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I apologise if this is posted in the wrong stackexchange but I am currently in the process of building and testing a router running pfSense.

Having recently had a line fault, the BT Openreach engineer that did the repair told me of the huge cost implications of a subscriber causing the fault. As such, I began to question whether or not a router misconfigured with either a software or hardware fault/issue could cause issues on the telecomms network externally. This does seem absurd to be, surely the network should be pretty well protected against router issues and only the subscriber would be knocked offline should an issue arise but I wanted to be absolutely certain.

James W
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  • First sentance was right. it is a wrong stackexchange site. Not sure where it does fit though. – Hennes Dec 22 '15 at 15:21
  • @Hennes I assumed since Serverfault is mostly for Server and Networking that this'd be a fit. If anyone does have a suggestion for where I should ask though, I'd happily ask somewhere else. – James W Dec 22 '15 at 15:25
  • Hardware issue can always happen. I hope their equipment is secure from that. Software/routing issues should not propagate to an providers network anyway. (though an error can obviously result in a network setup which does not work on your side. But it should not take down or disturb the provider. Having written that. BGP can result in 'fun'. – Hennes Dec 22 '15 at 15:31
  • I would assume they'd have a pretty resilient network, especially considering isolated faults don't _usually_ take down an entire exchange. – James W Dec 22 '15 at 15:38
  • I was going to mention BGP but realistically if nobody is peered with you, you can advertise what you want and who cares? I suspect most competent ISPs will block BGP traffic if they are not expecting it anyway. – Mintra Dec 22 '15 at 15:42
  • Thanks for the clarification. I might have do some reading into BGP – James W Dec 22 '15 at 15:49
  • It's an interesting topic to read around but you shouldn't need to actually touch it for a small premises internet connection. – Mintra Dec 22 '15 at 16:11

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You're not going to be able to cause physical line faults by misconfiguring the software on your router. I suppose if you physically shorted out the pins in the telephone socket you may trip something out in the exchange, but you're unlikely to be doing that.

The worst you can probably do with software misconfiguration is temporarily break your own internet access.

Mintra
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  • I should be up and running on a FTTP installation soon, although that was promised over a year ago (part of a fibre upgrade scheme run by the government). I will likely be using an external modem in that case so there should be no issues. Thanks! – James W Dec 22 '15 at 15:37