1. Background - Till mid 2024, I was using both Airtel Xstream Fiber and Jio Fiber in load-balancing setup. Then for the next one year, I temporarily shifted to a remote place and managed with LTE WAN. Now I am back to the city but in a different place where neither Airtel nor Jio is available in wired form (or maybe they just want to push airfiber). So I have no other option but to look for local ISPs. Out of Hathway, Alliance and PMPL, Hathway is the only player with almost nation-wide presence so I went for it.
2. Before installation - Before taking the connection, I told the salesperson that I won't use their CPEs and will use my own OnT and Router instead. So I need the GPON Serial & Password and PPPOE username & password. I have decided that I will not bother requesting them for bridge mode and will rather take things in my own hand. The sales guy seemed clueless. I told him to talk to their backend team and let me know if this is possible, only then I will take the connection.
3. Installation- Fortunately, after few hours he replied positively by saying that though all the configurations are done remotely from Mumbai and they don't have any control over it, their engineer can provide me the details once it's setup by the Mumbai team. I told him to go ahead with the installation. It was done the same day within 4 hours. Payment was made directly to Hathway. A cheap dual band ONT-Router combo was provided which was just plugged in and the engineers left without internet connection being live. When asked, they told that they can't do anything more than just cabling and installation as everything else will be done from Mumbai. Internet became live almost after 3 more hours. I immediately logged into their ONT and to my surprise all crucial settings are visible, even passwords!!! So I just copied PPPOE username (which is my full name in small letter), and password (for me it's Hathway@123) and VLAN ID (for me it's 241). I set up my TP-Link XZ003-v2 by just entering the GPON Serial (provided in their ONT's label), left GPON password blank, tagged VLAN 241. Then I setup my ER605 with the PPPOE username and password, no MAC cloning required. It started working!!
4. Experience so far - I opted for 40mbps plan and paid Rs. 449x3 months + GST. It's a prepaid connection so after three months I need to recharge. So far plan speed is good. I am getting around 50 mbps symmetrical speed with 3ms unloaded and 8ms loaded latency to the nearest server. Haven't checked with distant or international servers though. No site is blocked. But P2P experience is below average. Even my Vi 4G used to give better speeds while torrenting. To my surprise though, I am getting public IPv4, but IPv6 yet.
That's all for now
2. Before installation - Before taking the connection, I told the salesperson that I won't use their CPEs and will use my own OnT and Router instead. So I need the GPON Serial & Password and PPPOE username & password. I have decided that I will not bother requesting them for bridge mode and will rather take things in my own hand. The sales guy seemed clueless. I told him to talk to their backend team and let me know if this is possible, only then I will take the connection.
3. Installation- Fortunately, after few hours he replied positively by saying that though all the configurations are done remotely from Mumbai and they don't have any control over it, their engineer can provide me the details once it's setup by the Mumbai team. I told him to go ahead with the installation. It was done the same day within 4 hours. Payment was made directly to Hathway. A cheap dual band ONT-Router combo was provided which was just plugged in and the engineers left without internet connection being live. When asked, they told that they can't do anything more than just cabling and installation as everything else will be done from Mumbai. Internet became live almost after 3 more hours. I immediately logged into their ONT and to my surprise all crucial settings are visible, even passwords!!! So I just copied PPPOE username (which is my full name in small letter), and password (for me it's Hathway@123) and VLAN ID (for me it's 241). I set up my TP-Link XZ003-v2 by just entering the GPON Serial (provided in their ONT's label), left GPON password blank, tagged VLAN 241. Then I setup my ER605 with the PPPOE username and password, no MAC cloning required. It started working!!
4. Experience so far - I opted for 40mbps plan and paid Rs. 449x3 months + GST. It's a prepaid connection so after three months I need to recharge. So far plan speed is good. I am getting around 50 mbps symmetrical speed with 3ms unloaded and 8ms loaded latency to the nearest server. Haven't checked with distant or international servers though. No site is blocked. But P2P experience is below average. Even my Vi 4G used to give better speeds while torrenting. To my surprise though, I am getting public IPv4, but IPv6 yet.
That's all for now