Shaun4BigBlocks
New Around Here
Hello Guys & Gals,
I was hoping someone(s’) could help me out here. I have AT&T residential class ADSL2+, so configurations are often more restricted than business class solutions.
Also, I have also inquired about business class solutions from AT&T, but they won’t allow business class service plans to residential addresses- regardless of the fact that two taxed small businesses reside at my address.
I was setup and running fine for a couple of years before lightning hit my local RT (Remote Terminal) and sizzled my old AT&T gateway. The replacement was a NVG-599. Ever since the replacement I now run into all the problems that everyone else talks about- primarily double NATing issues. My speed of 12 down (max AT&T offers to my location) increases ping substantially (from like 40 to 100) and 2.5 down (at idle).
With the old gateway, and after a lot of toying around, I was able to pretty much maintain down speeds with only about an extra 20 added to the ping. Those days are gone.
So, I called AT&T again, basically complaining that I wanted true business class service so as to be able to have a /29 Block with 8 (5 usable static IP’s). They told me that they still couldn’t give me business class (even after offering to provide home business tax records), but that they now could allow me to have the /29 Block with my current residential package. I told them I wanted it!! They told me they needed to send me a BGW-210 first and then to call them to enable the /29 block.
I am up and running with the BGW-210. I figured that before I called them, I would attempt to receive some tips from the forum as this is completely new territory for me. I really don’t need to have my network(s) down for too long while I tinker with them as my wife and I work at different times and it seems that one of us is always needing internet. Basically she has to tether while I tinker.
My goal is to do something like this: have the AT&T gateway go to an unmanaged switch (please comment if you think I need a managed for this), and then have the switch feed an ASUS RT-AC88U (Merlin Firmware) running an addressable VPN client, a Linksys WRT-1200AC (DD-WRT Firmware) running a different VPN client. This is the bare minimum setup I need to be up and running.
That would use three out of my five available static IP’s leaving two open. I would like to use those for tinkering- meaning I have a few other routers running other firmware such as Tomato that I basically just use for learning purposes. I know most won’t believe me, but I used to be able to just connect all the routers to one un-managed switch from the AT&T gateway in IP pass through mode, with light configuration changes, and “it worked”, without a speed penalty that impacted me enough to complain. From what I have read, AT&T has really cracked down on a true bridge mode as they want to be able to more easily track customer usage as this data is valuable to third party interests.
Sooo, is anyone actually doing something like this who cares to give me a few pointers? Theory is nice, but real time experience is priceless. For example, do I use IP pass through, and then the public static IP’s automatically know to self NAT, or do rules have to be configured in the gateways firewall?
I think the biggest problem I am going to have is that most people doing this are using some pretty high end Cisco stuff that takes most of the guesswork out, and then possibly doing most of their configuring while on the phone with Cisco through a business support plan- hopefully this is not the case… I really wish AT&T still offered a dedicated modem (no router) gateway like the old days.
One last thing- the most popular forum response it “Google it”. I just wanted to let you all know I have tried Googling and support for /29 Blocks is few and far between, besides most people don’t even know what a /29 Block is…
I was hoping someone(s’) could help me out here. I have AT&T residential class ADSL2+, so configurations are often more restricted than business class solutions.
Also, I have also inquired about business class solutions from AT&T, but they won’t allow business class service plans to residential addresses- regardless of the fact that two taxed small businesses reside at my address.
I was setup and running fine for a couple of years before lightning hit my local RT (Remote Terminal) and sizzled my old AT&T gateway. The replacement was a NVG-599. Ever since the replacement I now run into all the problems that everyone else talks about- primarily double NATing issues. My speed of 12 down (max AT&T offers to my location) increases ping substantially (from like 40 to 100) and 2.5 down (at idle).
With the old gateway, and after a lot of toying around, I was able to pretty much maintain down speeds with only about an extra 20 added to the ping. Those days are gone.
So, I called AT&T again, basically complaining that I wanted true business class service so as to be able to have a /29 Block with 8 (5 usable static IP’s). They told me that they still couldn’t give me business class (even after offering to provide home business tax records), but that they now could allow me to have the /29 Block with my current residential package. I told them I wanted it!! They told me they needed to send me a BGW-210 first and then to call them to enable the /29 block.
I am up and running with the BGW-210. I figured that before I called them, I would attempt to receive some tips from the forum as this is completely new territory for me. I really don’t need to have my network(s) down for too long while I tinker with them as my wife and I work at different times and it seems that one of us is always needing internet. Basically she has to tether while I tinker.
My goal is to do something like this: have the AT&T gateway go to an unmanaged switch (please comment if you think I need a managed for this), and then have the switch feed an ASUS RT-AC88U (Merlin Firmware) running an addressable VPN client, a Linksys WRT-1200AC (DD-WRT Firmware) running a different VPN client. This is the bare minimum setup I need to be up and running.
That would use three out of my five available static IP’s leaving two open. I would like to use those for tinkering- meaning I have a few other routers running other firmware such as Tomato that I basically just use for learning purposes. I know most won’t believe me, but I used to be able to just connect all the routers to one un-managed switch from the AT&T gateway in IP pass through mode, with light configuration changes, and “it worked”, without a speed penalty that impacted me enough to complain. From what I have read, AT&T has really cracked down on a true bridge mode as they want to be able to more easily track customer usage as this data is valuable to third party interests.
Sooo, is anyone actually doing something like this who cares to give me a few pointers? Theory is nice, but real time experience is priceless. For example, do I use IP pass through, and then the public static IP’s automatically know to self NAT, or do rules have to be configured in the gateways firewall?
I think the biggest problem I am going to have is that most people doing this are using some pretty high end Cisco stuff that takes most of the guesswork out, and then possibly doing most of their configuring while on the phone with Cisco through a business support plan- hopefully this is not the case… I really wish AT&T still offered a dedicated modem (no router) gateway like the old days.
One last thing- the most popular forum response it “Google it”. I just wanted to let you all know I have tried Googling and support for /29 Blocks is few and far between, besides most people don’t even know what a /29 Block is…
