I’ve had many routers over the years — Linksys WRT54GL, Linux and iptables, ASUS RT-N66U, Ubiquiti USG, OPNsense, Ubiquiti EdgeRouter, and MikroTik CCR1009. At least those are the ones I can remember.

But I’ve been fascinated by VyOS ever since I first heard about it, even more so after using the EdgeRouter CLI. As both VyOS and EdgeOS are forks of Vyatta.

Fascinated and intimidated is probably more accurate — the lack of a GUI doesn’t give you a lot of help… But at the same time, it’s a great learning experience — you have to know and understand what you are doing 🙂

So I set out to replace my internet facing router — with a virtualized VyOS instance 🙂

I recently decided to give Altibox and their 6rd implementation another go — searching the interwebs I stumbled upon a Norwegian forum post that read (translation by me):

Altibox offers native dual-stack IPv6 if your home central is in bridge mode. You get a /56 prefix though DHCPv6-PD (prefix delegation) and can split it into multiple /64 networks. (…) — sveinse

WHAT!? Really? They offer native dual-stack IPv6 with DHCPv6-PD? Let’s test it! 🥳

Back in August I wrote about connecting my ISP (Altibox) fiber straight into the Mikrotik CCR1009. I’ve since decided not to include the CCR in my network stack, but instead use my EdgeRouter 4 as, well — the edge router, and VyOS to route the local networks.

So I moved the SFP module and fiber from the CCR — to the EdgeRouter 4 👇

Ever since I got the fiber installed last year, the plan has been to drop the ISP box and plug it straight into my router. That’s why I had the fiber terminated in my patch panel.

I’ve been reluctant to do it, since messing with the internet needs to be done while the rest of the house is sleeping. And I was unsure what SFP module to use. I did buy the Ubiquiti UF-SM-1G-S pair, planning to use it with my EdgeRouter.

But I ended up using the SFP module that came with the ISP box, and my new MikroTik CCR1009.

The swap was super easy and only took a few minutes 😃

I have two fiber cables in my patch panel — a single-mode simplex SC from my ISP, and a multi-mode duplex LC for 10 GbE network to my desktop computer.