US Telco Support → Frontier Communications > [DSL] frontier westell 7500 configuration: UPnP, Bridging

[DSL] frontier westell 7500 configuration: UPnP, Bridging

Hello,

new frontier customer.

I believe I have the westell 7550 modem+wifi router device. Its currently setup as follows:

PPP
DCHP on modem on private lan
wifi off
my personal netgear wifi router serving all my home devices

couple of problems I have had so far:
I have an IP device that I would like to connect to from outside the home network. It is UPnP capable. Using my previous ISP, I was able to use it successfully for over a year. The frontier modem does show that it has had a successful UPnP chat and configured the port forwarding correctly. However, if I try to connect to the device from outside the home network, the modem rejects the connection. I can see it in the modem log that it has refused this connection instead of forwarding to the correct port on the device.

secondly, I would like the modem to be in bridged mode. In my previous setup, the ISP modem (cable) was basically invisible from home network. It passed along the WAN IP to my wifi router and my wifi router handed out private IP addresses and also took care of port forwarding etc. I'd really like to replicate this setup with Frontier.

I contacted Frontier tech support several times but their tech support personnel seem to be less capable than to help me with these questions.

thank you all for your help

Log into the 7550 then Net Connections>Broad Connection>Action then on the active connection open it and change the Mode to Bridge.

Here is a good guide, even though for the 7500 it is the same except the IP of the 7550 and 7500 are different:

»www22.verizon.com/Support/Reside···9175.htm

You will have to setup the Frontier log-in credentials on the Netgear router. I do not know which carrier you previously had but Frontier will only supply you with one public IP on home accounts. So the device you are trying to access from the outside hopefully is connected to your Netgear.

Thank you. I will try this once I get home. The device I am connecting to my frontier modem is a netgear n600 wifi router, SAMKNOWS version. That is the only device to connect to the modem

everything worked. thank you very much. i dont know why frontier tech support did not want to help. they actually told me bridging is not supported.

one more question: Now how do I access the modem? I have setup the router to give out 192.168.254.x IP from 1 to 100. The modem was at 192.168.254.254 using subnet 255.255.255.0.

I don't know what your current modem is but you can access it by connecting your laptop or PC directly into one of the ports on the 7550 and you can log into it. But you will have to set the network card to a fixed IP within the 192.168.254.254 domain. You can use 192.168.254.35 or something like that and subnet of 255.255.255.0. Once you are in bridge mode you should really have very little need to log back into the 7550, unless you want to change configuration or to review the sync information. Some routers, i.e. ZyWall USG series, will permit different addressing on the WAN and WAN-PPP configuration and can be configured to permit direct access from behind your router.

ok, spoke too soon. several issues.

the modem's dhcp is visible on the routers lan. i have no idea why. the modem is connected to the "wan/uplink" port on the wnr2000. so i have to either turn off dhcp on modem and give a static ip to the wnr2000 and let wnr2000 dhcp handle the home network (i am doing this now) or i turn off the dhcp on wnr2000 and let modem's dhcp issue ip's.

using modem's dhcp is not really a problem, but the modem is really very basic, no ip reservations ... which means both my router and the ip camera keep getting varying ip address rendering them useless.

the modem refuses to stay in bridged mode. it keeps going back to its original pppoe configuration by itself.

Make sure the modem's UPnP is turned off. Also make sure that DHCP on the modem is turned off. The IP from the provider should pass to the router.

yes, i did those. router does get the ISP IP. But the modem reverts to pppoe config on its own after a short while

It should not do that. Check to make sure that public LAN is turned off. Not sure if that would effect it but worth the check. If all those things check good ask Frontier to replace it.

frontier says bridged mode is not supported at all.

any ideas on why the modem's DHCP is becoming available on my routers LAN?

Under Advance go into Private LAN and make sure DHCP is not checked. Also go into IP Address Distribution and make sure that is turned off.

I know they do not support bridged mode. But one never know when they will have a another problem. Maybe the internet light is always red, the modem just will not turn on after several attempts using power cycle or your power supply is bad. Yes, the of course the line is connected from the jack to the modem but it just will not work. As I mentioned one never knows when a piece of electronic equipment is going to fail or for what reason.

updates:

bridge mode was successful in that the modem stays in bridge mode. maybe it was my mistake earlier when it refused to stay.

i also tried with an at&t 2wire 2701hg-b dsl modem+router. i was able to put it in bridge mode without any problems.

looks like the problem is with the netgear wnr3500l router. it operates fine when its in AP mode, i.e., it receives a DHCP address from the ISP/modem and it works as wifi router only. The moment, I put in the PPPOE details and have the router setup the PPPOE, it has problems. For the first 10-25 minutes, everything works as expected.

Shortly after, it will stop giving out IPs. It will also become unreachable. However, the activity lights on the unit function as usual. If I pull out the modem's power, the router will indicate internet no longer available. If I plug it back it, it will show the correct status LED. It will even respond on ping sometimes.

Modem lan: 192.168.1.254 or 192.168.254.254, dhcp off, bridge mode
router: 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.1.10 or 192.168.254.1 or 192.168.254.10, dhcp excludes modem IP

I have not tried to use a wired connection only to the router when it becomes unresponsive. I have read some posts that the router sometimes does have problems with wifi but wired clients work fine. However, I have used this with cable modem and dsl modem and never had any problems. So at this point, I am very certain the problem is because of the wnr3500L unit when it is configured to setup the PPPOE with modem in bridge.

So currently, I have the modem handing out DHCP + DSL + PPOE. The modem is plugged in to the LAN port of the WNR3500L. WNR3500L serves only as the wifi component.

This still leaves me with two problems I started with:
1) No control over DHCP assignment -> the 7550 doesnt let you do this
2) The IP Camera cant be accessed from outside the home network. Plus I have to check the modem for the camera's IP address periodically due to (1).

Can you set the camera's IP address to a fixed IP? The 7550 will see that that IP is assigned to the camera and just renew the lease for it.

so ... i just found out, the upnp and port forwadring does work. its just not allowing a name based connection from inside the home network. modem actively blocks this connection (from inside home, connect using hostname). (br0-ppp0 blocked is the message along with IP addresses)

i.e., i cannot access the camera using a hostname, its actually a DDNS name I use for the camera.

From outside the home network, I can access the camera using the DDNS name. I think I know the reason for this behavior.

So for now, in the home, I use IP to connect and from outside, I use DDNS name.

In my earlier setup, a cable modem is bridge mode, connected to WNR3500L with NO authentication required, allowed DDNS name from inside and outside just fine. So when I was testing, I tried the DDNS name and assumed it didnt work.

I set a 2 day lease time and so far the hosts have been asking for same IPs again when its time to renew. So I guess its ok for now.

But I am surprised at WNR3500L not being able to handle PPPOE connections

What is the model of the camera that you are using?

Foscam FI8910W

Upnp and ddns works perfectly.