First Experiences with FibreNest - Updated

Great News! I’ve finally moved in to my house, 8 months after putting down my initial deposit, 4 months after expected delivery and 2 weeks after getting the keys. But this blog isn’t for reading about the politics of buying a house, or the current global issues. It’s about Tech. So let’s focus on the provider.

What is FibreNest? I’ve never heard of them!

FibreNest is an ISP that is installed across newer Charles Church and Persimmon developments. It is an ISP that is part of the Persimmon Group, providing internet connectivity for the developments in the Persimmon Group.

Before even buying the house, I found out that FibreNest is the only ISP provided to these developments, with no other PSTN, Cable or Fibre infrastructure run to the location at all. As a person that likes to keep their options open with regards to any utility supplier, this was slightly disturbing that the developer has a monopoly on internet connectivity.

However, after a small amount of investigation (TrustPilot, FibreNest Support, Neighbours), there was a general consensus that although support might be lacking, connectivity is as advertised and without major issues.

Packages & Pricing

At the time of writing this, there are a few plans available to new customers:

• 10 Mbit (10Mb Down / 1Mb Up) - £14/month
• 20 Mbit (20Mb Down / 2Mb Up) - £25/month
• 75 Mbit (75Mb Down / 7Mb Up) - £31/month
• 125 Mbit (125Mb Down / 10Mb Up) - £35/month
• 250 Mbit (250Mb Down / 25Mb Up) - £40/month
• 500 Mbit (500Mb Down / 50Mb Up) - £45/month

The packages under 250Mbit (10, 20, 75, 125) are also subject to a £20 setup/connection fee.

The base contract is 12 months (including a price fix), turning in to a 30 day rolling contract from then.

Subjectively, I found their pricing to be competitive in the current market. As an example a 500Mb connection from Virgin Media is currently running £62/month (£35 setup, 18 month contract) for broadband only.

Between work and play, i’ve always been a higher than average user of the internet and so opted for the 500 Mbit package. This package also includes a free static IP as part of the connection (which is quite useful for me), versus being £5/month for lower packages. The 50Mbit upload will be extremely useful for backups, file sharing and outbound video streaming.

Pre-Connection

As part of the FibreNest Guarantee, all requirements inside the property are completed before move in. I found this to be true, with the all-in-one ONT already installed in the property, terminated to a connection on the outside wall of the house.

Unfortunately FibreNest cannot guarantee that the groundworks to the property are completed in time for the move-in date. This was the issue in my case, with the concentration point for my road being beyond the point at which the developer had reached on the site plan. Unfortunately this meant that there were 6 weeks of no physical connectivity.

However, as long as you sign up to a FibreNest connection before exchange, they will provide you with either a 4G “MiFi” style router, or a cheque for £50 per month of no connectivity. I chose the £50 cheque, and signed up for my own 4G connection through SMARTY (Three rebrand), and used a DrayTek modem. Issues with signal strength and congestion on my local mast meant no end of issues. But this article isn’t about Three’s overcrowded network.

There were several issues with groundworks over the course of 6 weeks, however this was not an issue with FibreNest, but the contractor being used at site.

Connection

Once all the pre-connection issues were solved, the initial connection was painless. My early sign-up had meant that the account was already live, and FibreNest were already aware of the settings required for the connection.

Post physical connection, the configuration of the line isn’t automatic. FibreNest do need to complete configuration on the development network before going live. This took approx 30min.

FibreNest provide a Huawei all in one ONT device that provides wired and wireless connectivity:

A big thumbs up to the FibreNest engineers who were on the ground, they were helpful and easy to talk to.

Testing

Initial testing of the connection was acceptible, showing close to the full 500Mb Down / 50Mb Up available on a wired connection, generally reaching 475-480 Mbit. However, it did highlight a significant issue, FibreNest use CG-NAT by default on their connections.

CG-NAT results in less that ideal speeds, especially during peak times, with connectivity regularly dropping to 350/400 Mbit. I can only assume this is due to a large throughput requirement in the FibreNest core network that may be causing issues:

I’ll be writing another article on the investigations I have done in to the FibreNest network setup for those looking for more technical detail.

After getting my static IP set up, results during peak times improved, providing a more consistent result, especially during peak times, and I was usual exceeding the 500Mbit speed:

I’ve noticed some odd latency and jitter spikes across both types of connection, but generally staying quite low for a residential connection.

Network Setup

Being an IT professional, I would never happy using the ISP supplied equipment, as the hardware and functionality is usually quite poor, limiting both throughput and security.

Firewall - Juniper SRX300 A major downside for an IT professional with FibreNest is no Bridge-Mode functionality for the Huawei ONT. That means that if you want to use your own Firewall, you have to deal with Double-NAT. It can be quite an issue for some types of connectivity. Luckily I had no issues with my connectivity. Using SSL-VPNs alleviated my main issue.

Switching - Cisco SG300 This is core to providing good connectivity to all clients, both wired and wireless. Congestion across switching is unlikely in a home environment, but it’s always good to know it wouldnt be an issue. The management capability is a priority in order to have multiple VLANs for security.

Access Point - Ruckus R510 Using a dedicated access point is key to being able to sustain the high throughput for clients. Using this a single client can saturate the full 500Mbit throughput available, much better than the ~150Mbit on the Huawei ONT.

Final Thoughts - October 2020

As my development isn’t an early adopter of FibreNest, they seem to have ironed out a lot of the network issues in reviews I had read about previously. After working with support, the connection is stable, fast and provides low latency. A good option for a residential connection.

I was originally quite nervous about being restricted to a single supplier, however this has gradually eased over time and i’m sure will continue.

However, it’s not all good news. The current global issues has meant that their support function is being pushed to capacity. Ticket responses and resolution are both extremely poor. The reported 48 hour response time was broken at every turn, with multiple chases not yielding much benefit as upon calling I would get pushed to the overflow team (Sales/Admin) who would pass across a message/note. Being a smaller ISP, their support hours aren’t 24x7, only offering Monday - Friday 8am – 8pm and Saturday 9am – 5pm. If you have an issue on a Sunday, it can seem like an eternity until Monday. This is compounded by the slow response times.

Additionally, the hardware supplied isn’t the greatest for WiFi connectivity. If you are only use the Huawei router, don’t expect a great service above some of the lower packages. If you have 125mbit+, you won’t get what you pay for unless you go wired.

Hopefully FibreNest can sort these two sticking points, and should be fairly easy with a bit of investment if possible.

UPDATED - January 2021

Firstly, FibreNest have recently been putting in measures to harden their core network, along with increasing their support capacity to handle the recent increase in people being at home. These network improvement works were completed through November-December 2020, and have subjectively improved support and network stability.

It is good to see a small ISP investing back in to their Local, Regional and National infrastructure to bolster their offering to their existing customers, while also providing expansion for their ever growing list of developments.

Secondly, they have changed their ONT and Router hardware provided to customers. The new ONT supports Bridge-Mode (great for us techies), and the new Velop Router by Linksys will provide a better WiFi connection for those just using FibreNest equipment. It has the ability to add additional mesh hubs for those that are experiencing coverage issues:

As soon as I heard this was a possiblity, I requested the upgrade from support. It allowed me to remove the SSL-VPN workarounds I had in-place, and go back to trusty IPsec tunnels for my remote connections.

Connectivity has remained solid, although congestion was obvious during the holiday period (albeit slightly expected). Speeds dipped considerably, but were still usable for standard tasks (streaming, browsing and work).