How to get Bell Fibe in Quebec/Ontario (Internet and IPTV) working with pfSense

sleepmaster91

Hi guys,

I found this forum and i found it very useful and i must thank the OP and everyone who contributed to this thread
I got the internet to work but i had problems with the TV. By doing a lot of googling i found out that you need to put your lan network (in my case 192.168.2.0/24 in the igmp proxy upstream but then the tv would play for 10s and then cut out so i did more googling around and i found a VERY IMPORTANT step : you need to do a bridge between the IPTV wan interface and the LAN interface. As soon as i did that the TV came on and stayed on !!! apps and whatnot are still not working but this is a major progress from the IPTV not working at all (i did try the dns redirection as advised by @iscy but maybe my seetings are wrong i will check tomorrow).

If you have any questions feel free to ask :)

Thanks again !!

Update : I had issues with the multicast packets causing tv to cut if i had multiple receivers plugged in my lan switch so i ~~installed a third NIC plugged in a seperate switch and configured IPTV on that interface. Now tv and internet works A1. Next step : installing a wireless access point ;)~~ split the lan into 2 vlans and used a managed switch (more info here https://www.highlnk.com/2014/06/configuring-vlans-on-pfsense/ )

Update #2 : PVR wasn't working on the wireless receivers connected to the VAP2500(IPTV Access Point). Thanks to @iscy who gave me a hint in the right direction(reply #13) I did some syslog investigation and i found out there was IPv6 traffic being blocked on the LAN interface(I really suggest everyone to host a syslog server on their PC/network) After i added Ipv6 traffic on the "Pass all" traffic rule on the IPTV LAN and rebooted everything PVR was up and running again !! Now all is working(Internet+IPTV+apps+PVR) ~~I'm 90% on my pfsense connection as i'm speaking(HH2000 is still hooked up for wifi connection and I might get a cheap AC1200 wireless router to finish the full switch to pfsense)~~ I'm 100% on the pfsense nowThanks again everyone for your contribution it helped me a lot :)

Update #3: I finlly made the full switch to pfsense yesterday and i noticed that the Tv would cut on/off every 5-10min so i did some investigation and i found out that you need to spoof the HH2000 MAC address to the WAN internet interface. I think bell has a list of mac addresses associated with their routers and that it doesn't work with a non-bell mac address. Also i noticed when you plug the VAP2500 in the switch there's a couple of "wrong network" errors on the wireless receivers so i had to unplug it for a couple seconds then plug iy back and reboot the wireless receivers and everything was fine then otherwise they would just boot to the "Bell Fibe" screen until you unplug the AP and plugged it back

If anyone needs help to get everything to work send me a PM and i will gladly help :)

froussy

I got it work with the 2.4 finally.. .. but app doesnt work… I added bell.ca in the resolver (with 10.2.xxx) and from a pc if I try to nslookup, I get "server failed"

any clue ?

Thanks

DPyro

A little off topic but I don't know where else to go for help. I got an Asus router with AdvancedTomato installed and got Internet and my PVR working. However, I need help getting my VAP2500/VIP2502 to work. Does anyone have suggestions why I'm stuck at the Bell logo on boot?

Do I need to place it on the same vlan as my PVR?
Do I need to get the apps to work in order for the VAP2500/VIP2502 to work?

JKnott

I haven't worked with the HH2000, but have with the HH1000. With some difficulty, I was able to put it into bridge mode, so that the internal gateway is bypassed. Hopefully, you can do the same. I have also tried with the HH3000, but the results cannot be adequately described in a public forum.

DPyro

Thanks but that's not really what I'm looking for. I know I can always connect a switch to the ONT and have the HH2000 connected to one port and my router another, but I want one device if I can help it.

autumnwalker

Bringing this one back up ... has anyone else attempted IPTV using GPON (i.e. Fibe install with Home Hub 3000)?

I can get internet on VLAN 35 working great, but I cannot get an IP / Gateway for IPTV.

rcmpayne

@autumnwalker I am having the same issue. I have Fiber line to a TPLink media converter and I've set up vlan 33-37 on its own wan interface's. Vlan 35 gets a IP and i have internet however, all the other vlans (34 and 36) don't get IPs at all.

Enable dhcpclient VLAN Priority tagging on
Choose 802.1p priority to set is set to Video (VI, 4)
IPv4 Configuration Type: DHCP

Any ideas?

autumnwalker

@rcmpayne I had an issue with the MAC address association on the IPTV VLAN for some reason. Internet was fine right off the bat, IPTV wouldn't grab an IP. You could spoof the MAC or you could wait awhile for the existing lease to expire. Once the MAC association thing was sorted out for me I got an IP, but no gateway. I had to manually enter the gateway as it was on on the HH3k.

rcmpayne

Re: How to get Bell Fibe in Quebec/Ontario (Internet and IPTV) working with pfSense

@autumnwalker
I just added the mac address and got a IP. but i still cant get TV boxes to start. This is the config now. Does this look right?

autumnwalker

Your IPTV boxes should be in the same subnet / VLAN as your main "trusted" network in order for any of the Bell apps to work.

You do not need 192.168.7.0/24 in your IGMP upstream proxy.

You need to create a manual gateway for IPTV and assign it what you had on your HH3K. The gateway address has been different for every Aliant user I have looked at. I suspect this is your issue - right now the STB's have no gateway defined for network traffic.

With "Allow DNS server list to be overridden by DHCP ..." you do not need to enter the DNS servers for Bell manually - they will be pulled with your Internet DHCP lease. You should; however, enable a secondary DNS with Cloudflare (1.0.0.1).

pjaneiro

I know this is an old thread, but has anyone ever figure out why iptv's may work for only 10 seconds, i got everything else working fine, even the apps on my tv terminals work, but viewing the tv itself freezes after about 10 seconds or so

I've been reading and reading, I don't get it, I'm using bell ftth passing through the ONT (still on old 2000 homehub), I was using the edgerouter from ubiquity all worked fine, decided to try the pfsense and the settings are really different when it comes to igmp and firewall rules

I also tried the bridging lan and iptv, it wortks kinda ok, but i still have the occasional skip and i cannot access the fibe app from the exterior

Help would be greatly appreciated form the gurus on here

Thanks

pjaneiro

I've been on this for two days now and I can't get the tv going, i only get the 10 seconds per channel working, i tried multiple igmp proxy settings, played with the firewall settings, nada, i got my edgerouter working in a jiffy, anyone with a working setup using bell fibe 1gbit could help me out ?

rekrek

I have it running on opnsense. I did a few things differently but it seems to work. I haven't keep the tv running extended period of time (30min+) but for now it works.
I wrote it down for reference here :
https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=13664.msg62951#msg62951

I started with this page as a guideline.

I noticed you didn't share your firewall rules, you must allow passing of ipv4 & ipv6 traffic !
I didn't touch routing and dns for my setup as I am bridging traffic.

Hope this works for you !

JKnott

@rekrek said in How to get Bell Fibe in Quebec/Ontario (Internet and IPTV) working with pfSense:

you must allow passing of ipv4 & ipv6 traffic !

Bell is using IPv6? When did that happen?

rekrek

Well, looking at my logs, I don't see ipv6 traffic. I read somewhere that enabling IPV6 for iptv solved some troubles. I suppose it's not true. Sorry for the misleading information.
So no ipv6 is not needed for iptv.

JKnott

@rekrek

Bell used to be a world leader in telecom. However, lately they've become a laggard. Several competitors, including most, if not all the cable companies, provide IPv6, as do some of the 3rd party providers, who connect by Bell's ADSL system or cable TV.

pjaneiro

observations on this setup, as of recently I noticed that accessing my recordings is sluggish and getting to the netflix app is a pain, i often get writing for your pvr.....so my initial thought was, failing hdd. so i did a few tests before and decided to plug back in the HH300, speed was back to normal, that's odd, while not turning off the PVR i rebooted my pfsense box and everything got sluggish again, hmmmm, so i was wondering anyone knows what might cause this ?

I also tested something else, in case it was the hard drive, i decided to replace it, for those who didn't know, you can swap out the hard drive with another 1tb or 500gb , the system will reset a few times, you will see a gear and a progress bar, odd thing again, that does not work with the pfsense setup, plugged back in the hh3000 boom, it started to re-install the software, again, i'm no expert in this, but something is missing with this pfsense setup

My setup right now is that i have a ethernet card just for my pvr, that port is in a bridge group with the iptv lan as documented in the steps here further up and my igmp setup has no downstream and an upstream of 10.0.0.0/8

pjaneiro

@pjaneiro

Nevermind, I was looking at my logs, it seems bell has started to use ipv6, i had all kinds of blocked from my pvr but ipv6 addresses, my setup was to block all ipv6, enabled ipv6 and boom, recorded shows started to run fine again, i even tried a new hdd and it started right up to download required software to it, so it might be a good thing to add in the how to that bell now needs ipv6 and it must be enabled in the firewall rules and system itself

idscomm

@pjaneiro
I’m working on my setup here with the HH3000. Would you be able to help me a bit. I got Internet working fine (that’s the easy part) but I have a few issue with the TV.... I’m getting an address but no gateway ... people are also talking about bridging .... do I have to bridge my Lab with my IPTV?

It would be nice to get an updated version of this guide with the latest version of pfsense.

Thanks in advance!

rcmpayne

@idscomm yeah sure I’ll give you a hand. If you can explain your set up that would be great. Are using a media converter into one wan port or do you have a different kind of set up?