what I was referring to was the process of DHCP leasing where a client (in this case, my router) requests to use its existing (or a new) address from the server (Sky somewhere) ... is the lease time very short? I know from a past employer when they had very few “real” addresses (by which I mean actual internet addresses rather than NAT’d ones as seems to be the case today and I have inside my own network) they decreased the DHCP lease time to recycle IP’s as quickly as possible because they were so tight on IPs.

If you are interested in getting Sky Fibre, then there are various guides on this forum to help you use your own non-Sky router.

I'm mainly looking at PlusNet to go to next ... I left Sky to go to BE so the news that they were buying them out wasn't particularly welcome I'm afraid. Besides, didn't you say Broadband Connect is awful?

Keke

[Scubbie]

The lease time appears to be 60 minutes. The Sky routers renew the lease after about 30 minutes to ensure that they stay connected.

At present most of the UK ISPs still use IPv4. There is movement afoot to roll IPv6 out, but currently there is no date on this. As Sky's Internet customer base has increased, they have purchased additional IPv4 Address blocks. This has caused other issues, hence we became aware of them.

Sky Broadband Connect is only available where you do not have Sky's kit in your local exchange or Sky's kit is completely full. As it isn't in your profile, I can't check your specific exchange to see this. Perhaps if you check the SamKnows site you can do so:

SamKnows - Telephone Exchange Search

Sky have been busy rolling out more kit to more telephone exchanges for some time now. Of the 5,600 telephone exchanges, Sky now have their kit in 2,346 (according to SamKnows). If you were to get Sky Fibre in an exchange without Sky's kit, then actually what happens is you are connected to a parent exchange. What this means is that Sky doesn't need to roll out their LLU kit to all the smaller exchanges now, which has been a problem for many of the small exchanges, and their customers get full access to both SFU and SFUP.

In addition if your exchange has O2/Be kit, then Sky may be taking it over. This means that you'll either have O2/Be kit or Sky will installl their own.

Sky promised that O2/Be customers would be able to continue using their own routers. It is hoped that this facility will also be rolled out to existing Sky customers on both ADSL and Fibre connections. A few of us are chasing this behind the scenes with Sky but we have no information available to say what will happen or when as yet.

[Kyuuketsuki]

Thx Scubbie

Keke

[dragon2611]

One of the things I heard is that Sky uses some kind of DHCP protocol to assign an external address to routers connected to their network but, because they have so many users (4 million plus?) the DHCP recycles IPs very rapidly ... it was usggested that this might cause disconnect type problems if someone were using a VPN connection.

Is this a possibility?

Thx

Keke

Your IP shouldn't change when you are connected as you should just renew the lease.

The lease time appears to be 60 minutes. The Sky routers renew the lease after about 30 minutes to ensure that they stay connected.

Whilst it's configurable in the DHCP server the default is usually to attempt renewal of the DHCP lease once the remaining Time is 50% of the lease duration, RFC2131 deals with how DHCP clients are supposed to behave, I believe the relevant part is around about page 40 (I did a search, I'm not quite ready to goto sleep yet so I decided not to actually Read the entire thing)