Technical Tip: Integrating FortiGate with Bell Fibe ISP with the Giga Hub modem and PPPoE Passthrough

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Description	This article describes the steps needed to integrate a FortiGate interface with the Bell Fibe ISP in Canada. These steps are primarily aimed at those already using this ISP and wishing to have the public IP on the FortiGate interface rather than having the Bell Giga Hub perform NAT for the FortiGate.
Scope	FortiOS.
Solution	Bell Fibe is a Canadian residential fiber-to-the-home provider where the service is currently provided via a combination Router/Modem given to the subscriber. The 'Giga Hub' device provided by Bell is required to access the service and does not provide a typical 'bridge-mode' functionality that can be toggled on or off to deactivate the routing functionality and behave only as a modem. Instead, the Giga Hub supports PPPoE pass-through while the internal router functionality remains active.  This differs from previous iterations of the modem used by Bell such as the 'Home Hub 3000', where the SFP transceiver was removable and could be inserted into an SFP port on the FortiGate directly. With the 'Giga Hub', the transceiver is built-in and soldered, meaning the method in Technical Tip: Bell Fibe configuration directly on the FortiGate is no longer possible for new subscribers. These steps assume that the Giga Hub is already functional and connected to an interface on the FortiGate via the 4xGE Ethernet ports (yellow), or the single 10/5/2.5G/1G Ethernet port (metallic) at the back of the modem. If the service speed exceeds 1 Gbps, consider using the metallic port with the appropriate speed on the FortiGate interface (SFP+ or 10G-Base-T or multigig Ethernet). The example below makes use of the X2 port on a FortiGate 101F with the FN-TRAN-SFP + GC transceiver to connect to the 10G port on the Giga Hub. No special configuration is needed on the Bell Giga Hub, but if the FortiGate is being used with FortiAP or FortiWiFi, it is recommended to turn off the wireless functionality of the Giga Hub. Configure the x2 interface for PPPoE connection. For Bell Canada , the PPPoE username always starts with 'b1.....' and is not the login used to access the customer portal. Rather, this username will be visible on the customer portal under 'My Services' for 'Internet'. The password is often provided with the welcome letter. If a welcome letter was never received, Bell support can reset this password if needed. Navigate to System -> Interface -> x2. Switch the mode to PPPoE and provide PPPoE Credentials, then select 'OK' when complete. In the CLI, the steps from C and D can be performed via the following commands (the username/password are placeholder examples only): FG101FTK19------ # config system interface FG101FTK19------ (interface) # edit x2 FG101FTK19------ (x2) # set mode pppoe FG101FTK19------ (x2) # set username b1abc1234 FG101FTK19------ (x2) # set password Bellb1PasswordHere FG101FTK19------ (x2) # show     config system interface         edit "x2"             set vdom "root"             set mode pppoe             set allowaccess ping             set type physical             set mediatype sr             set alias "Bell_FTTH"             set monitor-bandwidth enable             set snmp-index 8             set username "b1abc1234"             set password ENC TI396IDwqQC37oYq1tip4X5eE2f37ncGY1WWXlwJE6zrfthzTVRfjg8kW0MBK..........             set speed 10000full         next     end FG101FTK19------ (x2) # end The interface should now show a public IP obtained via PPPoE. If the connection fails, run the following debug commands diag debug reset diag debug disable diag debug app pppoed -1 diag debug enable To stop the debug:     diag debug disable Make sure to check if the pppoe process is up and running with the following command:    diag sys top 10 300 | grep pppoed Important note: PPPoE cannot be offloaded and, by default, will process ingressing PPPoE session frames via a single CPU core. This can lead to down link performance being lower than expected on some models. For further technical details and potential optimization steps, see the article in the Related articles section below. Related articles: Technical Tip: Optional PPPoE performance optimization