I have to say the Bell HomeHub 3000 is a fucking piece of shit, and I pity anyone that is forced to use it. I replaced mine, and it was easier than I thought, and got much better speeds out of my internal network and internet speeds.
Doing it was quite easy, and because, I struggled to find the exact steps to do this online, I decided to write and blog them out here. Warning I only cover Fibe Internet. I know you can also do Fibe TV this way, but I’m not clear on the exact steps to enable Fibe TV as well. If you also have phone, unplug it and optional get a VoIP service.
Physically, to connect the fiber line, I used the SFP module provided by Bell inside the HomeHub 3000. I took this and plugged it into the SFP port on my EdgeRouter. I did not have any compatibility issues with this.
Step 1
You need to find your Bell Internet credentials. This is an account name that starts with a “b” and a password. You may have written them down when you setup you Bell Fibe service. You can also get it by login into your Bell account and looking at your Internet service. Here you will find your account name, and you’ll get an option to change your password.
Note the Account name and password we will need them in a later step.
Step 2
Assuming your router is configured and working on your network at least locally, get into the EdgeRouter’s UI main Dashboard. Here you get a list of all your ethernet devices and how they are connected. On an EdgeRouter 4 (my model) the eth3 port is the SFP port, your model may be slightly different here, but the steps should all be the same.
I already configured mine with names, and you can see I also use my other ports for reasons.
Step 3
To make internet work with Bell we need to connect on vlan 35 using PPPoE. So first we add a vlan interface. Click on the Add Interface button, then Add VLAN. From here setup your vlan with an ID of 35 on your SFP port (eth3). I gave mine a name of Internet (PPPoE) because that’s what this is going to be used for. Leave MTU to 1500 and No Address.
Step 4
Next we need to add the PPPoE interface. Click on the Add Interface button, then Add PPPoE. Set PPPoE ID to 0. The Interface is the vlan interface we created in Step 3 (eth3.35). Fill in your Bell Internet credentials (starts with b) that you found in Step 1. Finally set MTU to 1492. This is required for large file transfers with Bell.
Step 5
Verify it all works. Your setup should look something like this and have Connected on the PPPoE interface.
Once this is all setup and done you should have full speed at your router and anything connected to it. Take that HomeHub and make it a paper weight. I recommend against throwing it out. I’m sure Bell would want it back.
I have been running this setup for several months now without any issues. I have gone through multiple power outages and device restarts, as well as prolonged periods without any power interruption. We never had issues with internet connectivity.
Thank you for the write-up. I got the Bell 1.5gbps Fiber internet this week, and researching for the next steps. I also use their Home Phone service, and the TV service (forced on me to meet the bundle discount criteria). The speed test from the HH3000 show extreme speeds, but when I connect through my ASUS Gigabit router, speeds drop significantly. The Bell guy couldn’t get the TV Box (using Ethernet cable at my request) to connect until I moved that cable from ASUS to the HH3000. This essentially tells me that I need to keep the HH3000, at least for the phone service.
Wondering if I can receive the incoming fiber directly into the UDM Pro as you have done, and then run another cable (Ethernet RJ45) from the UDM Pro to the HH3000 to keep it happy. I could also consider using the second SFP Port on the UDM Pro for this too, but I prefer to use it to link to an old CISCO SG200-26 that I use.
TL;DR: Please comment if this topology sounds feasible:
"Bell Fiber --[SFP]--> UDM Pro --[RJ45]--> HH3000" ---> TV Box
| |
| ---> Phone
v
[SFP or RJ45]
|
v
Cisco SG200-26 --> LAN
TV runs on a different vlan. You should be able to configure everything in your UDM Pro to bring in the TV signal as well. I believe it’s vlan 36. For phone however you need to go to another 3rd party since Bell puts their voip functionality inside the shitty HH3000
is there any way to make a voip service work?
If you get a voip a 3rd party voip service it shouldn’t be an issue. In those cases they will provide you with a device that plugs into your router over ethernet, and provides the RJ-11 plug for your home telephone network. Bell’s service requires their router.