Having been with Virgin Media for over 10 years, i decided it was finally time to jump ship and leave after VM’s FTTP rollout has been so heavily delayed. They deployed the fibre network in my street earlier this year and it’s just been sat there, active and live, ever since. It recently came out the reason no one could upgrade was because their order system couldn’t yet handle XGS-PON installs and couldn’t tell the difference between that and DOCSIS.
Having gotten fed up of waiting and paying over £100 a month for their top tier, i decided Yayzi was the best option for me.
We’ll skip the Install and other CityFibre related horror stories because who cares? I’m finally here to proudly brag!
Virgin Media speed test (1GB package, ASUS GT-AXE16000 Router, Cat7 cable).
Yayzi Speed Test (Unifi UDM:SE, Active Optical Cable (Fibre), GPON SFP+ Stick to replace ONT (So 100% fibre from computer to speedtest server, or as close as can be).
Yayzi, WiFi 7 speedtest via iPhone 15 Pro (Unifi AP U7 Pro)
Picture of my rack!
Any questions, feel free to ask! But one thing i can say for sure is Yayzi support really do know their thing or two, and try their best. So if you’re a potential new customer, i can 100% say go for it!
Hikvision CCTV will be going soon to be replaced by Unifi G5 Pro’s etc; keeps the CCTV and Network under one system, saves on cabinet space, saves on power and it’s just easier.
GPON → UDM, nothing. The GPON SFP stick plugs directly into the UDM. Plugging into the GPON SFP stick is just CityFibre’s internal fibre cable from the wall box termination point. So outside cable comes in, plugs into the wall box termination point and has a internal fibre running from that into the GPON stick, no different to if i had a traditional ONT.
Activation doesn’t play a part here. The GPON SFP stick has S/N and MAC spoofing / Cloning, so the GPON stick doesn’t look any different to the normal ONT as far as the network is concerned. It just eliminates the need for the ONT which spares a plug socket and copper / ethernet cables. If i have any issues i just remove the GPON stick and reinstate the ONT to rule that out and prepare incase of an engineer visit.
It’s a FS GPON ONU Stick. I’m not going to link it here as i’m not overly keen on advertising it and you probably need to know what you’re doing to properly install it. If you know what you’re doing well enough to install it, you’ll be able to find it.
It wasn’t easy to setup when i tried doing it myself. It has a pre-assigned static local IP for a web management / ssh interface, but doesn’t always play ball with UDM gear. I did however manage to do it by in the end just plugging it directly into my PC and doing it that way. You can also buy it pre-configured.
In the picture you sent that does not look like the FS.com GPON Stick. Normally they are a lot bigger and use SC connectors not (what looks like) an embedded fibre. I could be wrong but are you sure it’s the FS.com variant? Their also isn’t a WebGUI for the FS.com variant only SSH AFAIK https://resource.fs.com/mall/doc/20230831180515egrzs6.pdf
You’re quite right, that photo was taken when i still had VM installed (Hence the cat7 cable going into the 2.5G wan port). The blue fibre you can see is the Active Optical Cable going to my PC.
The 2.5G wan port has now been repurposed as my AP 7 Pro port, my computer has been moved down to the Pro Max 16 SFP port and the FS stick goes into where my computer once was.
Unfortunately that cupboard is now a mess from where i’ve ripped the walls apart running ethernet cables into the seperate rooms, moving the AP and hiding the internal fibre cable but i’ll get a picture later on.
You’re right, there isn’t a GUI (I don’t think i said there was one?).
Unfortunately Kettering / Corby / Northampton isn’t on XGS-PON so you’ll have to wait a while until you can use that stick. I made that mistake by buying the XGS-PON varient before actually ordering my internet and then had to go get the GPON version
Indeed, Unifi doesn’t have 2.5G poe switching gear actually released and in stock. I waited for weeks for their Pro Max 16 POE but no stock anywhere including EU Suppliers of Unifi stuff, so i gave up and brought a Zyxel injector. Does the job well enough
Edit: I lie, it’s now all in stock… after my months of waiting…
Sorry i just seen this. Yeah, the fibre cable from the street goes into a CityFibre termination box (I think it’s called that? Or isolation box, whatever it is). It then plugs into like a green coupler and uses an internal fibre cable to run into the cupboard where, during install it plugged into the ONT and now goes directly into the GPON Stick (So, no i didn’t have to do anything special to get it into the rack as CityFibre installed it in that cupbaord for me and left loads of slack, but yes, it is using a coupler as that’s what they installed when getting it into the cupboard).
With the GPON SFP stick, did you only need to clone the mac & serial from your ONT or was it more involved with Yayzi’s use of VLANs etc. ?
Very tempted to copy your setup, but I’m feeling like a noob… I’ve only ever used regular fibre (LC-LC) for simple aggregated links at my old job, GPON is a whole new adventure to learn about
I have the UDM-SE as well but have a DL4100 4 disk SAN instead of the NVR
