u/Noomalicious

UPDATE – fully reassured and thank you everyone for help and advice. For what it is worth current favourite is the Jinglai Hotel Shanghai South Bund Xintiandi.

ORIGINAL POST: We realise we will both have to register, but she is anxious about choosing a “non-judgy” hotel. I’m not even sure what that means! Any types of hotel which might suit better than others? We would like to stay within about 3km of the Bund.

I’m trying to replace a Vodafone Power Hub WiFi 6 with a TP-Link ER605 v2 managed by an OC200 controller.

Service details:

• Vodafone Full Fibre 910
• Openreach FTTP
• Openreach ONT
• ER605 v2
• OC200 controller (v6.0.0.36)

The Vodafone router connects immediately when plugged into the ONT.

On the ER605 I have configured:

• WAN1
• PPPoE
• Vodafone username and password
• MTU 1492
• MAC cloned from the Vodafone router WAN MAC

After speaking with Vodafone support, they confirmed:

• The PPPoE username and password are correct.
• I should configure VLAN 911 on the third-party router.

Symptoms:

• WAN link is stable at 1000 Mbps full duplex.
• Initially I was getting repeated PPPoE PADI timeouts.
• After one ONT power cycle I briefly got “authentication failed (wrong username/password)” which suggested the PPPoE server was responding.
• Subsequent attempts returned to PADI timeouts.
• No IP address, gateway or DNS is assigned on WAN1.

I’ve tried:

• Rebooting the ONT
• Leaving the ONT powered off for 10+ minutes
• Re-entering credentials
• Using the username both with and without the [@] broadband.vodafone.co.uk suffix
• MAC cloning the Vodafone router

Questions:

1. Has anyone successfully connected an ER605 v2 directly to Vodafone Full Fibre 910 on Openreach?
2. Is VLAN 911 definitely required on Vodafone Openreach FTTP?
3. Are there any ER605-specific PPPoE settings I should be using?
4. Has anyone seen the combination of occasional authentication failures mixed with mostly PADI timeouts?

Any screenshots of a working ER605 Vodafone FTTP WAN configuration would be greatly appreciated.

I’m trying to replace a Vodafone Power Hub WiFi 6 with a TP-Link ER605 v2 managed by an OC200 controller.

Service details:

• Vodafone Full Fibre 910
• Openreach FTTP
• Openreach ONT
• ER605 v2
• OC200 controller (v6.0.0.36)

The Vodafone router connects immediately when plugged into the ONT.

On the ER605 I have configured:

• WAN1
• PPPoE
• Vodafone username and password
• MTU 1492
• MAC cloned from the Vodafone router WAN MAC

After speaking with Vodafone support, they confirmed:

• The PPPoE username and password are correct.
• I should configure VLAN 911 on the third-party router.

Symptoms:

• WAN link is stable at 1000 Mbps full duplex.
• Initially I was getting repeated PPPoE PADI timeouts.
• After one ONT power cycle I briefly got “authentication failed (wrong username/password)” which suggested the PPPoE server was responding.
• Subsequent attempts returned to PADI timeouts.
• No IP address, gateway or DNS is assigned on WAN1.

I’ve tried:

• Rebooting the ONT
• Leaving the ONT powered off for 10+ minutes
• Re-entering credentials
• Using the username both with and without the [@] broadband.vodafone.co.uk suffix
• MAC cloning the Vodafone router

Questions:

1. Has anyone successfully connected an ER605 v2 directly to Vodafone Full Fibre 910 on Openreach?
2. Is VLAN 911 definitely required on Vodafone Openreach FTTP?
3. Are there any ER605-specific PPPoE settings I should be using?
4. Has anyone seen the combination of occasional authentication failures mixed with mostly PADI timeouts?

My screenshot below (username identifier and end of MAC obscured. The username ends .co.uk). Any screenshots of a working ER605 Vodafone FTTP WAN configuration would be greatly appreciated.

https://preview.redd.it/li1d4prm6u8h1.png?width=531&format=png&auto=webp&s=70681ae22d1dbe27719613997123b9141335dba4

Train tickets used to show individually in Wallet, and could therefore be moved up or down to put them in correct date order. Now they are grouped together and you move between them by swiping sideways. This is most irritating. Is there a way to change the display back to the previous version?

I bought a few items at the Uniqlo store in Chengdu, and having heard some announcements about applying for a tax refund for eligible people, which I correctly took to include short term foreign visitors, I asked at the till. They were very helpful and prepared some paper documentation for presentation when leaving China.

The tax refund desk was immediately after the first security check when entering the international departures area at Shenzhen, where I was changing planes for the flight back. They further endorsed the paperwork and told me where to find the office where the refund is actually processed.

Actually, I should have had the items with me, but they were in my hold luggage. Nevertheless (after asking me to make sure that next time I had them with me) the forms were endorsed.

I then took the forms to the office where the refund is processed (it is near Gate 118 at Shenzhen). There is a do it yourself machine, but they waved me away from it because they need to do some magic with the passport. Finally it was sorted and you get a choice of where you would like the refund sent – for example to a credit card, or to WeChat or Alipay.

That’s it. I think the refund was about 16% of what I had paid for the items.

I put the maximum three cards on each of these payment apps.

On Alipay American Express what’s the primary card and worked every time. Sometimes, but not always, I needed to enter my PIN.

WeChatPay took money first from the wallet, which I had hoped to avoid because I wanted the wallet to be the safety net. After that it used the primary card which is a Lloyds credit card. On just one occasion that payment method failed: there was an outage across Lloyds that day. I used the Wise card (preloaded card) instead and there were no problems.

My takeaway is that both American Express and Lloyds seem fine but a preloaded Wise card makes an excellent safety net. It was particularly important that Alipay remained functional, since Alipay was the only app through which I was able to order a taxi.

So after 10 days in China – mostly Chengdu – I have not needed a mainland phone number, although there were one or two occasions when I could not achieve certain things. These were: bicycle hire, audio guide hire, most attempts to get a taxi. However, the DiDi mini app within Alipay worked very well.

I’m just coming to the end of 10 fabulous days in China – Chengdu mainly. I have been using a Trip.com data eSIM, and hats off to them: it has been bulletproof. My one issue was that ChatGPT app is not available when using the eSIM without a VPN. But I used the Proton VPN free account throughout and had no issues.