Question regarding 2wire router + tomato linksys

[xazraelx]

Okay, well, we just upgraded to ATT U-Verse from TWC at my apartment and they specifically told me I couldn't used my old wrt54g with tomato I've been using for QoS, bandwidth monitoring, etc. They told me I wasn't allowed to have *any* router behind the 2wire. The model of 2wire they gave us is the 3800HGV-B. They also gave us an 8 port gigabit belkin switch.

I really, really (I can't stress this enough) despise the 2wire router they gave us. I'm going to be getting a wireless N router soon that can be flashed with dd-wrt or tomato (I've used both, either work for my needs).

Is there a way to hook a router up behind this 2wire router that I can use to monitor all traffic, distribute IPs to my clients, create custom rules, QoS, etc? I would prefer the 2wire just to act as a passive modem, if that were possible.

They also fed me some BS (I assume it's bs) about changing the settings inside the 2wire, I might brick it. Sounds like a terrible firmware to me, adjust a setting that is available from the homepage and you end up bricking their router.

I'm just looking for advice. Currently I have 2 computers off of the 2wire, and then 6 machines off of the switch. I'd prefer to have just a router connected to the 2wire, then everything connected from there. Is that possible with these?

Thanks...sorry for rambling, any advice is appreciated.

 

[guile]

xazraelx,

I just did this for a client of mine last night. He has AT&T U-verse, and he had a 2-wire router also. I don't remember the model, but it was a LARGE unit with a usb & coax connections.

Anyhow the thing was such a piece of shit constantly giving him issues, I went ahead and purchased a WRT54GL, and put Tomato 1.27 on it.

There are a few options you can do here. If the u-verse connection is via PPOE, you can set the 2wire unit to bridge mode, thus only enabling the modem function. From here you would need to setup the PPOE connection in Tomato, etc.

Another way to do it would be to leave the exisitng 2-wire unit as is, disable the wireless interface, and then give the router a static IP, and set the 2-wire's firewall settings to have that IP address on the DMZ.

I understand this may be a poor idea since to my knowledge it would be double NAT on the addressing, but the DMZ should be enough of a work around.

In the 2-wire unit, when you login there is also an advanced console menu.
Either use the IP address of the unit, IE http://192.168.1.1/MDC or you can use the DNS that is built in which I believe is http://2wire.att.net/MDC

Ideally the best thing would be to set the unit in bridge mode, but AT&T being 1940's Germany status in regards to their equipment/control, I am not sure you can do this on U-verse, vs standard PPOE/DSL, as I believe U-verse is just two pairs, IE VDSL or RADSL (Fellow posters please correct me if I am wrong!)

My particular client I setup the Wrt54gl on the DMZ, as I just didn't have time to go fighting and looking for where the bridge configuration was in the menu. It was getting late, and the guy wanting me to leave, so I just said **** it. But everything worked, incoming forwarded ports, Cisco vpn client, etc.


QUICK EDIT: I forgot to mention, inside the 2-wire router, there was a specific feature that showed "enable router behind router warning ON/OFF".
I had to disable the router behind router warning.


Good luck!