Shifting from Act Fiber to Excitel

[trichola]

Have act fiber 300mbps plan, but it doesn't work when there is power cut.
So considering to shift to excitel as price seems great; even though jio fiber was stable as per my neighbors, the ping and latency are bad.
Can you answer a couple of questions that can help me decide whether to shift to excitel or not?

1. Is bridge mode possible with excitel? With act fiber I use my own router (archer c6) and I feel it's better than what they usually give.
2. Can we login to their router and change few settings like dns, blocking urls or mac ids?
3. Is ping and latency good?
4. How long do they resolve the issues with internet disconnections (I know it depends on the location and local operator, but want to know an avg)

Apart from this, any negatives or positives doing this shift from act to excitel, do let me know.

 

[Sushubh]

since no one else has answered yet. for the first two points, answer is that their router is pretty locked and they do not offer bridge. i have seen some posts where people have claimed that they managed to get their own router working but i do not have any definitive guide at hand right now. third party... ping and latency is good to services they peer with like google servers. it might not be a good option if you are into gaming and stuff. fourth point... my local lco seems to have decent folks. i have had few wire cuts in the last couple of years. and most of the time they have managed to get me back online on same day. as long as wire cut does not happen past 3-4pm. then it is usually delayed to next day.

 

[trichola]

@Sushubh Disappointing if it doesn't support bridge mode and router is locked. It's very important to see who are all connected and also disable some settings and change dns.
The excitel guy, has told me "yes" when i asked for bridge mode; possible that he may have lied just for sales, considering how many times they called me. He said the router which they are giving has only 2 lan ports.

 

[FunnyMan]

1. Dont know how to setup bridging, but I am using my Archer A9 with OpenWRT with a Digisol ONU. remove excitel provided router
2. login via excitel admin login and you can change DNS, block mac, and block URL haven't tested.
3. I get 19-20, but my isp is way far, I know friend who lives in delhi get 4-5 loaded and unloaded both.
4. I create tickets, their system auto checks if there is outage or local issue, outage gets resolved in 1hr happens in 6month, I have save my Local LCO no. and directly drop him msg if local issue occurs he repairs mostly in 6hr to 1 day. Happened 2 times in 2yrs.
Also once no internet connectivity ticket is raised you get 1 day extra validity for every 4 business hours internet service is not restored max to 3 days permonth. So they try to restore connection quickly, or they don't get paid for 1 day.

I have made post on different forum TE, on how to use digisol onu + archer, don't know if crossposting is allowed, you can search there excitel ONU bypass.

 

[Rickysin]

you need to login to excitel router with admin credentials and there you can enable bridge mode, in my case my TP-Link router ax10 worked fine and pppoe connection was established on it.

i tried to setup tplink xz000-g7 but it failed.

ping from excitel is far stable than airtel and jio in my case and stable too. Even speed is also stable 24x7. did not face any wire cuts from the day i opted for the connection.

Though in my case Apple services like apple maps etc failed to connect on excitel and backend engineers failed to fix the issue and its been 6 or 7 months and still facing the issue.

 

[RajeshV]

The battery in your ACT node must be dead. Just raise a complaint and they'll replace it, then it'll work during powercuts.

 

[trichola]

I raised the complaint and they changed the battery too and said it should work from now on.
The technician said it should work for 1-2 hours max.
Later same problem started again.

 

[Deleted member 87056]

Idk why bridge mode is such an important criteria, it's much easier to use your own router with Double NAT than going through the hassle of setting the ONT in bridge mode that most ISPs don't even allow, unless you have a real use case like port forwarding(I am not really sure if ISPs allow port forwarding now). In my case, Tata Play Fiber folks set up the ONT in bridge mode since day1 and I just had to login using the PPPoE ID password on my own router. It was very easy. I would not budge Airtel or Excitel guys to provide bridge mode knowing the nightmare I have to deal with their customer care, it's just not worth it.
I'd say if ACT works fine for you, just raise a complain with them as someone mentioned, I am pretty sure they will fix it, I have had good experience with ACT in the past. Connection quality, ping, routing and stability would be much better than Excitel imo.
The biggest disadvantage with Excitel is that they rely on third party LCO for last mile connectivity while ACT has their own staff who resolve issues and install connection, just like Jio and Tata Play.
Alternatively you can get Jio Fiber as a backup connection in case ACT goes down. That would be the best bet for you.

 

[Danny!]

@Sushubh Im using Excitel With my own router ! Basically its a Bridge mode {Using as PPPoE on my TP-Link AX 53} Router
!!! Yk it took me 3 months to get that !. The only solution is that to contact them via linked in They will solve the issues on the real prior basis And yeah from there the magic happened. as the latency is Too low in excitel i became permanent customer for excitel No turning back and BTW My LCO is a chill and cool guy and resolves the issues faster than a light FR . Cable cuts are rare scenarios where it will take 1 - 3 Hours max

 

[meprateek2]

Hi @Danny! ,

Hope you're good, I'm from Bandlaguda area and using Excitel.
Could you please share the bridge mode configuration parameters screenshots of Excitel Router & the AX53 PPPoE screenshots also.
I would like to use my TP-Link Archer as my main router.

Appreciate your help. Thanks