AC68U WAN Dual Access

[davidcmc]

I have the following setup:

Fiberhome PON modem in BRIDGE mode and LAN IP 192.168.1.1
RT-AC68U configured as a ROUTER (NAT enabled), PPPoE authentication with my ISP and LAN IP 192.168.0.1

My laptop is connected to the AC68U wireless. The internet connection is alright. However, I'd like to be able to connect the the Fiberhome web gui without having to connect my laptop directly to it.

My previous router was a TP-Link WR940N, which had a feature called "WAN Dual Access", also known as "Russian PPPoE". With this feature, I could simply configure a secondary static WAN IP address to the same WAN port and be able to connect to the bridged modem.

Look at the pic below:

This allows me to connect to the bridge modem interface directly through the TP-Link WAN port.

In the AC68U configurations, I've found a "Dual WAN" feature, but it seems to be targeted for people with actual double ISP connections (like load balance or backup connection). It doesn't allow me to set both WAN to the same WAN port (I need to choose different ports for primary and secondary WAN), so it doesn't seem to be what I want.

My question: am I able, with Asus stock firmware, to set a "WAN Dual Access" and connect to my bridge modem through the WAN port of the Asus router?

 

[ColinTaylor]

My question: am I able, with Asus stock firmware, to set a "WAN Dual Access" and connect to my bridge modem through the WAN port of the Asus router?

No, there is no equivalent to the "Russian PPPoE" option in the stock Asus firmware. As you have correctly surmised the "Dual WAN" feature is something completely different.

 

[JDB]

I have set up exactly this.

You need to run Merlin firmware on the router to make it simple to setup.

Once running, enable the JFFS partition in the GUI.

Then create a file /jffs/scripts/services-start
Put in it;

ifconfig `nvram get wan0_ifname`:1 192.168.1.254 netmask 255.255.255.0
iptables -t nat -I POSTROUTING ! -s $(nvram get lan_ipaddr) -d 192.168.1.0/24 -j SNAT --to 192.168.1.254
logger Set routing to Modem​

Run this command;
chmod a+x /jffs/scripts/services-start

Reboot.

Done!

EDIT: Updated to be router agnostic but using `nvram get wan0_ifname` rather than eth0

 

[davidcmc]

Thank you both very much.

So, with Asus stock firmware, there's no way to do what I want?

Maybe if I set WAN IP manually to 192.168.1.2 and WAN subnet mask to 255.255.255.0 to temporarily be able to access modem interface?

I've noticed that the router assigns itself a LLA as a second WAN IP.

Is that just an idle Dual WAN?

 

[JDB]

The ifconfig and iptables commands will work on stock, there's just no easy way to make them work on every boot, you'd have to SSH to the router, run the 2 commands, then it will work until next reboot.

There's no harm in running Merlin, it's based on latest Asus stock anyway and has 100's of advantages over it, or you can just take advantage of 1 (such as the above JFFS script) if you want to, it will still feel/work like stock for the rest of it's functions (though you will lose AiMesh functionality so it's a no-go if you are using that).

 

[JDB]

Maybe if I set WAN IP manually to 192.168.1.2 and WAN subnet mask to 255.255.255.0 to temporarily be able to access modem interface?

https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-merlin/wiki/Access-modem-Web-UI-on-WAN-port-(no-script)