BT Homehub 5A with NowTV fibre

Installing and Using OpenWrt
#1

I have been using the 5A for some time with SSE (ppoA), but am about to switch to NowTv fibre. I would like to keep the 5A as it has excellent wifi which reaches throughout the house.

My understanding is that NowTV uses the similar protocols to sky, MER I believe.

Has anyone setup openwrt for NowTV? and is there a setup guide ?

Many Thanks

#2

NowTV is exactly the same as Sky, was with them last year. You get a Sky IP address and they support IPv6.

They actually use DHCP for authentication, but don't validate the clientID anymore, in fact option clientid can now be completely omitted, or you can use a random value, however if present the clientid string must be hex encoded (no delimiters) for openwrt - eg use https://coding.tools/ascii-to-hex

There are only minor changes needed, the main one is selecting DHCP Client in WAN protocol and entering a clientID, and if you are switching from ADSL, then you'll need to add a custom interface "dsl0.101" under WAN->Physical Settings.

You can easily set it up in the UI, I think Bill's pdf guide covers setting them up in the UI apart from the IPv6 settings, but I've posted the relevant bits from my network settings file below.

config dsl 'dsl'
        option annex 'b'
        option tone 'a'
        option xfer_mode 'ptm'
        option line_mode 'vdsl'


config interface 'wan'
        option ifname 'dsl0.101'
        option proto 'dhcp'
 #       option clientid '613162326333653466353036406e6f7774767c6131623263336534'       # EDIT: either omit this option or if included clientID must be a hex encoded string in recent openwrt versions.      
 #       option macaddr 'AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF'  # optional, clone your now/sky router wan mac if you have trouble connecting when swapping between routers.

config device 'wan_dev'
        option name 'dsl0'

config interface 'wan6'
        option proto 'dhcpv6'
        option reqaddress 'try'
        option reqprefix 'auto'
        option ifname 'dsl0.101'
        option delegate '1'
1 Like
NowTV / OpenWrt
Having some trouble
DSL showing connected but no internet
#3

@mjs
Many thanks for the setup info . Its looks quite doable and fairly simple. Just need to get the mac address of the supplied router, which should be fairly straightforward, and hopefully it will all work out.

One of the things I use my internet for is home control of the central heating. My old and new broadband packages don't offer a static IP option. At the moment my dynamic ip hasn't changed for more than a year, so not really an issue. Do you know if there is way that I could get the HH5A to email me or text me when it changes with the new IP number, or is there another/better solution to this problem. One idea I had was to monitor the line connection LED and when this was interrupted and restarted get the monitoring device to email me, not sure how I would get the new ip number.
I will post this as a separate topic in this forum if you think its suitable.

Once again many thanks for the NowTV/Sky info

Best Regards
dataguy

#4

I would suggest registering with a free dynamic DNS service and installing ddns-scripts and luci-app-ddns See:- https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/services/ddns/client

I use freeddns.org

Using the WAN mac address of the NowTV router is entirely optional, should work fine without.

I've got into the habit of cloning them when using a third party router because with a couple of my earlier ISPs, the change of MAC address when swapping routers would cause a delay (sometimes very long) in reconnecting, which was a pain if you need to swap routers when you contact support.

#5

Thankyou, that seems an excellent solution to the DNS problem. The link to freeddns.org seems to resolve to https://www.dynu.com/, presumably they have been renamed or taken over. Either way its a suppoorted free ddns provider.

Many Thanks

Best Regards

dataguy

#6

Hi Again
Not sure how its possible for this outfit to do this !!

https://www.noip.com/download?page=win
Our Dynamic DNS Update Client continually checks for IP address changes in the background and automatically updates the DNS at No-IP whenever it changes.

If it changes how can they know what the new IP will be, because when it changes the address is lost..
I will definitely go with one of the tried and tested suppliers you linked to.

Best Regards

Dataguy

#8

ddns-scripts_no-ip_com is needed to support no-ip.com, but it works (for IPv4, IPv6 is not supported by the ddns-scripts_no-ip_com so far).

#9

@mjs
Your update info was spot on, and Im now connected to NOWTV with my plusnet router. This gives a 6-10 db improvement in wifi strength over the std offering.

I have been trying to do the DDNS bit. I have got a free subdomain with Free DNS (also lists as afraid.org), and loaded the Luci DDNS script into Openwrt to expose the Services/Dynamic DDNS menu pages. However I seem to have run out of ideas at this point.

FreeDNS (http://freedns.afraid.org/dynamic/) suggests using :-
http://[USERNAME]:[PASSWORD]@freedns.afraid.org/nic/update?hostname=[DOMAIN]&myip=[IP]

Which almost fits. but I don't know how to get the IP number into the url string. They also supply update scripts but the url string seemed simplest.

Any assistance much appreciated.

Best Regards

Dataguy