FTTH
Having recently moved home I have become a part of the privileged few (hopefully not for long) in the UK to have fibre-to-the-home (FTTH sometimes known as fibre-to-the-premises or FTTP). Not wanting to use the EE provided all in one modem/firewall/router/switch/access point I have a setup that uses the pre-installed BT Openreach Nokia modem (ONT) a pfSense firewall/router along with a Ubiquiti switch and (eventual) pair of Ruckus wireless access points.
From the BT Openreach modem a copper cable (probably Cat6) connects to the WAN interface on my pfSense firewall. EE provide some guides (see links below) that provide some handy pointers but don’t answer all the questions.
EE guide 1 – How do I use my own router for home broadband?
EE guide 2 – What are my home broadband internet settings?
Working out your username (and password)
As described in the guides your username will be in the format PRODUCTIONHQNUN<NUMBERS>@fs after a little bit of poking around the username is the same as the EE account number which can be found at https://mybroadbandaccount.ee.co.uk/b2cselfcare/b2c/myaccount > select your active account > it’s the number in the round brackets.
For example the username based on the (redacted) account number as shown below could be PRODUCTIONHQNUN48123456@fs.
Your password will have been set when you first signed up for Broadband/your EE account (if you have changed your EE account password since first setting it it’ll likely still be the first password set). If you can’t remember this or don’t know it you will probably have to call 150 to see if it can be recovered (or changed).
Plugging it into pfSense
With this information in hand hop into your WAN interface on pfSense and configure as shown below. Firewall/NAT configuration is out of the scope of this guide but the defaults configured in pfSense will normally work well as is.