"True" Docsis Cable Modem (Cisco Epc2325)

[Dork]

You're right that I can't be 100% sure that DOCSIS is available on the main road but the reason I'm pretty sure that it would be is that my office is less than 1KM (further) away on the same road and I recently discovered that I can get DOCSIS there. Also the TRUE/TOT technicians have told me that the main road is where the ADSL DSLAMs are so there must be Fibre there. I just worry that since my house is at the end of the Soi & beyond that is the river they won't ever consider it commercially viable to extend the service down my Soi unless I (& perhaps some neighbours) can convince them to. I have no idea how I might do that though. The sales office certainly don't seem very interested.

[Pib]

You're right that I can't be 100% sure that DOCSIS is available on the main road but the reason I'm pretty sure that it would be is that my office is less than 1KM (further) away on the same road and I recently discovered that I can get DOCSIS there. Also the TRUE/TOT technicians have told me that the main road is where the ADSL DSLAMs are so there must be Fibre there. I just worry that since my house is at the end of the Soi & beyond that is the river they won't ever consider it commercially viable to extend the service down my Soi unless I (& perhaps some neighbours) can convince them to. I have no idea how I might do that though. The sales office certainly don't seem very interested.

Yea, installation of a trunk line for cable or fiber optics ain't cheap because there is a lot of new associated equipment along with the new cable RF line and/or fiber optics line that must be installed combined with head-end equipment and labor....and I expect there are plenty of other costs. No doubt the internet providers are going to first install it in locations where they get the most bang for their investment baht..and then continue to the less bang for the baht locations. But regardless, good luck on getting access soonest. Knock on wood, but I've been happy with my DOCSIS 20Mb/2Mb plan...and when it didn't go down during the flood I got really impressed.

[Dork]

You're right that I can't be 100% sure that DOCSIS is available on the main road but the reason I'm pretty sure that it would be is that my office is less than 1KM (further) away on the same road and I recently discovered that I can get DOCSIS there. Also the TRUE/TOT technicians have told me that the main road is where the ADSL DSLAMs are so there must be Fibre there. I just worry that since my house is at the end of the Soi & beyond that is the river they won't ever consider it commercially viable to extend the service down my Soi unless I (& perhaps some neighbours) can convince them to. I have no idea how I might do that though. The sales office certainly don't seem very interested.

Yea, installation of a trunk line for cable or fiber optics ain't cheap because there is a lot of new associated equipment along with the new cable RF line and/or fiber optics line that must be installed combined with head-end equipment and labor....and I expect there are plenty of other costs. No doubt the internet providers are going to first install it in locations where they get the most bang for their investment baht..and then continue to the less bang for the baht locations. But regardless, good luck on getting access soonest. Knock on wood, but I've been happy with my DOCSIS 20Mb/2Mb plan...and when it didn't go down during the flood I got really impressed.

Thanks. I'll keep trying & will let you know if any result.

[Jayman]

just fyi.. once you set the modem to bridge mode it seems to no longer be accessible by the default 192.168.1.1 and changed to 192.168.100.1

It's normal because in bridge mode the modem has to be on a different subnet than the router. Since the most common default address for a consumer level router is 192.168.1.1, retaining that address (or the 192.168.1.x subnet) for the modem would cause problems for people that aren't aware of the need to change subnet.

once you are bridging you have tuend off the router function.. that's the point. You don't run the modem in bridge and router mode at same time. It's one or the other. Router= modem acts as router. Bridge = no router function.

On all my other modems when changed into bridge mode the LAN ip never changes.. but this one did and no notice of it either.. Took me some time to even figure it out.

Yes it's true that once in bridge mode the router and modem communicate at the Data Link Layer (Level 2) not the Network Layer (Level 3). However since the modem needs to be accessible for configuration via TCP/IP, it still need a fixed IP address. And since the modem is connected to the router's WAN port, it "MUST" be on a different subnet than the LAN. If it is on the same subnet, it either won't work at all or will behave erratically.

I only suggested it because from your post you seemed surprised that, once in bridge mode the modem changed subnet. That's normal behaviour and if you're not aware of that, could be why you're having problems getting it to work.

That has not been "normal" on any of my other modems. My modem LAN IP is never on the same subnet as my router and when I change to bridge mode my moden doesn't change ip's on me. I create a route from my router to my modem so that clients on my LAN can access the modem config page.

Before I changed the cisco modem into bridge mode I changed the LAN IP to a new subnet different than my router, I then connected to it on the new subnet IP I gave it and changed to bridge mode only to have it change back to a diff IP and subnet. You might call that normal but I have put quite a few modems into bridge mode and none have changed ip's on me when I did. They let me config the IP and not just manually set it themselves thinking I'm too ignorant to setup my network properly.

[Jayman]

You're right that I can't be 100% sure that DOCSIS is available on the main road but the reason I'm pretty sure that it would be is that my office is less than 1KM (further) away on the same road and I recently discovered that I can get DOCSIS there. Also the TRUE/TOT technicians have told me that the main road is where the ADSL DSLAMs are so there must be Fibre there. I just worry that since my house is at the end of the Soi & beyond that is the river they won't ever consider it commercially viable to extend the service down my Soi unless I (& perhaps some neighbours) can convince them to. I have no idea how I might do that though. The sales office certainly don't seem very interested.

True came out and ran the new fiber lines around my entire mooban over 1 year before they actually offered the service. I figured that once the cable was sitting on the pole outside my house then it would be a short matter of time before the network went active. They even told me it would be "next" month. That was July 2011 and I just now got the service turned on.

I should add that I would always tell them to notify me as soon as the service went live in my area and I would be sure to sign up. I was and am currently a TRUE adsl customer so they knew exactly who I am but never notified me. Every time we would see a new promo on our monthly bill about the "ultra" service we would call to sign up and they would say not available in your area yet.

Edited September 30, 2012 by Jayman

[Dork]

True came out and ran the new fiber lines around my entire mooban over 1 year before they actually offered the service. I figured that once the cable was sitting on the pole outside my house then it would be a short matter of time before the network went active. They even told me it would be "next" month. That was July 2011 and I just now got the service turned on.

How far does the coax go from your house before it reaches the cable termination equipment (or whatever that is called)? And does that then connect to the fibre? I'm just trying to get a rough idea of what would be involved if TRUE were to extend the service from the main road (where I think it is already available) and my house 5-600 metres away. If it is only coax then maybe it is possible for me to pay for running the cables. If it involves running fibre and some kind of termination equipment as well as the coax, me paying for that might get a bit scary.

[Jayman]

True came out and ran the new fiber lines around my entire mooban over 1 year before they actually offered the service. I figured that once the cable was sitting on the pole outside my house then it would be a short matter of time before the network went active. They even told me it would be "next" month. That was July 2011 and I just now got the service turned on.

How far does the coax go from your house before it reaches the cable termination equipment (or whatever that is called)? And does that then connect to the fibre? I'm just trying to get a rough idea of what would be involved if TRUE were to extend the service from the main road (where I think it is already available) and my house 5-600 metres away. If it is only coax then maybe it is possible for me to pay for running the cables. If it involves running fibre and some kind of termination equipment as well as the coax, me paying for that might get a bit scary.

I'm honestly not sure where the cable terminates. It could be at the junction box outside my village on the street. I'm really bad with guesstimating distance and the cable doesn't go the short route to the front gate but a rather longer way around the village. I will ask the tech guys if/when they come out tomorrow to bring me a new modem.

[Jayman]

Ok.. here is an update.

I was successful with putting the cisco 2325 into bridge mode on the following page 192.168.1.1/GatewayMode.asp

But before you do that, disable the wifi on the modem and make sure all other Ethernet cables are unplugged other than the device you are using to change the settings.

Once you switch it into bridge mode it will reboot. The very first client to connect to the modem (wifi or LAN) will be issued first a 192.168.100.x address and then a few moments later will be issued an IP from the ISP. I'm talking the external IP. After this happens, any other client (wifi or lan) that connects direct to the modem will be SOL and only this first device will have direct access to the internet. No MAC cloning was needed at all. The ISP doesn't care what MAC the device being handed the IP is. I tried it on 4 different devices both LAN and wifi and the 1st device connected gets the external IP. This is why I tell you to disable the WIFI on the modem prior to putting to bridge mode cause you don't want some wifi client being that first client to connect.

So now you need to setup your Router. I have a dlink flashed with tomato at the moment. DD-wrt would work equally as well. You will change the WAN setting in your router to DHCP mode and give it the IP of your modem which will be 192.168.100.1

Then save the setting and reboot the router and power cycle the modem. You want to make sure than nothing but your router is plugged into your modem and that your modem is plugged into the WAN port on your router.

After the modem boots and the router boots, the router will first be handed a 192.168.100.x ip until an IP is handed from the ISP and then you will see it change and voila your router is now online.

As you can see my router has an external IP issued by the ISP. Once again, no MAC cloning was needed for this.

I still have a request in for the Motorola modem as one member suggest it was better.

At this point though I would be fine without it.

I should also note that my LAN clients can access the modem at 192.168.100.1. Once you get there your settings are limited to wireless and Gateway mode (where you can set the device back to a router)

I hope this helps someone. I know that TRUE is very quick to tell you that this modem does not support bridge mode which clearly it does. Perhaps they just don't know how to set it up or don't want the customers doing it themselves. The crew that came and did my install were not IT guys. All they could do was install the cabling and then plug their laptop into the modem to provision it. I was asking the guy on the laptop questions in Thai and he clearly had no idea. He admitted he was not an IT guy but just an installer.

There it is, if anyone has questions I'm happy to try and help.

[Pib]

True came out and ran the new fiber lines around my entire mooban over 1 year before they actually offered the service. I figured that once the cable was sitting on the pole outside my house then it would be a short matter of time before the network went active. They even told me it would be "next" month. That was July 2011 and I just now got the service turned on.

How far does the coax go from your house before it reaches the cable termination equipment (or whatever that is called)? And does that then connect to the fibre? I'm just trying to get a rough idea of what would be involved if TRUE were to extend the service from the main road (where I think it is already available) and my house 5-600 metres away. If it is only coax then maybe it is possible for me to pay for running the cables. If it involves running fibre and some kind of termination equipment as well as the coax, me paying for that might get a bit scary.

I'm honestly not sure where the cable terminates. It could be at the junction box outside my village on the street. I'm really bad with guesstimating distance and the cable doesn't go the short route to the front gate but a rather longer way around the village. I will ask the tech guys if/when they come out tomorrow to bring me a new modem.

I expect everything you will see relating to a DOCSIS installation will be mounted high up on the pole...no ground level junction boxes like you see with telephone/DSL lines. And the RF cable trunk line is about an inch in diameter, very stiff, not low cost pencil diameter size cable like phone wire on the poles. Plus, there are trunk line amplifiers, signal dividers, signal taps, etc., that are also needed to amplifier/route the signal. Actually, such a line can carry both TrueVisions TV channels and TrueOnline internet if equipped for both...and just because you might see such line running around/near you neighborhood does not mean its also internet equipped...it could be equipped only for the TrueVisions signal and not internet.

Here's a one of my earlier posts in another thread showing some of the True cable TV/internt trunk line they ran around my moobaan: Earlier Post. Now from the trunk line tap to your residence they just run a regular RG6/11 75 ohm TV cable which hooks into the cable modem/router....and I think the max run from the trunk line tap to the residence can only be around 75 meters. For my house, the run from the trunk line tap to the house was around 25 meters....as tap on the trunk line had been spaced about everl 25 meters on the trunk line going up and down the soi's. That's why there are quite a few posts in some other threads where poeple have confirmed they are close to a True cable TV/internet trunk line (like a 150 meters away), they True call center who say it appears DOCSIS does service their area, an installation is scheduled, but then True technician comes out and ruins the day by saying the residence is too far from the trunkline...and the installation is cancelled.

And I expect some of those cases have really been cases where True is just not allowed in a certain area. For example: my moobaan has True cable/internet and two other moobaans right next to our moobaan do not...in some cases where a wall separates the two moobaans with a trunk line going down the soi on one side of the wall the homes have cable TV/internet, but the folks on the other side of the wall in that other moobaan can not tap into that trunk line which is about 50 meters away because True is not authorized to service that area/moobaan. So many little kingdoms in Thailand....and each of these kingdoms (i.e, moobaans,condo buildings, areas, etc) might only have one or maybe two service providers for landline service, cable TV, internet, etc.

Edited October 1, 2012 by Pib

[Dork]

True came out and ran the new fiber lines around my entire mooban over 1 year before they actually offered the service. I figured that once the cable was sitting on the pole outside my house then it would be a short matter of time before the network went active. They even told me it would be "next" month. That was July 2011 and I just now got the service turned on.

How far does the coax go from your house before it reaches the cable termination equipment (or whatever that is called)? And does that then connect to the fibre? I'm just trying to get a rough idea of what would be involved if TRUE were to extend the service from the main road (where I think it is already available) and my house 5-600 metres away. If it is only coax then maybe it is possible for me to pay for running the cables. If it involves running fibre and some kind of termination equipment as well as the coax, me paying for that might get a bit scary.

I'm honestly not sure where the cable terminates. It could be at the junction box outside my village on the street. I'm really bad with guesstimating distance and the cable doesn't go the short route to the front gate but a rather longer way around the village. I will ask the tech guys if/when they come out tomorrow to bring me a new modem.

I expect everything you will see relating to a DOCSIS installation will be mounted high up on the pole...no ground level junction boxes like you see with telephone/DSL lines. And the RF cable trunk line is about an inch in diameter, very stiff, not low cost pencil diameter size cable like phone wire on the poles. Plus, there are trunk line amplifiers, signal dividers, signal taps, etc., that are also needed to amplifier/route the signal. Actually, such a line can carry both TrueVisions TV channels and TrueOnline internet if equipped for both...and just because you might see such line running around/near you neighborhood does not mean its also internet equipped...it could be equipped only for the TrueVisions signal and not internet.

Here's a one of my earlier posts in another thread showing some of the True cable TV/internt trunk line they ran around my moobaan: Earlier Post. Now from the trunk line tap to your residence they just run a regular RG6/11 75 ohm TV cable which hooks into the cable modem/router....and I think the max run from the trunk line tap to the residence can only be around 75 meters. For my house, the run from the trunk line tap to the house was around 25 meters....as tap on the trunk line had been spaced about everl 25 meters on the trunk line going up and down the soi's. That's why there are quite a few posts in some other threads where poeple have confirmed they are close to a True cable TV/internet trunk line (like a 150 meters away), they True call center who say it appears DOCSIS does service their area, an installation is scheduled, but then True technician comes out and ruins the day by saying the residence is too far from the trunkline...and the installation is cancelled.

And I expect some of those cases have really been cases where True is just not allowed in a certain area. For example: my moobaan has True cable/internet and two other moobaans right next to our moobaan do not...in some cases where a wall separates the two moobaans with a trunk line going down the soi on one side of the wall the homes have cable TV/internet, but the folks on the other side of the wall in that other moobaan can not tap into that trunk line which is about 50 meters away because True is not authorized to service that area/moobaan. So many little kingdoms in Thailand....and each of these kingdoms (i.e, moobaans,condo buildings, areas, etc) might only have one or maybe two service providers for landline service, cable TV, internet, etc.

Thanks for that Pib. The photos are helpful too, so I know what to look for on the street.

What exactly is the "Trunk Line"? Are you sure that isn't fibre optic cable?

[Pib]

For True cable the trunk line is the "main" line run around the moobaan/area--it's not fiber optics but RF coaxial cable. Now other lines that feed the trunk lines may be fiber optics, but not the trunk line.

It kinda like a regular RG6/11 TV cable that you connect to your TV/settop box, but on steroids. See the illustration below. It's about inch in diameter, 75 ohm impedance, center conductor is solid copper, dielectric material between the center and outer conductor/shield, and solid outer shield vs mesh shield...and then covered with PVC insulation. I see the same stuff running up and down many main roads that has a lot of residences....probably most of it just TV capable but more and more is being equipped to also carry internet, which runs on separate frequencies and using different modulation than TV channels. If you had a one meter piece in front of you and tried to bend it, it would be like trying to bend a 1 inch blue PVC pipe except it would not spring back to a straight shape after bending it....it would be like bending a copper pipe and retain its bent shape....it did just this with a scrap piece laying around during the trunk line installation.

Now other approx one inch diameter in size black lines are also hung on the poles and these are usually phone lines consisting of many wire pairs within. To tell the difference you pretty much have to be looking for the type of devices (i.e., amplifiers) pictured in my other post hooked into the line. And even fiber optics lines can look very similar because within that large black wire is many fiber optics lines....when TOT replaced the old ground-level junction boxes in my moobaan right after the flood with fiber optics junction boxes mounted on poles, the fiber optics cable they strung to the fiber optics boxes looks very similar to the True cable trunk link....just a little smaller in diameter, but flexible and multiple fiber optics lines in each cable...in TOT's case the cable they were stringing had 8 fiber optics lines housed within the cable. Yea, about the only way to tell unless you want to climb up the pole and grab the part number of the cable to research it, is to look for the other devices hooking into that line and maybe see the line hooked into a power/junction box that may have the company's name on it.

[Phil Conners]

Ok.. here is an update.

I was successful with putting the cisco 2325 into bridge mode on the following page 192.168.1.1/GatewayMode.asp

But before you do that, disable the wifi on the modem and make sure all other Ethernet cables are unplugged other than the device you are using to change the settings.

Once you switch it into bridge mode it will reboot. The very first client to connect to the modem (wifi or LAN) will be issued first a 192.168.100.x address and then a few moments later will be issued an IP from the ISP. I'm talking the external IP. After this happens, any other client (wifi or lan) that connects direct to the modem will be SOL and only this first device will have direct access to the internet. No MAC cloning was needed at all. The ISP doesn't care what MAC the device being handed the IP is. I tried it on 4 different devices both LAN and wifi and the 1st device connected gets the external IP. This is why I tell you to disable the WIFI on the modem prior to putting to bridge mode cause you don't want some wifi client being that first client to connect.

So now you need to setup your Router. I have a dlink flashed with tomato at the moment. DD-wrt would work equally as well. You will change the WAN setting in your router to DHCP mode and give it the IP of your modem which will be 192.168.100.1

Then save the setting and reboot the router and power cycle the modem. You want to make sure than nothing but your router is plugged into your modem and that your modem is plugged into the WAN port on your router.

After the modem boots and the router boots, the router will first be handed a 192.168.100.x ip until an IP is handed from the ISP and then you will see it change and voila your router is now online.

As you can see my router has an external IP issued by the ISP. Once again, no MAC cloning was needed for this.

I still have a request in for the Motorola modem as one member suggest it was better.

At this point though I would be fine without it.

I should also note that my LAN clients can access the modem at 192.168.100.1. Once you get there your settings are limited to wireless and Gateway mode (where you can set the device back to a router)

I hope this helps someone. I know that TRUE is very quick to tell you that this modem does not support bridge mode which clearly it does. Perhaps they just don't know how to set it up or don't want the customers doing it themselves. The crew that came and did my install were not IT guys. All they could do was install the cabling and then plug their laptop into the modem to provision it. I was asking the guy on the laptop questions in Thai and he clearly had no idea. He admitted he was not an IT guy but just an installer.

There it is, if anyone has questions I'm happy to try and help.

Very interesting information. I just got a True DOCSIS line installed, with a Cisco EPC2325 cable modem and would to switch it to bridge mode and hook my Linksys WRT54GL/Tomato router on the back of it.

My Tomato seems a little different to yours though - when I choose DHCP under WAN/Internet settings I only get a field for MTU - there are no option to add an IP address. Any idea why the difference? Do I need another version of Tomato? I can't remember which one I installed, it's been running a couple of years already....

[muratremix]

Phil, Wrt54GL is very old device and doesn't support wireless N.

Why don't you buy yourself a new router, perhaps a dualband (with 5ghz networking, strongly recommended in mooban areas).

If you buy asus rt-n66u or rt-n66ac (wireless ac), you don't even need tomato or dd-wrt. There is a custom firmware based on original firmware which works flawlessly (MerlinWRT).

If you don't need expensive 5ghz router, asus rt-n16 still good choice for 2.4ghz network and it can run both dd-wrt and tomato.

If not, please update your tomato to a newer one. For gods sake even 1 year is too much without updating firmware

[Jayman]

Ok.. here is an update.

I was successful with putting the cisco 2325 into bridge mode on the following page 192.168.1.1/GatewayMode.asp

But before you do that, disable the wifi on the modem and make sure all other Ethernet cables are unplugged other than the device you are using to change the settings.

Once you switch it into bridge mode it will reboot. The very first client to connect to the modem (wifi or LAN) will be issued first a 192.168.100.x address and then a few moments later will be issued an IP from the ISP. I'm talking the external IP. After this happens, any other client (wifi or lan) that connects direct to the modem will be SOL and only this first device will have direct access to the internet. No MAC cloning was needed at all. The ISP doesn't care what MAC the device being handed the IP is. I tried it on 4 different devices both LAN and wifi and the 1st device connected gets the external IP. This is why I tell you to disable the WIFI on the modem prior to putting to bridge mode cause you don't want some wifi client being that first client to connect.

So now you need to setup your Router. I have a dlink flashed with tomato at the moment. DD-wrt would work equally as well. You will change the WAN setting in your router to DHCP mode and give it the IP of your modem which will be 192.168.100.1

Then save the setting and reboot the router and power cycle the modem. You want to make sure than nothing but your router is plugged into your modem and that your modem is plugged into the WAN port on your router.

After the modem boots and the router boots, the router will first be handed a 192.168.100.x ip until an IP is handed from the ISP and then you will see it change and voila your router is now online.

As you can see my router has an external IP issued by the ISP. Once again, no MAC cloning was needed for this.

I still have a request in for the Motorola modem as one member suggest it was better.

At this point though I would be fine without it.

I should also note that my LAN clients can access the modem at 192.168.100.1. Once you get there your settings are limited to wireless and Gateway mode (where you can set the device back to a router)

I hope this helps someone. I know that TRUE is very quick to tell you that this modem does not support bridge mode which clearly it does. Perhaps they just don't know how to set it up or don't want the customers doing it themselves. The crew that came and did my install were not IT guys. All they could do was install the cabling and then plug their laptop into the modem to provision it. I was asking the guy on the laptop questions in Thai and he clearly had no idea. He admitted he was not an IT guy but just an installer.

There it is, if anyone has questions I'm happy to try and help.

Very interesting information. I just got a True DOCSIS line installed, with a Cisco EPC2325 cable modem and would to switch it to bridge mode and hook my Linksys WRT54GL/Tomato router on the back of it.

My Tomato seems a little different to yours though - when I choose DHCP under WAN/Internet settings I only get a field for MTU - there are no option to add an IP address. Any idea why the difference? Do I need another version of Tomato? I can't remember which one I installed, it's been running a couple of years already....

I'm not running the stock tomato but the "toast" version. Is nearly the same with a few added graphs and such.On the wan/internet tab did you select DHCP under type? It's not till you select type=dhcp that you see the area to enter the modems ip. Not sure how it would function without that other than to assume it uses the dhcp broadcast to discover where the dhcp server is.Like I mentioned, the most important thing is to make sure that no other devices are trying to connect to the modem. The first device that connects gets the external IP. So, to be sure, turn off all other devices nics and then power on the modem in bridge mode, then plug the router into the lan side of it (connected to WAN port on router) and power the router on. It should try and get ip via dhcp from modem. The first address it will get is internal 192.168.100.x addy. Then a few moments later it will update to the one issued from the WAN and will be your external IP.

on a side note, my router is not N wireless and I have no issues with that at all. I have many devices that use it. All can stream video and what not without any issues.

edit. I realized that 1500 is the best MTU setting for use on this docsis setup. I just looked through my posted screen shots and see I was using 1492 when I started.

edit 2: another thing I realized is that the modem IP space you are looking for serves 1 function and that is to setup a route so that you can access your 192.168.100.1 modem from your LAN which is prob on a different subnet. My LAN is on 192.168.1.x

That place to enter your modem IP is to setup that route entry for you but you can just as easily do it manually from the advanced/route page. The entry looks like this

Edited October 30, 2012 by Jayman

[Phil Conners]

Phil, Wrt54GL is very old device and doesn't support wireless N.

Why don't you buy yourself a new router, perhaps a dualband (with 5ghz networking, strongly recommended in mooban areas).

If you buy asus rt-n66u or rt-n66ac (wireless ac), you don't even need tomato or dd-wrt. There is a custom firmware based on original firmware which works flawlessly (MerlinWRT).

If you don't need expensive 5ghz router, asus rt-n16 still good choice for 2.4ghz network and it can run both dd-wrt and tomato.

If not, please update your tomato to a newer one. For gods sake even 1 year is too much without updating firmware

I hardly ever use Wifi. My house is all wired up with 100 mbps ethernet, I only use wifi for mobile phones and tablets. I don't have a single N-device.

Tomato hasn't been updated since 2010 -- see http://en.wikipedia....mato_(firmware)

[Phil Conners]

Ok.. here is an update.

I was successful with putting the cisco 2325 into bridge mode on the following page 192.168.1.1/GatewayMode.asp

But before you do that, disable the wifi on the modem and make sure all other Ethernet cables are unplugged other than the device you are using to change the settings.

Once you switch it into bridge mode it will reboot. The very first client to connect to the modem (wifi or LAN) will be issued first a 192.168.100.x address and then a few moments later will be issued an IP from the ISP. I'm talking the external IP. After this happens, any other client (wifi or lan) that connects direct to the modem will be SOL and only this first device will have direct access to the internet. No MAC cloning was needed at all. The ISP doesn't care what MAC the device being handed the IP is. I tried it on 4 different devices both LAN and wifi and the 1st device connected gets the external IP. This is why I tell you to disable the WIFI on the modem prior to putting to bridge mode cause you don't want some wifi client being that first client to connect.

So now you need to setup your Router. I have a dlink flashed with tomato at the moment. DD-wrt would work equally as well. You will change the WAN setting in your router to DHCP mode and give it the IP of your modem which will be 192.168.100.1

Then save the setting and reboot the router and power cycle the modem. You want to make sure than nothing but your router is plugged into your modem and that your modem is plugged into the WAN port on your router.

After the modem boots and the router boots, the router will first be handed a 192.168.100.x ip until an IP is handed from the ISP and then you will see it change and voila your router is now online.

As you can see my router has an external IP issued by the ISP. Once again, no MAC cloning was needed for this.

I still have a request in for the Motorola modem as one member suggest it was better.

At this point though I would be fine without it.

I should also note that my LAN clients can access the modem at 192.168.100.1. Once you get there your settings are limited to wireless and Gateway mode (where you can set the device back to a router)

I hope this helps someone. I know that TRUE is very quick to tell you that this modem does not support bridge mode which clearly it does. Perhaps they just don't know how to set it up or don't want the customers doing it themselves. The crew that came and did my install were not IT guys. All they could do was install the cabling and then plug their laptop into the modem to provision it. I was asking the guy on the laptop questions in Thai and he clearly had no idea. He admitted he was not an IT guy but just an installer.

There it is, if anyone has questions I'm happy to try and help.

Very interesting information. I just got a True DOCSIS line installed, with a Cisco EPC2325 cable modem and would to switch it to bridge mode and hook my Linksys WRT54GL/Tomato router on the back of it.

My Tomato seems a little different to yours though - when I choose DHCP under WAN/Internet settings I only get a field for MTU - there are no option to add an IP address. Any idea why the difference? Do I need another version of Tomato? I can't remember which one I installed, it's been running a couple of years already....

I'm not running the stock tomato but the "toast" version. Is nearly the same with a few added graphs and such.On the wan/internet tab did you select DHCP under type? It's not till you select type=dhcp that you see the area to enter the modems ip. Not sure how it would function without that other than to assume it uses the dhcp broadcast to discover where the dhcp server is.Like I mentioned, the most important thing is to make sure that no other devices are trying to connect to the modem. The first device that connects gets the external IP. So, to be sure, turn off all other devices nics and then power on the modem in bridge mode, then plug the router into the lan side of it (connected to WAN port on router) and power the router on. It should try and get ip via dhcp from modem. The first address it will get is internal 192.168.100.x addy. Then a few moments later it will update to the one issued from the WAN and will be your external IP.

on a side note, my router is not N wireless and I have no issues with that at all. I have many devices that use it. All can stream video and what not without any issues.

edit. I realized that 1500 is the best MTU setting for use on this docsis setup. I just looked through my posted screen shots and see I was using 1492 when I started.

edit 2: another thing I realized is that the modem IP space you are looking for serves 1 function and that is to setup a route so that you can access your 192.168.100.1 modem from your LAN which is prob on a different subnet. My LAN is on 192.168.1.x

That place to enter your modem IP is to setup that route entry for you but you can just as easily do it manually from the advanced/route page. The entry looks like this

Actually the True cable modem hasn't been able to connect to the server at all, since I got up this morning, so I'll probably keep the 3BB line for now. At least until the True cable becomes stable, if ever.

Logically, if you select DHCP, what would be the point of adding an IP address anyway? It will just assume whatever IP it is given by the cable modem.

I had a look at the different versions of Tomato, but they don't seem to offer anything I need over the plain version. I like the download stats and the static dhcp system, and the access control system, that's really all the functionality I use.

[Jayman]

Actually the True cable modem hasn't been able to connect to the server at all, since I got up this morning, so I'll probably keep the 3BB line for now. At least until the True cable becomes stable, if ever.

Logically, if you select DHCP, what would be the point of adding an IP address anyway? It will just assume whatever IP it is given by the cable modem.

I had a look at the different versions of Tomato, but they don't seem to offer anything I need over the plain version. I like the download stats and the static dhcp system, and the access control system, that's really all the functionality I use.

Like I said in my edit2 above, the ip you enter for your modem has nothing to do with dhcp but rather to do with setting up a route to the modem from your LAN subnet.

The dhcp server is discovered via a broadcast.

You don't need ot get a new tomato version just for that as I have shown you how to setup that route manually. And quite honestly, that route is not needed if you never intend to access your modem at 192.168.100.1 from your LAN pc's.

[Dork]

Very interesting information. I just got a True DOCSIS line installed, with a Cisco EPC2325 cable modem and would to switch it to bridge mode and hook my Linksys WRT54GL/Tomato router on the back of it.

My Tomato seems a little different to yours though - when I choose DHCP under WAN/Internet settings I only get a field for MTU - there are no option to add an IP address. Any idea why the difference? Do I need another version of Tomato? I can't remember which one I installed, it's been running a couple of years already....

The reason that there is no option to enter an IP address on the Tomato is because in true "bridge mode" there is no IP address between the router and the modem because they communicate at OSI layer 2 (below TCP/IP). The DHCP setting refers to the WAN IP address, not the LAN address of the modem. In "bridge mode" the modem only has an IP address for webgui configuration and that address is irrelevent to the network routing.

I suspect that this Cisco modem doesn't actually support "bridge mode" but Cisco use confusing terminology by having 2 user selectable gateway modes and calling them either "router" or "bridge" which are something else altogether. It would seem more intuitive if what they call "bridge" was called "NAT Disabled" and "router" called "NAT Enabled".

That's why in this configuration with the (non-bridge mode) Cisco, the Tomato needs an IP address and routing tables for the Cisco because it is simply acting as a gateway for the Tomato.

[Jayman]

Very interesting information. I just got a True DOCSIS line installed, with a Cisco EPC2325 cable modem and would to switch it to bridge mode and hook my Linksys WRT54GL/Tomato router on the back of it.

My Tomato seems a little different to yours though - when I choose DHCP under WAN/Internet settings I only get a field for MTU - there are no option to add an IP address. Any idea why the difference? Do I need another version of Tomato? I can't remember which one I installed, it's been running a couple of years already....

The reason that there is no option to enter an IP address on the Tomato is because in true "bridge mode" there is no IP address between the router and the modem because they communicate at OSI layer 2 (below TCP/IP). The DHCP setting refers to the WAN IP address, not the LAN address of the modem. In "bridge mode" the modem only has an IP address for webgui configuration and that address is irrelevent to the network routing.

I suspect that this Cisco modem doesn't actually support "bridge mode" but Cisco use confusing terminology by having 2 user selectable gateway modes and calling them either "router" or "bridge" which are something else altogether. It would seem more intuitive if what they call "bridge" was called "NAT Disabled" and "router" called "NAT Enabled".

That's why in this configuration with the (non-bridge mode) Cisco, the Tomato needs an IP address and routing tables for the Cisco because it is simply acting as a gateway for the Tomato.

I have explained exactly how I have setup the cisco to work in bridge mode, I even showed pictures of all my settings. The confusion is that there is a place to enter an IP for the modem in the router setup. This has nothing to do with bridge mode. As I stated, this is to setup a route so that you can access the modem gui from the LAN as they are on different subnets.

You can look in the image I attached previously but the entry says

Route Modem IP (must be in different subnet to router, 0.0.0.0 to disable)

as I said, this is just to add a route to the modem. you can leave it at 0.0.0.0 and no route entry will be added. You can also add the route manually from the advanced route page.

100% though the cisco modem is in bridge mode and yes the dhcp is to get the router the external IP. As I have said, first the router is given a 192.168.100.x ip from the modem and then a few moments later it is changed to the external IP given from the ISP.

I hope this is clear now and forgive me if my previous posts caused confusion on this.

[Dork]

I have explained exactly how I have setup the cisco to work in bridge mode, I even showed pictures of all my settings. The confusion is that there is a place to enter an IP for the modem in the router setup. This has nothing to do with bridge mode. As I stated, this is to setup a route so that you can access the modem gui from the LAN as they are on different subnets.

You can look in the image I attached previously but the entry says

Route Modem IP (must be in different subnet to router, 0.0.0.0 to disable)

as I said, this is just to add a route to the modem. you can leave it at 0.0.0.0 and no route entry will be added. You can also add the route manually from the advanced route page.

100% though the cisco modem is in bridge mode and yes the dhcp is to get the router the external IP. As I have said, first the router is given a 192.168.100.x ip from the modem and then a few moments later it is changed to the external IP given from the ISP.

I hope this is clear now and forgive me if my previous posts caused confusion on this.

Perhaps the DOCSIS specification doesn't allow for true bridge mode because of MAC filtering/authentication. I don't have any direct experience with it.

Just out of curiosity, if you do a traceroute from a client device to an external address, what shows as the 2nd hop? Is it the WAN IP or the Modem's?

[Jayman]

I have explained exactly how I have setup the cisco to work in bridge mode, I even showed pictures of all my settings. The confusion is that there is a place to enter an IP for the modem in the router setup. This has nothing to do with bridge mode. As I stated, this is to setup a route so that you can access the modem gui from the LAN as they are on different subnets.

You can look in the image I attached previously but the entry says

Route Modem IP (must be in different subnet to router, 0.0.0.0 to disable)

as I said, this is just to add a route to the modem. you can leave it at 0.0.0.0 and no route entry will be added. You can also add the route manually from the advanced route page.

100% though the cisco modem is in bridge mode and yes the dhcp is to get the router the external IP. As I have said, first the router is given a 192.168.100.x ip from the modem and then a few moments later it is changed to the external IP given from the ISP.

I hope this is clear now and forgive me if my previous posts caused confusion on this.

Perhaps the DOCSIS specification doesn't allow for true bridge mode because of MAC filtering/authentication. I don't have any direct experience with it.

Just out of curiosity, if you do a traceroute from a client device to an external address, what shows as the 2nd hop? Is it the WAN IP or the Modem's?

Interestingly enough... the 2nd hop times out and no ip is even listed

Tracing route to google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]

over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms <1 ms <1 ms router [192.168.1.1]

2 * * * Request timed out.

3 8 ms 7 ms 23 ms 10.92.237.253

4 12 ms 12 ms 14 ms 203-144-128-22.static.asianet.co.th [203.144.128.22]

5 12 ms 11 ms 7 ms 119-46-185-213.static.asianet.co.th [119.46.185.213]

6 13 ms 22 ms 11 ms 61-91-210-225.static.asianet.co.th [61.91.210.225]

7 14 ms 11 ms 11 ms 61-91-213-36.static.asianet.co.th [61.91.213.36]

8 14 ms 11 ms 12 ms 61-91-213-14.static.asianet.co.th [61.91.213.14]

9 15 ms 18 ms 15 ms TIG-Net25-45.trueintergateway.com [122.144.25.45]

10 16 ms 15 ms 15 ms TH-ICR-TT1-26-129.trueintergateway.com [122.144.26.129]

11 35 ms 37 ms 35 ms 72.14.215.181

12 110 ms 54 ms 35 ms 209.85.242.244

13 53 ms 45 ms * 209.85.250.237

14 * * * Request timed out.

15 38 ms 37 ms 35 ms google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]

Trace complete.

incidentally, hop 3 is NOT my WAN IP and in fact my WAN IP is not showing in the tracert at all. I'm assuming that it's hop 2. hop 1 is my router. The modem gui IP is 192.168.100.1 and is also not listed in the tracert.

I believe that the modem is in true BRIDGE mode and have no reason to believe otherwise. All routing has been turned off and the modem is acting purely as a bridge to the ISP.

edit: the reason my router is probably not responding to the ping is that I have it setup not to do so. Ie.. stealth mode.

Edited October 30, 2012 by Jayman

[slarty]

does anyone know the Advanced settings username/password ? this is not the sames as the regular login - which on mine, by default is admin/password ?