I'm with Plus.net and got "upgraded" to  FTTC and my prize was a shitty router modem. This has very few features and utilites that I enjoyed with my old Asus router/modem. OK I know it's not "Enterprise" grade but it had some nice features. This week I leaned I could still use it withthe shitty router I was sent.

This took me six months to figure this out by the way and having a PiHole was another complication. I'm clearly not a fast learner. I am sixty five after all.

Anyway.

On the shitty router, (or SR as it shall be known henceforth), hit the bridge mode button in "advanced mode". You will immediatley kill your internet, but don't panic! (You can always undo that but beware the caveats below).

I connected my old DSL-N55U, (decent router, or DR as it shall henceforbe known) , back into the LAN and assigned it a new IP address. 192.168.1.10 in may case. My SR is 192.168.1.1. You may have issues if both have the same address, pull the network cable the SR while you configure the DR. Once all os stable I will probably set things up differently so that the gateways again becomes 192.168.1.1. But if you set your DHCP server appropriately, once all the client leases are renewed all should become good again.

I connected my DR  directly to the SR with some cat5 on RJ45 port 1. Log into the N55U on it's new IP address.

Ignore the warnings and navigate to th WAN=>Dual WAN tab. Here, change the primary WAN to "Ethernet WAN" "LAN port1". Note this is the cable I plugged into connected to the SR. "Apply".

Now this this already had my old settings for connecting via ADSL , but make sure that PPOE is selected in the "Internet Connection" tab.

If not, also fill in the username/password malarky and "Apply".

Now here's where other blogs went awry. Once you've done this you will have noaccess to the SR and no LAN access. YOu need two more patch cables. One from the DR to your switch, you do have a switch, right? And another from the SR to the switch. This IMPORTANT. Without doing this you will no have access to the SR and won't be able to switch back to router mode from "bridge mode". Also you DR will not be able to contact the LAN. Both of these situations are A BAD THING and no one alse seems to mention this.

Make sure to disable DHCP on the DR  if you are using a PiHole, edit PiHole to use the ptovide the new gateway address of 192.168.1.10.The DHCP leases will pick this up on renewal. Make them restart their networks if if you need to. I have a lot of Pies and Wyse clients running.

Now you have a Decent Router with which you can do all the things you enjoyed before your SR arrived.

Some other tweaking will be required but this should get you online. I had some issues with DHCP and DNS that required some PiHole filddling, fnarr. I had to change the GW address on the PiHole DHCP setting basically.

Do not get your SR confused with the Yamaha SR400 and SR500. These are great I would love to own one. My friends tell me I shouldn't buy another bike because I nearly died last time I had one. I was younger then though. I'm more sensible now. Right?

Footnote 1: Free-online.net were the only company I could find 1998  that offered any sort of Linux support. They were actually helpful back then to get UK LInux users online, dial-up obviously. Thank you to those folks, wherever you are now.

Footnote 2: I had to remake some CAT5 RJ45 ends to do all this. I curse the person who invented the RJ45. I'd rather solder up some DB25's than make up RJ45's.

Last changed: 5. January, 2024 at 19:19