Swapping roles between Airport Extreme (802.11ac) and TG589vn v2 (VDSL connection)

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Swapping roles between Airport Extreme (802.11ac) and TG589vn v2 (VDSL connection)

zkarj

36 posts

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#143607 20-Apr-2014 21:32

I currently have a VDSL-fed Thomson TG589vn v2 performing routing duties and my Airport Extreme Base Station (AEBS) running in bridge mode providing wifi. I'd like to swap the routing duties from the TG589 to the AEBS.

I've read various posts here to the effect that I need to:

1. Use the setup wizard on the TG589 to select bridge mode and turn off DHCP (and leave all else default).
2. Configure the AEBS to use PPPoE with the Xtra login credentials (user@xtrabb.co.nz password).

However, when I tried this I ran into some difficulty. Is there a best order of operations to do this, or did I miss something?

I first ran through the wizard on the TG589 which seemed to go without a hitch and it restarted. I then set about changing my AEBS configuration but got stuck when it insisted I could not commit the changes because "The DHCP range you have entered conflicts with the WAN IP address of your Apple wi-fi base station" (wording may be slightly different).

I have some questions which may help me (or you) clear it up.

1. When the TG589 is in bridge mode, does it even have an IP address any more? The AEBS configuration (before hitting Update) still referred to the "router" being at 192.168.1.254 – not sure if that will disappear/become irrelevant after the change.

2. I made very sure my AEBS address (192.168.1.1) was outside the DHCP range I gave (192.168.1.128 - 200) and that the DHCP range left room for the existing TG589 address. It's clearly a problem in my AEBS config, but what? I could not understand where the conflict was.

I have a feeling I was just one step away from having it working but a baying family wanted the Internet, so I rolled it back. Speaking of which, I was a bit miffed that restoring a config to the TG589 does not restore it to router mode! I had to use the wizard again.

eXDee

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#1028376 20-Apr-2014 22:02

You're going to run into the problem of lack of VLAN tagging - which the Airport doesn't do because apple seems to not want to implement it on any of their airport hardware.
You need VLAN10 tagged packets on VDSL or you cant even PPPoE auth, let alone send any traffic.

Its not answering your other questions, but this is going to be a problem if you bridge the Thomson to the airport.

sbiddle

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Biddle Corp

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#1028464 21-Apr-2014 08:41

It's been a while since I played with Thomson but from memory in bridge mode it requires the bridged router to handle the VLAN tagging which as mentioned above Apple won't implement. If this is the case your best option is to go out and buy some like a Zyxel P870 to replace your modem, this will run in bridge mode and handle the VLAN tagging.

hashbrown

463 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1028496 21-Apr-2014 09:50

sbiddle: It's been a while since I played with Thomson but from memory in bridge mode it requires the bridged router to handle the VLAN tagging which as mentioned above Apple won't implement. If this is the case your best option is to go out and buy some like a Zyxel P870 to replace your modem, this will run in bridge mode and handle the VLAN tagging.

No, the TG589v2 handles the tagging and maps it to a native PPPoE connection on the first port. Any of the other ports can be used to manage it while in bridge mode.

zkarj

36 posts

Geek

#1028527 21-Apr-2014 11:40

I had made the presumption that it does work based on JonoNZ's post in another thread.

morrisk

364 posts

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#1028595 21-Apr-2014 15:14

Yes this works - I followed the setup as given in that thread approx 1 year back and have not had ay problems at all.

zkarj

36 posts

Geek

#1028606 21-Apr-2014 15:50

I came across another post online which hinted that my problem was assigning the DHCP range in the same subnet as the WAN address was the problem.

So I tried again. I ran through setting the TG589 as a bridge and then attacked the AEBS. The AEBS this time around automatically switched the DHCP addressing to the 10 subnet and blow me down it just worked!

The main difference is when running AirPort Utility, wait for everything to be found. The AEBS initially comes up with 2 errors - no PPPoE server and (understandably) no Internet. But if you leave it about 20 seconds, the PPPoE server is found and everything turns green. Actually, sometimes when starting it, there is only the no Internet error, but it similarly resolves itself within 10 seconds or so.

I've recorded the AEBS settings I ended up with, along with some notes. One possible difference this time around was I restarted the AEBS after I had brought the TG589 up in bridge mode.