Integrating BT Hub2 onto school network

[Progress]

Maybe a dumb question, but it's based on the complete Non-Support from BT all all levels (why am I surprised?)

 

I'm trying to help a very small infant school get through to the end of their broadband contract so they can upgrade to a decent connection.

 

Purely as a temporary measure, we've got a basic SOGEA connection - this should give us up to 70Mb rather than the 5Mb contract they are currently tied into until September.

This new one is with BT, who in their wisdom have sent us a BT Hub2 which is "out of the box".

 

I have to admit, I have no idea how to get this integrated into the network - we have a server with DNS and DHCP, I'm guessing I have to switch off the DHCP on the hub and forward ports to the server, but BT help is unintelligible/non-existent.

 

Has anyone done this before? BT are not even willing to send out an engineer to assist.

[speakercon]

What firewall are they using? You can put the homehub into modem mode and let it pass the internet connection through to the firewall as I would assume the current connection is?

[PotNoodleTech]

Realistically they should be getting the connection from the local authority complete with the local authority's filtering and firewall set up to make it all safe?

 

It's unusual for a school to just go buy a home broadband package with a cheap router as you've got no proper firewall, no proper internet filtering, and no hope of meeting safeguarding rules and regulations. BT won't help with that it is beyond their remit - you basically are not a home user and shouldnt be using it?

 

(That said, I totally understand you are only trying to help the poor school to get something better so I am not having a go.)

[Progress]

Thanks - We will have filtering etc provided by a third party, it's just the initial setup I'm struggling with. As I said, it's just until September when we will do it "properly"

 

It was all set up with BT Education, so make of that what you will...

[Progress]

The existing firewall is provided by EMPsn - Don't ask... We will be using filtering etc provided by Securly until we can do it all properly.

[PotNoodleTech]

Ah ok I am glad there's filtering etc in place.

 

So if you are changing the router - I am guessing whatever filter you have provided by the third party will need some settings changed such as pointing to the routers IP address etc.

 

Either everything points to your filtering/router and when that's updated to point to the BT router it should work. Or you may need to change some settings on the devces such as the default gateway.

 

All depends what you got and how it's been set up in the past to be honest no way for us to guess. Good luck! Maybe ask the third party that et up the filtering etc for help?

[speakercon]

So if there is no firewall available you wouldn't be able to use modem mode, the homehub would have to do the firewall & routing duties.

 

Assuming its a flat network I would change the default 192 ip range to match that of the current range, disable DHCP, and set the securly DNS forwarders on your windows DNS server.

 

Ideally the BT connection would have a static ip. And you don't have any VPN's or anything like that to worry about or IP based conditional access policies or IP based SIP registration?

 

I'd take a careful look at the default firewall rules and settings and ensure anything unneeded is removed/disabled and apply caveat about using SOHO equipment in enterprise environment.

[Davit2005]

Personally I'd get rid of the BT hub and use something like a DrayTek or Cisco vDSL router and then pass the Public IP address to the firewall (i.e. modem mode) if they have a static IP. If they are not using a static IP you could prob jus connect the FW to the DrayTek and use a RFC 1918 subnet that is unused internally between the FW and the vDSL router. Depends what setup you have at the moment.

[dmj]

BT should give you the pppoe connection details if you ask for the username and password. Then you can use whatever device you like.

Most contracts state that you can use your own equipment, if they want to talk you into using their equipment complain to Ofcom.

 

edit: look here https://business.bt.com/help/article/broadband-and-internet/getting-started/can-i-use-my-own-broadband-modem-or-router/

Edited January 9, 2025 by dmj

[Oaktech]

Personally I'd get rid of the BT hub and use something like a DrayTek or Cisco vDSL router and then pass the Public IP address to the firewall (i.e. modem mode) if they have a static IP. If they are not using a static IP you could prob jus connect the FW to the DrayTek and use a RFC 1918 subnet that is unused internally between the FW and the vDSL router. Depends what setup you have at the moment.

 

 

This^^

 

I've had to do it recently for a not for profit I support. They moved from TalKTalk Business ADSL at @15Mb to BT Sogea @70Mb and at the same time changed phone suppliers. The phone supplier couldn't get their VOIP running at all through the BT Hub and BT washed their hands of it as 'not our service not our problem'. I also couldn't get their Unifi cloudkey to talk out through it which meant I wasn't able to help them remotely and they couldn't access their UnifiProtect CCTV through it. Because they had Unifi CloudKey on prem already I added in a £50 second hand Unifi USG with the BT hub in modem mode and we off to the races.

 

(I know the USG is EoL there is a plan to replace it at easter with a cloud gateway.)