Trooli lets customers use their own router — the mark of a decent ISP. If you would rather run a UniFi gateway, a firewall appliance or anything better than the supplied box, here is the whole process, including how to get your PPPoE credentials when the first person you ask says no.

Before you start

Photograph the existing setup — every cable, every port, both boxes. Five seconds now saves an hour later.
Your PPPoE username and password — the one thing you cannot proceed without. See below if support will not give them to you.
A router that can handle the line — if you are on a gigabit or 2Gb package, make sure the hardware can actually route it with any features you plan to enable.
A decent Cat5e or Cat6 patch lead — or just reuse the one that came with the Trooli router, which is known good.

Getting your PPPoE credentials

Trooli's PPPoE username and password are what authenticate your connection, and they are not printed on anything. There are three ways to get them, in order of least effort.

Ask Trooli support

Call and request the PPPoE username and password for your connection. Customers report being given them without fuss. If the person you speak to says it is against policy — an answer some people have had historically — ask again another day or escalate, because it is plainly obtainable and other customers have it.

Read them from a Zyxel router

If Trooli supplied one of the newer Zyxel routers, this is the easy route: log into the router's admin interface with the credentials on the label, find the PPPoE or WAN page once the broadband is working, and reveal the password there. No terminal required.

Extract them from a Technicolor router

Older Technicolor DGA4134 or DGA4135 units do not display the details anywhere in the web interface, so they have to be read from the running process:

Find the Access Key on the label on the underside of the router — on some units it is written under the paper sticker, which has to be peeled back carefully.
SSH to the router as user engineer, using that access key as the password.
Run top and look through the process list for the pppd line. The PPPoE username and password are passed to it as plain arguments — user followed by password.
Write them down before you unplug anything.

Making the switch

Configure your router first
Set the WAN or internet connection type to PPPoE and enter the username and password. Nothing else is needed: leave the VLAN ID blank — do not set 40 or 101, despite what you may read elsewhere — and leave QoS blank too.
Find the ONT
This is the second box on the wall, separate from the router. It converts the incoming fibre to an ordinary network jack. Typically white or black with four indicator lights, a green-ended fibre lead, a network cable and its own power supply. Leave it powered and leave the fibre alone.
Unplug the Trooli router
Including the network cable running from it to the ONT. The ONT itself stays exactly where it is, powered on.
Connect your own router
Plug your router's WAN port into the ONT's RJ45 network jack, using good quality Cat5e or Cat6 — or the lead that came with the Trooli router.
Bring it up and test
Give it a minute to authenticate. If it does not come up, power cycle the ONT once you have double-checked the settings — some ONTs hold onto the previous device for a while.
Sort IPv6 while you are there
Trooli supports IPv6. On a UniFi gateway, set the WAN IPv6 connection type to DHCPv6 with a prefix delegation size of 56. Other routers use the same values under different names.

If it does not connect

Authentication failing

Nine times out of ten the credentials have a typo, or a trailing space picked up when pasting. Retype them by hand. Some PPPoE usernames include a domain suffix after an @ — it is part of the username and must be included exactly.

ONT still holding the old session

Power cycle the ONT, wait for its lights to settle, then reboot your router. If a PPPoE session is already established from the previous router, the new one may be refused until the old session times out.

Cable or port

Confirm you are in the WAN port and not a LAN port, and that the ONT's LAN light comes on when connected. A marginal patch lead will negotiate at a lower speed or not at all — swap in the one Trooli supplied to rule it out.

Stubborn cases

A small number of setups have needed the original router's WAN MAC address cloned onto the new router, and the host-uniq value from the pppd line carried across. Rarely necessary, but worth knowing before you conclude the line is broken.

Why bother running your own router

Real security

A quality gateway such as a Ubiquiti UniFi unit gives you intrusion detection and prevention, proper firewall policy and threat management — none of which an ISP router offers. ISP hardware is also a standing target: a vulnerability in a widely deployed model puts every customer on the same footing at once.

Nobody else's access

ISP routers ship with remote management the provider can use. Your own router has no supplier back door into your network, and you choose your own DNS resolvers for privacy and filtering rather than accepting whatever the ISP points you at.

Features that actually exist

VPN access into the network, port forwarding that works, VLAN segmentation for IoT and guests, meaningful logging. Standard on a decent gateway, absent or crippled on most supplied routers.

Headroom and expansion

More routing throughput and lower latency, which matters for gaming and busy households, plus a platform you can build on with UniFi switches and access points instead of fighting one box's Wi-Fi from the other end of the house.

The ONT is the connection. The router is just the first thing you plug into it — and that part is your choice.

Want it done properly?

We install and configure UniFi gateways, switching and Wi-Fi across homes and businesses, including ISP changeovers like this one. See our network installation service, or call us for anything network, phone or computer related.

Get in touch