XR1000v2 with fibre ISP 4th Utility (UK) - Icotera i5205-00 bridge device issues

[VJ4YK5]

Hi all,

I was hoping someone may be able to help me. I've been hitting a brick wall for about 12 months with my ISP 4th Utility (they are truly one of the worst fibre providers out there for a number of reasons which I won't go in to).

In a nutshell they provided me with an Icotera i5205-00 bridge device in November 2023, this feeds the fibre connection to my XR1000v2. When I first got it I punched in the supplied PPPoE details in to my router, successfully connected and had no issues with it until June 2025. Since then I've had intermittent connection drops, where the fibre light on the bridge device flashes and the internet light on the router goes red. Sometimes it comes back up on its own, sometimes it goes off again quickly, sometimes it's just one drop. There's no real pattern to it to be entirely honest. 4th Utility don't want to know and just end up telling me to go to my router manufacturer, so here I am fresh off of an extremely frustrating 2 hour 10 minute phone call with them.

They originally supplied me with a Dasan H660GM GPON ONT router. It's ugly, the antennas are at ridiculous angles and I don't want it on my wall. As part of the troubleshooting I've been doing I left the Dasan in bridge mode connected to my XR1000v2 for a week and experienced no connection drops. In my opinion this identified the issue being with the bridge device, but they're refusing to send me a replacement and stating that the logs on their end indicate that the device is fine and it's a problem with the credentials which must be my 3rd party router's configuration (or something along those lines, I was so beyond frustrated that it's slightly difficult to recall). While on hold I checked this forum and thought it could possibly be related to the VLAN ID, I had to almost beg the person on the phone to check if there was one as he was outright refusing at first but he eventually stated that his senior said there is no tag.

Can anyone suggest anything related to the XR1000v2 that could be causing this? The bridge device has no GUI or ability to be configured, and when it's connected to the XR1000v2 via the WAN/Internet port the only thing I have configured is the PPPoE credentials (see screenshot). When I have the Dasan H660GM connected instead I do not change any config in the XR1000v2 but I do configure the Dasan in to bridge mode on WAN0 with Tag 201 (see screenshot) which seems to work fine despite the ISP stating there's no tag (I also do not know if this is correctly set but, it works?).

The only thing I can think of that's different from when I first started using the bridge device to now is that years ago the PPPoE credentials had a different username and password depending on whether you were using the Dasan router or the Icotera bridge device. They've since changed that and now it's one username and password regardless of which device you use. I have no idea if that's important or even relevant but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Unfortunately I live in a block of flats and I don't have the option to switch to a better provider as 4th Utility installed their lines here themselves, every day I wish CityFibre had instead.

Any help or guidance would be much appreciated!

[Netduma Fraser]

They're blaming it on a 3rd party router and when replacing the bridge device it seems to work so I think it if is that device then if possible I would directly connect your PC to the bridge device for awhile and see if the same issue happens. If it does then it's definitely the bridge device and they can't blame the router, hopefully they'd then do the right thing. If not then it's more likely the bridge device and XR don't play well together, in which case you may not want to but the Dasan may be the best setup to use - if you're using the XR for WiFi then perhaps you can remove the Dasan antennae for better aesthetics. 

On the Internet Setup page on the XR for the timeout option update this to whatever the maximum value it will allow you to enter is, apply, reboot the router from the interface and then see if it works better overall after that. How do you usually resolve the issue if the connection doesn't restore itself?

[VJ4YK5]

42 minutes ago, Netduma Fraser said:

They're blaming it on a 3rd party router and when replacing the bridge device it seems to work so I think it if is that device then if possible I would directly connect your PC to the bridge device for awhile and see if the same issue happens. If it does then it's definitely the bridge device and they can't blame the router, hopefully they'd then do the right thing. If not then it's more likely the bridge device and XR don't play well together, in which case you may not want to but the Dasan may be the best setup to use - if you're using the XR for WiFi then perhaps you can remove the Dasan antennae for better aesthetics. 

On the Internet Setup page on the XR for the timeout option update this to whatever the maximum value it will allow you to enter is, apply, reboot the router from the interface and then see if it works better overall after that. How do you usually resolve the issue if the connection doesn't restore itself?

Hi Fraser, thanks for the reply and advice.

I’ll connect my PC directly to the bridge and see what happens, then report back.

Unfortunately the Dasan antennae don’t detach from the device, it’s a ridiculous piece of hardware.

Regarding the timeout option, I’ve tried to change this before but it’s a field that is prevented from being updated. I’ll confirm this when I’m home later but I’m sure I’ve tried to change it before and been prevented from doing so.

A power cycle usually re-establishes connection on the bridge, but the problem re-occurs after this. So far the only thing that has sustained a consistent connection is the Dasan.

[VJ4YK5]

@Netduma Fraser

Just confirming with an image that I cannot change the Idle Timeout(In Minutes) field that has '5' in it. In the attached image the red circle with a line through it is what my cursor displays as when I hover it over that field and/or click it.

[DARKNESS]

@VJ4YK5I am not a PPOE user, so this isn’t my specialty, but you do realize there's an option to change the tag and set up bridge mode if you’re using PPOE on the advanced tap with the VLAN tag.

• https://jam.dev/c/103ccb6d-ef0e-4a36-873e-6aa403898294

[VJ4YK5]

27 minutes ago, DARKNESS said:

@VJ4YK5I am not a PPOE user, so this isn’t my specialty, but you do realize there's an option to change the tag and set up bridge mode if you’re using PPOE on the advanced tap with the VLAN tag.

• https://jam.dev/c/103ccb6d-ef0e-4a36-873e-6aa403898294

Thanks! I did try using this setting before I put the Dasan back, but I couldn’t seem to get it to work. I’ll give it another go as I’ve just noticed on there it says “0: VLAN is not used for the group”, hopefully someone can tell me exactly what that means but I suppose my assumption is that you input 0 for no tag? If so that does match what my ISP said about there being no tag. I’ll report back after the football lol

[Netduma Fraser]

15 hours ago, VJ4YK5 said:

Thanks! I did try using this setting before I put the Dasan back, but I couldn’t seem to get it to work. I’ll give it another go as I’ve just noticed on there it says “0: VLAN is not used for the group”, hopefully someone can tell me exactly what that means but I suppose my assumption is that you input 0 for no tag? If so that does match what my ISP said about there being no tag. I’ll report back after the football lol

Yes you'd put 0. The ISP timeout must be set to 5 then, if they're otherwise unhelpful perhaps they could change the timeout for you just to see if the issue improves

[VJ4YK5]

11 minutes ago, Netduma Fraser said:

Yes you'd put 0. The ISP timeout must be set to 5 then, if they're otherwise unhelpful perhaps they could change the timeout for you just to see if the issue improves

Thanks Fraser, I’ll do some testing later today after work and report back what happens.