If you want to make your life easier, I have a Spark issued HG630B sitting at home unused. Spark sent it to us when we upgraded from ADSL to VDSL. We already have the exact same modem in use and it works great. Use it for LAN/WAN routing and WIFI, then if you want gigabit speeds wired, connect one of the LAN ports to a gigabit switch (they are cheap as chips) and patch all wired computers into the gigabit switch. The HG630B does all the DHCP, WIFI, DNS, Routing, etc and the switch just gives high speed transfer on the wired LAN.
Flick me a PM if you want it, I am out east Auckland if you want to pick it up, otherwise I can ship it for a couple of dollars. You can have the modem itself for free if you want it.
Try Vultr using this link and get us both some credit:
Thank you all for your comments, suggestions and help ... thank you toyonut for your kind offer - I'd be in like a shot excepting Spark and Vodafone are hammering on the door to have us connected to fibre which I understand is already laid in the berm - so it may be a short lived solution - but I take your point - and will be following up on the best fibre type modem to use (presuming there is such a device!).
Comments:
The D-Link is an old DIR-615 router/WiFi unit - pressed into service as a WiFi link to the LAN - as runningman correctly comments.
The reason I posted this topic in the Spark forum is to get some advice on the interfacing into an ADSL Spark network.
e.g - there are a number of comments here about using a Static IP in the WAN interface - is this correct for ADSL/Spark? Should I be using PPOE or PPPOA (as showing on the ST5 - "Routed PPPoA on 0/100 (modified by user)" - what does this mean?
Also in the ST5 is an ADSL username and password "xxxxxx.xxxxxx.xadsl@xtra.co.nz" - when are these used if at all?
The ST5 has been setup at install with 2 network gateways - 10.0.0.138 and 192.168.1.254 - why is this? and why does the WAN set up on 10.0.0.138 and the LAN setup on 192.1.168.1.nnn?
I plugged the ST5 into the WAN interface on the D-Link - then tried the various interface options showing on the D-Link drop down box - when set to Static IP the ST5 connected and provided all the other details - DNS, gateway ... is this is correct for Spark ADSL?
Should I be WAN interfacing using Spark ADSL password and username? PPOE seems to require this? (put aside for a moment, what is best engineering practice - I understand double NAT etc ...).
Where is the decision made, to route a request from a local machine to Spark's DNS servers rather than another local device? ... I have setup LMHOSTS on each Win10 computer and bolted down the IP issued by the ST5 DHCP but this has not made local addressing more reliable.
I'd appreciate some comment on these points please ... network discovery etc are topics for another forum..
Well the UFB install went well - not so the billing and problems that followed but we're now on Fibre and all's well with the world.
FWIIW - and this may help others - the Spark supplied 659B modem install did not directly solve my Windows 10 network name resolution issues - devices could be pinged and accessed by their local IP but names appeared and disappeared randomly as noted above.
There is a small software prg (app!) that identifies devices on a non-domain network - LanScan.exe - this scans the network for network device names and identifies the Master Browser - this can also be done using standard network commands.
Using this program showed my Synology NAS as being the "master browser". Because of its up time it eventually "outranked" other computers and assumed this role. However its hibernation and automatically powering down during the night, resulted in the network having no master browser from time to time and on startup the next morning - my assumption being that the whole arbitration process was collapsing with no other device assuming the role of master browser.
I read elsewhere that Synology NAS hibernation will not occur when there is network activity for it and allowing master browser status could result in the drives not hibernating at all - I haven't seen this but it makes sense.
I tried adjusting the OS ranking on the SAMBA configuration (samba.conf) in the OpenELEC media players (Kodi) but these either weren't up to the job or I mangled the settings.
Within the settings on the 659B modem, is a SAMBA tick box to allow the USB drive to be identified on the network. I ticked this and plugged in a USB drive - 24 hours later the ATP device (659B modem) appeared on the network with a Master Browser status - as the modem's up time now outranks all other devices, name resolution is stable and the network operates as it should.
Trust this helps others and thank you all again for your help and input.
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