Hi everyone, this is my review on Jio Fiber for the initial FRC of 999 with 150 Mbps of bandwidth and 3300 GB FUP. I have taken only the router as the STB is useless to me (you'll know why below).
1. Installation & Activation: My neighbour had a Jio fiber ad stuck on his wall with the Jio sales rep number and I called him for a connection at my home in the evening around 4 pm. The sales rep is the one who does the KYC arrives at my home at around 7:30 pm takes a pic of the customer and any valid KYC document and after that you get a SMS with a link to pay the security deposit of 1500 and 2500 in case you take the STB as well. This took less than 10 min and he leaves informing me that the installation team will visit tmw morning. Installation team of 2 members visits my house the next day around 12 pm and starts laying fiber cable which has a conduit for extra protection and is black in colour. Then they plug the cable to a fiber distribution box installed on a pole(all poles owned by Jio) nearby. The other end is plugged either into a white box which is basically a cable organizer or to the router/ONT. Activation was done in less than 5 min and they leave.
2. Router and speeds: I got the JCOW401 router which is very similar to the JCO4032. First thing I changed was the DHCP settings which had 192.168.29.1 for gateway and 192.168.29.2 to 192.168.29.254 as the DHCP addresses to 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.2 - 10.0.0.254. Also changed the Wi-Fi channels and AP credentials. I have done a LAN local speedtest using iperf3 and got 931 Mbps out of it. The internet speed was around 140 to 150 Mbps all the time. Do not you cant replace the ONT/Router with your own but you can disable dhcp and other stuff and use your own.
3. Home server: I already have a home server which was acting as a NAS, media server, DNS server(recursive) so connected the server to the router.
I didnt want to rely on the router's firewall so I put the server in the DMZ Hosts list. I also run a DNS server so I put the ipv4 local address and the public IPv6 address in the router's DHCP settings. I use a combination of Adguard Home(better alternative to Pi-Hole) and Unbound. Next i pointed my domain(Cloudflare has my domain) to the server by adding a AAAA record to the server's public IPv6 address. I run many self hosted web apps including Jellyfin (A much better alternative to Plex or emby). I use cloudflare's web protection and firewall to block many threats and i even geoblocked all countries except India for added security.
4. Technology: Jio uses GPON for fiber network as a result there is no need of power(electricity) for the poles or boxes this was the main reason i opted for Jio. Its a dual-stack network with IPv4 + IPv6 and IPv4 is CG-NATed, IPv6 is public with a /64 subnet. The router is a GPON ONT/Router combo including VoIP. The router has a RJ-11 port for the VoIP calls thru a landline do note that Jio doesnt provide VoIP credentials and hence you are stuck with either the landline or the propeitary mobile app. Jio is registered with AP-NIC with ASN55836 and has the highest IPv6 deployment in the world with 91.76% making India the largest country in terms of IPv6 deployment. Team-F1 develops the firmware for the routers and its based in the EU with an Indian branch here in Hyderabad.
5. Reliability: My uptime is 99.6% down only for 3 hours that too was caused by a jackass who disconnected the cable from the db box on the pole and was resolved really quickly so really happy with it. Even during power outage there is no issue as the network is passive though you need to power the router but that was not an issue as I already have a UPS for my server and home.
6. Latency and gaming: I am not a huge gamer and mostly play offline games but I also do play Valorant with my friends and I get around 30 to 35 ms ping to Mumbai servers and around 47 to 52 ping to Singapore servers. In terms of Cloud providers, Azure provides the least ping at 25 ms followed by GCP at 30ms and AWS at 35ms. I SSHed into all my VPSs and had no connection issues or drops.
7. Censorship : Jio is one of the worst if not the worst offender in this regard, they use DPI to block websites instructed by the Govt and many by themselves, However the DPI is similar to the one done by unifi routers and can be easily bypassed by using GoodbyeDPI, powertunnel etc. There was no throttling of specific websites so no need to worry about net neutrality.
8. Reason to Switch to Jio: I was using ACT Fibernet but had many issues with it; They use ethernet from their switch so there are some losses, No internet after power goes off for more than 5 minutes as the switch's battery dies, very bad IPv6 routing, Dynamic IP even for IPv6. Terrible customer service and very bad uptime at 91.2%.
9. Final thoughts: Jio Fiber is a very reliable and affordable ISP. Many people on this forum have been misinformed a lot about the router's features and think its a locked down black box which it ain't. The missing part is documentation of all settings which is lacking. Its performance pretty similar to routers costing 3 to 4k like the TP-Link Archer A7. I am primarily a LAN user and hence haven't fully tested Wi-FI range and speeds. Compared to Airtel, you get proper and good IPv6 routing and compared to LCOs much better service, tech and reliability.
10. Extras : If you have any questions or want any tests to be performed please comment below and will try to do it.
1. Installation & Activation: My neighbour had a Jio fiber ad stuck on his wall with the Jio sales rep number and I called him for a connection at my home in the evening around 4 pm. The sales rep is the one who does the KYC arrives at my home at around 7:30 pm takes a pic of the customer and any valid KYC document and after that you get a SMS with a link to pay the security deposit of 1500 and 2500 in case you take the STB as well. This took less than 10 min and he leaves informing me that the installation team will visit tmw morning. Installation team of 2 members visits my house the next day around 12 pm and starts laying fiber cable which has a conduit for extra protection and is black in colour. Then they plug the cable to a fiber distribution box installed on a pole(all poles owned by Jio) nearby. The other end is plugged either into a white box which is basically a cable organizer or to the router/ONT. Activation was done in less than 5 min and they leave.
2. Router and speeds: I got the JCOW401 router which is very similar to the JCO4032. First thing I changed was the DHCP settings which had 192.168.29.1 for gateway and 192.168.29.2 to 192.168.29.254 as the DHCP addresses to 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.2 - 10.0.0.254. Also changed the Wi-Fi channels and AP credentials. I have done a LAN local speedtest using iperf3 and got 931 Mbps out of it. The internet speed was around 140 to 150 Mbps all the time. Do not you cant replace the ONT/Router with your own but you can disable dhcp and other stuff and use your own.
3. Home server: I already have a home server which was acting as a NAS, media server, DNS server(recursive) so connected the server to the router.
I didnt want to rely on the router's firewall so I put the server in the DMZ Hosts list. I also run a DNS server so I put the ipv4 local address and the public IPv6 address in the router's DHCP settings. I use a combination of Adguard Home(better alternative to Pi-Hole) and Unbound. Next i pointed my domain(Cloudflare has my domain) to the server by adding a AAAA record to the server's public IPv6 address. I run many self hosted web apps including Jellyfin (A much better alternative to Plex or emby). I use cloudflare's web protection and firewall to block many threats and i even geoblocked all countries except India for added security.
4. Technology: Jio uses GPON for fiber network as a result there is no need of power(electricity) for the poles or boxes this was the main reason i opted for Jio. Its a dual-stack network with IPv4 + IPv6 and IPv4 is CG-NATed, IPv6 is public with a /64 subnet. The router is a GPON ONT/Router combo including VoIP. The router has a RJ-11 port for the VoIP calls thru a landline do note that Jio doesnt provide VoIP credentials and hence you are stuck with either the landline or the propeitary mobile app. Jio is registered with AP-NIC with ASN55836 and has the highest IPv6 deployment in the world with 91.76% making India the largest country in terms of IPv6 deployment. Team-F1 develops the firmware for the routers and its based in the EU with an Indian branch here in Hyderabad.
5. Reliability: My uptime is 99.6% down only for 3 hours that too was caused by a jackass who disconnected the cable from the db box on the pole and was resolved really quickly so really happy with it. Even during power outage there is no issue as the network is passive though you need to power the router but that was not an issue as I already have a UPS for my server and home.
6. Latency and gaming: I am not a huge gamer and mostly play offline games but I also do play Valorant with my friends and I get around 30 to 35 ms ping to Mumbai servers and around 47 to 52 ping to Singapore servers. In terms of Cloud providers, Azure provides the least ping at 25 ms followed by GCP at 30ms and AWS at 35ms. I SSHed into all my VPSs and had no connection issues or drops.
7. Censorship : Jio is one of the worst if not the worst offender in this regard, they use DPI to block websites instructed by the Govt and many by themselves, However the DPI is similar to the one done by unifi routers and can be easily bypassed by using GoodbyeDPI, powertunnel etc. There was no throttling of specific websites so no need to worry about net neutrality.
8. Reason to Switch to Jio: I was using ACT Fibernet but had many issues with it; They use ethernet from their switch so there are some losses, No internet after power goes off for more than 5 minutes as the switch's battery dies, very bad IPv6 routing, Dynamic IP even for IPv6. Terrible customer service and very bad uptime at 91.2%.
9. Final thoughts: Jio Fiber is a very reliable and affordable ISP. Many people on this forum have been misinformed a lot about the router's features and think its a locked down black box which it ain't. The missing part is documentation of all settings which is lacking. Its performance pretty similar to routers costing 3 to 4k like the TP-Link Archer A7. I am primarily a LAN user and hence haven't fully tested Wi-FI range and speeds. Compared to Airtel, you get proper and good IPv6 routing and compared to LCOs much better service, tech and reliability.
10. Extras : If you have any questions or want any tests to be performed please comment below and will try to do it.
