I connected my fiber internet directly to my pfsense router via SFP!

hey YouTube quick video about my

ingenious plan to bypass all the crap my

ISP makes me use well full disclosure I

don't actually have to use the

all-in-one router they provide but your

average customer does let's talk about

my setup right now I've got my fiber Ont

plugged into my pfSense box most

consumers would have their Ont plugged

into the LAN port on the all-in-one

router modem they provide the funny

thing about this one in particular is

it's also a VDSL modem if you subscribe

to the VDS l service so this is all fine

and dandy my pfSense gets a public IP

all great it's been like this for years

but recently I found out new installs do

not get the Ont and in fact they go

directly into this into the SSP port so

obviously I thought well if I put a PCIe

card in the pfSense box

can I just unplug it from there and plug

into there and will it work well that's

the point of this video we're gonna find

out so step one is to convince the ISP

to come out and upgrade my setup to the

new way of doing it so obviously we go

on the web chat and we go through all

the steps and get ourselves a tech books

now we just got to wait for them to come

out and determine if my setup is

compatible with SFP alright update one

week later they actually came out and

they did it they didn't even charge me

so they took away the Ont and basically

wired me directly in here through SFP

into the all-in-one router which we

talked about a few minutes ago obviously

me being eager to test this out the very

first thing I did as soon as they left

let's pull the SFP module out of here

and plug it in to a switch so as you can

see the switch is hooked up so I'm sure

you can assume and you assume correctly

it does work so basically the

sfe novel is plugged in and I've got the

pfSense router plugged in via ethernet

and it picked up a public IP so the

theory is now that we've tested this

that this will actually work the way I

want it to so I went on eBay and I

ordered myself a used dual 10 gig

Ethernet card so it's got two ten gig

SFP ports on there I did look it up to

make sure this is compatible with PF

sense and it should be so anyways let's

go ahead and install this and see if

this actually works the way I want it to

so you may notice there's no riser card

in here so we're gonna try to use a

ribbon cable extension although now that

I'm looking at this I have questions of

whether or not this is going to work but

we're gonna try anyways unfortunately I

wasn't able to find a or efficiently

find a PCIe riser card otherwise I would

have ordered one this came in two days

on Amazon Prime and cost 8 bucks so

that's gonna be my first attempt so this

is a card here and it's going to

basically install just like so now let's

see if we can get this to actually do it

what's supposed to okay it looks like

this oh there we go

was a bit of a tight fit I've got a bit

of concern about heat but we're just

going to going to install it like this

for now and if I have to add another fan

or something in there we will okay so

that's clipped in so I guess what I'm

gonna do is I'm going to use can't use

that so I'm gonna use this port and this

is where it's gonna be a little bit

silly because this is gonna have to

basically loop over like that and then

this is gonna have to be this is my

concern here because I don't really want

to pinch this but in order for me to get

the lid on this is going to have to be

oh I guess I should have unplugged it

because the whole system just turned on

for some reason it's gonna go ahead and

unplug it now we're just going to go

like this and see what happens

okay so we're into the PF sentient

interface so if we did no problem we're

just going to go ahead and go to win and

see what we see here obviously not the

right place to go so let's go

assignments okay so we're seeing a few

new interfaces VX 0 and B XE 1 so let's

go ahead and select one as B X Z 0

hit save and see what happens so we're

gonna go ahead and plug in this module I

don't know which is which oh port 1 and

port 2 perfect so let's go like so so

we're now plugged into port 1 I don't

see any lights on yet and let's take our

fiber which is right here

and plug that sucker in Oh Oh something

fell I hope I didn't break something

important okay so she's locked in

still not seeing any port activity

lights so I heard that these can take up

to five minutes to actually connect

having said that I assumed we would have

had an activity light of some sort but

we're just gonna give it some time just

in case tragedy it did not work

a pfsense detected and installed the

card no problem and my stuck in one of

the other SMP modules I have and did a

test with my switch and I was able to

get it working

however the the SPG pond module just

would not simply not work so I've got a

slight theory and it's very much a

theory is I don't know if this card was

enable able to produce enough power to

actually run the module and the reason I

say that is because there's four status

lights here on the card itself it's

already the video is probably awful but

they're lined up one two three four and

when you power up the card to the lights

come on right away and as soon as you

insert a module it in the right way like

the light would turn off so in the case

of the the Jeep on module the light

would to start blinking erratically so

it'd be like blinked or blink blink

blink almost as if it was trying to

power up and it almost got there and

then no no no so I don't know that's a

wild theory the the fact is is i I've

never seen but usually when there's an

error code or something something like

that you get a a flash sequence that

makes sense not just random so that

makes me think it was a hardware related

issue so don't worry I'm not gonna leave

you hanging I went on the internet and I

actually found someone had posted on DSL

reports that they have used this exact

card well I don't know if it's this

exact variation but this chipset

successfully and this is let's see is

this is a Chelsea ot4 20 as the bag says

another nice thing about this card in

particular is it has a fan so that

should really help with the cooling

because that card got hot and I wasn't

even really using it all right so let's

now repeat what we just did and install

this one and see if we get better

results hopefully this works because

this is not what I would recommend

shipping a card in but we'll see hey

plug in

fiber from the pole outside

and we'll give it a few minutes and see

what happens

so usually when I powerup my switch it

does take a good 68 seconds for this to

actually show that a link has been

established so I'm hoping that maybe

that's the same case here holy beep it

actually worked so we've got a public IP

showing up on PF sense and we've got a

link to the ISP Wow

I gotta be honest I did not actually

think that this would work well let's

just see let's just do a speed test and

see if we're getting full speeds out of

this

okay here we are speedtest.net so you

may notice we are literally using a

server that belonged to our ISP which is

almost necessary because I find a lot of

times servers aren't able to take the

bandwidth of my connection will pull so

here goes nothing I'm curious my ping

time is worse or better than usual

usually it sits around three

milliseconds okay well I'm gonna say

that's not necessarily worse or better

okay about 700 megabits per second

download that is not great

but we'll see where the upload hits and

if we are getting better upload

performance then we need to try a

different server yeah that's not what I

call better okay just to make sure we're

not having issues with computer

resources we're going old school and I'm

just gonna record the screen so

currently right now nothing's open on

the computer except for the browser and

well that's about it and a few

background apps so this part here okay

we got we're showing you better pink oh

wow okay I have a feeling this was

computer related then not actual and

motor related all right we did it

we took Fiverr to the home and plugged

it directly into pfSense

that's actually pretty sweet if you have

fiber-to-the-home and your connection is

similar to mine and they give you an

all-in-one router of some sort with an

SFP module plugged in you might be able

to do the same thing presuming you have

a card that is compatible in my case

this is an oak what's called a Nokia SFP

Ont is what is actually on the module

itself and it obviously did not work

with my Broadcom card I'll just paste

the model oh it's right here 5:30 sfp+

so this is a dual 10 gigabit as an HP

card did not work but then we put the

Chelsea Oh which I'm very sorry if I'm

saying that wrong please correct me if I

am the T 420 worked without a problem it

just plugged in and pfsense installed it

right away no driver hassle and it

disconnected so this I would say is a

success I hope my ISP does not watch

because this probably violates my Terms

of Service if you liked the video please

like and subscribe and I'll try to keep

posting things that are interesting

alright thanks for watching