Problem with RTA1320 / TP-Link TL-WR1043ND and TelstraClear

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chasio

27 posts

Geek

#111878 18-Nov-2012 13:25

I am trying to run a new (well, never used...) Dynalink RTA1320 in half-bridge mode with a TL-WR1043ND and am following the write-up on ben.geek. It seems clear this would be easier if I were not on TelstraClear (or if I were at least not under contract...).

The situation is that if a PC is directly connected to the RTA1320 with PPP IP Extension enabled, I can use the internet just dandy although I cannot see the modem admin pages any more (thanks to the TCL gateway oddity). If I introduce the WR1043ND in Dynamic IP mode and go via that, I can no longer get out to the internet.

In the comments under the walk-through I note there is a hack documented by Eileen to get around this. However, I have two issues with that:

1) I cannot get to my modem's admin pages to implement the change suggested.
2) I don't understand the hack (my shame knows no bounds).

Maybe I could get around (1) by resetting the router and implementing Eileen's hack before enabling PPP IP extension. But what exactly should I be doing when I do that? Grateful for pointers or any other ideas.

I'd like to get the basics working before going to Gargoyle but if Gargoyle would help, I could always do that first.

TIA.

RunningMan

8956 posts

Uber Geek

#719085 18-Nov-2012 16:44

I'm not on TC, so can't confirm this will work, but did set up an RTA1320 in half bridge a month ago, so did a bit of reading at the time.

Two things to try:

1) Make sure you have the current firmware http://support.netcommwireless.com/product/xdsl/rta1320

2) Make sure the modem is set to a different internal IP subnet than that used by your router's internal address range. i.e. if your router is using 192.168.1.x range, then set the modem IP to 192.168.2.1. Basically, the modem needs to have a LAN side address that the router thinks is in the WAN.

The RTA1320 will hand out the externally assigned IP address via DHCP to the downstream router when in half bridge mode (what you want), but if it has no external address (i.e. DSL is down) then it will hand out an address in the same range as it's own subnet (192.168.2.x).

chasio

27 posts

Geek

#719088 18-Nov-2012 16:50

Thanks for the firmware link. When I looked for an update earlier today, the Netcomm site just reported the device was no longer supported and there were no downloads available. I am on 3.30j so will upgrade to 3.64y.

Per the walk-through, I made the Dynalink 10.0.0.1, while the TP-Link is 192.168.1.1. Hopefully after the upgrade / reset / re-apply loop I'll have some progress.

Cheers.

chasio

27 posts

Geek

#719099 18-Nov-2012 18:11

Update:

Firmware updated to 3.64y (after disabling the Win7 firewall) and I can see the Dynalink's admin pages on 10.0.0.1 as well as reach the internet if directly connected PC to Dynalink (firewall re-enabled ;) ).

However, I still cannot get the TP-Link (192.168.0.1) to route me out to the internet. This is where I suspect the TCL peculiarity with their gateway setup is interfering.

Eileen wrote "I set up a static IP on my router and gave it a 30 bit subnet mask with a default gateway one higher than my IP address within the subnet. This effectively meant that I had told it to send all traffic that wasn’t for the LAN out the WAN interface to an IP that wasn’t really there. However, the proxy ARP seems to pick up any traffic going out the WAN and ferry it across the PPPOA and low and behold the whole thing works!"

From what I make out, a 30-bit subnet has a mask of 255.255.255.252, correct?

So do I need to set the TP-Link wireless router up somehow with that mask? Or the Dynalink modem/router? I am confused as to where the change needs to be made. I thought the IP address on the TP-Link needed to be the DHCP IP address assigned by TCL, extended from the Dynalink.

Any clues? Thanks.