Asus-wrt NBN Australia

[stephan04]

Hi all hope someone here can help.

I am on the NBN national broadband network in Australia and my service provider is Belong which is owned and operated by Telstra.

My connection is HCF (hybrid cable fibre)

My Asus rt-ac 68u worked fine fore the first 2 mnths and the router power cycles every morning at 4am.

I believe Belong maybe using MAC hardware locking (IpOE) but this does not make sense why would it stop working. When I plug the Sagecomm supplied pre-setup router in the connection works fine after about 5min.
When I unplug and plug the Asus in it says your service providers dhcp is not functioning properly.
Asus Wan is set to Automatic Ip and dhcp query to aggressive.
I have also cloned the wan mac from the sagecomm into the Asus but still no joy.
I heard they cycle the Mac locking every 4 hours so I will unplug all connections overnight and plug the asus in in the morning and see if it will work.
I will completely reset the asus-merlin and load the most recent firmware again.
Any advice much appreciated.

 

[BobbyFlobby]

Hi all hope someone here can help.

I am on the NBN national broadband network in Australia and my service provider is Belong which is owned and operated by Telstra.

My connection is HCF (hybrid cable fibre)

My Asus rt-ac 68u worked fine fore the first 2 mnths and the router power cycles every morning at 4am.

I believe Belong maybe using MAC hardware locking (IpOE) but this does not make sense why would it stop working. When I plug the Sagecomm supplied pre-setup router in the connection works fine after about 5min.
When I unplug and plug the Asus in it says your service providers dhcp is not functioning properly.
Asus Wan is set to Automatic Ip and dhcp query to aggressive.
I have also cloned the wan mac from the sagecomm into the Asus but still no joy.
I heard they cycle the Mac locking every 4 hours so I will unplug all connections overnight and plug the asus in in the morning and see if it will work.
I will completely reset the asus-merlin and load the most recent firmware again.
Any advice much appreciated.

Hi Mate,

I will likely be facing a very similar issue soon enough, and I am not sure if you have checked out whirlpoolings, as there is a similar thread here with a few suggestions https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/2650429

 

[Vexira]

Hi all hope someone here can help.

I am on the NBN national broadband network in Australia and my service provider is Belong which is owned and operated by Telstra.

My connection is HCF (hybrid cable fibre)

My Asus rt-ac 68u worked fine fore the first 2 mnths and the router power cycles every morning at 4am.

I believe Belong maybe using MAC hardware locking (IpOE) but this does not make sense why would it stop working. When I plug the Sagecomm supplied pre-setup router in the connection works fine after about 5min.
When I unplug and plug the Asus in it says your service providers dhcp is not functioning properly.
Asus Wan is set to Automatic Ip and dhcp query to aggressive.
I have also cloned the wan mac from the sagecomm into the Asus but still no joy.
I heard they cycle the Mac locking every 4 hours so I will unplug all connections overnight and plug the asus in in the morning and see if it will work.
I will completely reset the asus-merlin and load the most recent firmware again.
Any advice much appreciated.

Mac clone the belong unit that's what I have to do for Optus FTTN, to get my VoIP and internet to work, Optus thinks the sagecom is plugged in.


Try setting the query frequency to normal, and turn on the ttl settings, that's what fixed it for me once it twice.

 

[stephan04]

Hi Mate,

I will likely be facing a very similar issue soon enough, and I am not sure if you have checked out whirlpoolings, as there is a similar thread here with a few suggestions https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/2650429

Cheers, I will post here if I get the bugger to work by tomorrow morning.

 

[stephan04]

Mac clone the belong unit that's what I have to do for Optus FTTN, to get my VoIP and internet to work, Optus thinks the sagecom is plugged in.


Try setting the query frequency to normal, and turn on the ttl settings, that's what fixed it for me once it twice.

Thanks mate will give it a go and will reply if I get it right.

 

[stephan04]

I will post my steps for getting it to work:
ISP= BELONG HFC (FTTN)
Connection = HFC
1) Reset the router and ticked initialised
2) Reload latest merlin firmware
3) setup as per images and make sure you ENABLE UpNp !!
4)WAN connection Automatic ip
5) Mac address clone - copy WAN Mac address from your sagecomm issued router and insert into text area and click apply ( do not click clone mac button)
6)Extend TTL value = yes & DHCP query= Normal mode
7)Reboot Router
8) Sign into Asus router again and go to Network Map and then wait 20min !!!!! it should connect Yes it takes a long time , do not ask me why. So Belong either requires upnp although it is disabled on the sagecomm (they may have forwarded a port hard coded) or they use Mac locking... either way this is what I had to do to get it to work.
Everytime I applied something to the Asus it will disconnect and I have to wait 15min again for it to connect but it does connect after at least 15min.

Hope this helps.

 

[BobbyFlobby]

Thanks for letting us know how you got it to work!
I have a few 86u routers and so will be interesting to see if i need to follow your steps exactly or if it works differently with my chosen provider. I am not a fan of having upnp on, so I will try with it off initially.

 

[Vexira]

View attachment 18543 View attachment 18544 View attachment 18545
I will post my steps for getting it to work:
ISP= BELONG HFC (FTTN)
Connection = HFC
1) Reset the router and ticked initialised
2) Reload latest merlin firmware
3) setup as per images and make sure you ENABLE UpNp !!
4)WAN connection Automatic ip
5) Mac address clone - copy WAN Mac address from your sagecomm issued router and insert into text area and click apply ( do not click clone mac button)
6)Extend TTL value = yes & DHCP query= Normal mode
7)Reboot Router
8) Sign into Asus router again and go to Network Map and then wait 20min !!!!! it should connect Yes it takes a long time , do not ask me why. So Belong either requires upnp although it is disabled on the sagecomm (they may have forwarded a port hard coded) or they use Mac locking... either way this is what I had to do to get it to work.
Everytime I applied something to the Asus it will disconnect and I have to wait 15min again for it to connect but it does connect after at least 15min.

Hope this helps.

It's Mac locking all the ISPS wantt you to have Thier hardware for troubleshooting purposes so Thier techs can do basic support, it just ensures compatibleity with the vectoing protocols used.


If it's anything like Optus you just have yo use Thier modem first then do the Mac cloned device after.

 

[stephan04]

I tried turning off UpNp and it disconnects straight away, waited 15min and did not connect and this is without rebooting the router.
Then turned the UpNp back on and connected within 7 min, again without rebooting. Thus Belong must require some port on that UpNp and it maybe hard coded into their sagecomm as by default the UpNp is disabled on the sagecomm.
I assume Telstra HFC would be the same.

 

[Vexira]

I tried turning off UpNp and it disconnects straight away, waited 15min and did not connect and this is without rebooting the router.
Then turned the UpNp back on and connected within 7 min, again without rebooting. Thus Belong must require some port on that UpNp and it maybe hard coded into their sagecomm as by default the UpNp is disabled on the sagecomm.
I assume Telstra HFC would be the same.

Possibly during prerouting, what modem are you using may I ask.

 

[stephan04]

Possibly during prerouting, what modem are you using may I ask.

Asus RT-AC68U with the latest merlin firmware.

 

[Vexira]

Asus RT-AC68U with the latest merlin firmware.

You are using fttp?

 

[stephan04]

You are using fttp?

HFC from road into house , the Sagecomm says FTTN so fibre to the node and from there using the HFC cable.

 

[Vexira]

HFC from road into house , the Sagecomm says FTTN so fibre to the node and from there using the HFC cable.

Bit odd FTTN works like this fiber to the node cabinet then, copper to the pillar or fiber if you are lucky then copper to the premises, which sagecom model is it, I have two dsl units from Optus, that I extracted the VoIP settings from.

Both of mine have rj11 ports yours has a coax port?

Because if you have VDSL2(FTTN) then you could use a vigor 130 like me for a modem then put it in bridge mode, then connect the Asus to it with a cloned Mac address.

Aslo pm me if you have Skype or discord and I can show you my setup.

 

[stephan04]

Bit odd FTTN works like this fiber to the node cabinet then, copper to the pillar or fiber if you are lucky then copper to the premises, which sagecom model is it, I have two dsl units from Optus, that I extracted the VoIP settings from.

Both of mine have rj11 ports yours has a coax port?

Because if you have VDSL2(FTTN) then you could use a vigor 130 like me for a modem then put it in bridge mode, then connect the Asus to it with a cloned Mac address.

Aslo pm me if you have Skype or discord and I can show you my setup.

Fibre to the node then from there it uses the telstra foxtel existing coaxial cable.
Incoming coaxial cable connects to the NBN connection box.
From there ethernet cable plugs nto the Uni-D port and plugs into the router’s WAN port, in my case the Asus RT-AC68U. ( sagecomm is spare issued by Belong)
Sagecomm modem when plugged in shows FTTN as connecting as type.

 

[Vexira]

Fibre to the node then from there it uses the telstra foxtel existing coaxial cable.
Incoming coaxial cable connects to the NBN connection box.
From there ethernet cable plugs nto the Uni-D port and plugs into the router’s WAN port, in my case the Asus RT-AC68U. ( sagecomm is spare issued by Belong)
Sagecomm modem when plugged in shows FTTN as connecting as type.

My main question is the Uni-D set to bridge mode as in I will act as a modem only?

 

[stephan04]

My main question is the Uni-D set to bridge mode as in I will act as a modem only?

No idea I did not even know I could access and adjust that . The uni-D port is on the NBN connection box so I am sure NBN would disable access to the device or settings.

 

[Vexira]

No idea I did not even know I could access and adjust that .

You can it has a sticker with a default login and an IP address to get to the web interface.

 

[stephan04]

You can it has a sticker with a default login and an IP address to get to the web interface.

Nah no sticker neither in the manual or the packaging box. I will try and find the default login online.

 

[Vexira]

Nah no sticker neither in the manual or the packaging box. I will try and find the default login online.

Seems a bit odd to me all things considered.