TOT fiber + 2 routers

[AngThong]

I'm having some network stability issues.

 

TOT recently installed fiber in my house (25/15). They also installed a ZTE F660 fiber modem/router. Its wi-fi signal is a bit weak and I need to be able to set up VPN client in the router, which the ZTE doesn't seem to allow. To remedy this, I have connected an Asus RT-AC68U router to the ZTE (cable from Ethernet port on the ZTE to the WAN port on the Asus).

 

This works OK 90 % of the time with good speeds within Thailand and internationally. The other 10 %, the Asus will randomly lose connection with the ZTE and I'll have to manually reboot both.

 

I need 24/7 router-level VPN, so removing the Asus isn't an option. Currently set up as PPTP, but OpenVPN is an option, don't know if it'd make any difference.

 

I am not terribly familiar with the issue at hand, but I know that sitting behind two routers isn't ideal. I also know they should ideally be bridged - but there doesn't seem to be a setting for this in the ZTE's GUI. I've seen reports online suggesting TOT can set the ZTE in bridged mode if I ask them, but I'd have to go through my landlord which would be a major hassle for unrelated reasons, so that would be my very last resort only, and would likely take a good while.

 

I've given the Asus a static IP address (192.168.1.2) outside of the DHCP range (192.168.1.3 - 192.168.1.99) on the ZTE and adjusted the WAN settings on the Asus accordingly. I also tried setting up DMZ for the Asus on the ZTE, but it seemed to cause more trouble (? maybe unrelated...) so I disabled it. The Asus' LAN IP is 192.168.2.1 and its DHCP range is 192.168.2.2 - 192.168.2.99.

 

I wonder what could be causing the Asus to disconnect... Double NAT? UPnP? Something else? Any ideas, anyone?

[mtls2005]

There may be other similar threads here, I only searched for a few seconds.

 

 

Maybe read through Pantip; example: http://pantip.com/topic/34304002

 

Where it seems like you may need TOT's assistance?

 

[AngThong]

1 minute ago, mtls2005 said:

There may be other similar threads here, I only searched for a few seconds.

 

 

Maybe read through Pantip; example: http://pantip.com/topic/34304002

 

Where it seems like you may need TOT's assistance?

 

 

Yes, those are among the reports I've seen - most of them suggest to contact TOT.

 

As I said in my OP, I'd have to go through my landlord which would be undesirable at the moment, and even if I did, it'd likely take a good while before anything happens. Hence looking for other options... Guess I'll just have to educate myself on the topic so I understand all the settings thoroughly.

[mtls2005]

Sorry for not being more clear.

 

It could be that no matter how self-educated you become you may still need TOT to make some change(s) in their provisioning system. Just ask your landlord if you can contact TOT directly.

 

But the last post in that Pantip thread seems to indicate that it can be accomplished by creating a new WAN connection, in Bridge Mode, and using your PPPoE credentials in your Asus router.

 

 

[thedemon]

I have the same ZTE-F660 bridged to a pfSense router. In the 2 years since it was installed it has never gone down or required a reboot. I can honestly say that, as far as I am aware, the uptime has been 100%.

 

As already suggested, only TOT can do the switch to bridge mode. From my experience they will send a technician to your premises where he will make a call to the network centre and they will do the actual switch immediately. The technician will connect his laptop to a LAN port on the ZTE and make a PPPoE connection to verify that bridge mode is on and working.

 

Even if the account is not in your name, you should still be able to call TOT and ask for a technician to visit. They don't seem to care who the account holder is.

 

It looks to me that the Pantip post referred to by mtls2005 is half-bridge whereas true bridge mode is done on layer 2. That would somewhat defeat the purpose.

[johng]

In the Pantip post user HS4CJR  reaffirms that the  ZTE-F660 from TOT can be bridged by yourself

he suggests that when doing the reconfiguration  you must remove the fibre cable from the modem or it will reconfigure itself !!

[AngThong]

Thanks. I'll try calling TOT and see what they say.

[CaptHaddock]

I have TOT service, not fiber, and use a second router.  In principle, there should be no difference in performance with two routers, compared to one.  However, I noticed that TOT was revoking the external ip address of its the outside Huawei router very frequently, at least once per day and sometimes more often.  And when the outside router got a new ip the inside router would lose internet connectivity until rebooted.  So, I did two things:

 

1.  Turned on the watchdog function in the inner router, which is running DD-WRT which offers this function.  So, if the inner router is unable to ping 8.8.8.8 it will reboot itself.  This works reliably, but is disruptive if it occurs during a time when we are using the internet.

 

2.  So, I plugged the external router into an Orvibo wifi smartplug which is configured into the wifi network of the inner router.  This arrangement lets me schedule a job on a linux box that cycles the power from the Orvibo to the outer router everyday at 4:00 AM during which the router gets a new external ip address.  When the outer router does down,  the inner router notices in a couple of minutes and reboots itself.

 

This arrangement has reduced the frequency of interruptions of service during waking hours.  The scheduled interruption takes about 3 minutes to restore service.  It looks like TOT wants to issue a new ip at no more than 24 hour intervals.  If I make sure that reissue occurs at 4:00 AM it is less likely to happen again that day.

 

Edited September 21, 2016 by CaptHaddock

[AngThong]

2 hours ago, CaptHaddock said:

This arrangement has reduced the frequency of interruptions of service during waking hours.  The scheduled interruption takes about 3 minutes to restore service.  It looks like TOT wants to issue a new ip at no more than 24 hour intervals.  If I make sure that reissue occurs at 4:00 AM it is less likely to happen again that day.

 

 

I've noticed the same thing with TOT when using Unblock-Us (DNS service) to access restricted websites - I have to manually refresh the service every time my IP address changes, which happens at least once every 24 hours.

 

TOT said they will be in touch re. bridging the routers, we'll see what happens.

[CaptHaddock]

1 hour ago, AngThong said:

 

I've noticed the same thing with TOT when using Unblock-Us (DNS service) to access restricted websites - I have to manually refresh the service every time my IP address changes, which happens at least once every 24 hours.

 

TOT said they will be in touch re. bridging the routers, we'll see what happens.

 

You can automate the update of the ip by registering with a free DDNS service (recommend: now-ip.org) and get a name for your site.  For example, your site might be myhome.now-ip.org.  Then run a DDNS client on any computer or certain routers to update the DDNS entry for myhome.now-ip.org when it changes, checking every five minutes.  Then  you can just connect to myhome.now-ip.org and it will connect you using the current ip.

[bek]

 

You can automate the update of the ip by registering with a free DDNS service (recommend: now-ip.org) and get a name for your site.  For example, your site might be myhome.now-ip.org.  Then run a DDNS client on any computer or certain routers to update the DDNS entry for myhome.now-ip.org when it changes, checking every five minutes.  Then  you can just connect to myhome.now-ip.org and it will connect you using the current ip.

I have a setup where my AIS gateway is bridged and an Asus RT-AC87U router is connected. When looking in the interface of either the gateway or the router, my wan ip is something like 110.118.XXX.XXX. If I use a service like iplocation.net to view my public ip, it shows as 49.228.XXX.XXX.
Asus provides a DDNS service with their routers, which is easy to set up. I tried using it for my DNS Unlocator service, but it didn't work. I did some googling, and it seems that due to the mess with the ip addresses, a DDNS service will not work.
Have I misunderstood something, or can you confirm that DDNS will not work with my AIS setup?

My public IP seemed to change every 10-15 minutes, when I was trying to run the DDNS service.

[thedemon]

1 hour ago, CaptHaddock said:

 

You can automate the update of the ip by registering with a free DDNS service (recommend: now-ip.org) and get a name for your site.  For example, your site might be myhome.now-ip.org.  Then run a DDNS client on any computer or certain routers to update the DDNS entry for myhome.now-ip.org when it changes, checking every five minutes.  Then  you can just connect to myhome.now-ip.org and it will connect you using the current ip.

 

The op is talking about a smart DNS service for circumventing geo-restrictions not DDNS.

 

I'm pretty sure Unblock.us requires refreshing the login page on their website everytime the IP address changes.

[thedemon]

1 hour ago, bek said:

 

I have a setup where my AIS gateway is bridged and an Asus RT-AC87U router is connected. When looking in the interface of either the gateway or the router, my wan ip is something like 110.118.XXX.XXX. If I use a service like iplocation.net to view my public ip, it shows as 49.228.XXX.XXX.
Asus provides a DDNS service with their routers, which is easy to set up. I tried using it for my DNS Unlocator service, but it didn't work. I did some googling, and it seems that due to the mess with the ip addresses, a DDNS service will not work.
Have I misunderstood something, or can you confirm that DDNS will not work with my AIS setup?

My public IP seemed to change every 10-15 minutes, when I was trying to run the DDNS service.

 

 

Member mtls2005 mentioned a solution to this issue in this post 

Apparently it is because the AIS home packages utilize double NAT instead of providing subscribers with a public IP address. TOT do issue public IP's so don't have the issue.

[thedemon]

7 hours ago, CaptHaddock said:

I have TOT service, not fiber, and use a second router.  In principle, there should be no difference in performance with two routers, compared to one.  However, I noticed that TOT was revoking the external ip address of its the outside Huawei router very frequently, at least once per day and sometimes more often.  And when the outside router got a new ip the inside router would lose internet connectivity until rebooted.  So, I did two things:

 

1.  Turned on the watchdog function in the inner router, which is running DD-WRT which offers this function.  So, if the inner router is unable to ping 8.8.8.8 it will reboot itself.  This works reliably, but is disruptive if it occurs during a time when we are using the internet.

 

2.  So, I plugged the external router into an Orvibo wifi smartplug which is configured into the wifi network of the inner router.  This arrangement lets me schedule a job on a linux box that cycles the power from the Orvibo to the outer router everyday at 4:00 AM during which the router gets a new external ip address.  When the outer router does down,  the inner router notices in a couple of minutes and reboots itself.

 

This arrangement has reduced the frequency of interruptions of service during waking hours.  The scheduled interruption takes about 3 minutes to restore service.  It looks like TOT wants to issue a new ip at no more than 24 hour intervals.  If I make sure that reissue occurs at 4:00 AM it is less likely to happen again that day.

 

 

Clever solution. Yeah TOT reset the connection precisely every 24 hours. I have looked at my router logs in the past.

[CaptHaddock]

1 hour ago, bek said:

 

I have a setup where my AIS gateway is bridged and an Asus RT-AC87U router is connected. When looking in the interface of either the gateway or the router, my wan ip is something like 110.118.XXX.XXX. If I use a service like iplocation.net to view my public ip, it shows as 49.228.XXX.XXX.
Asus provides a DDNS service with their routers, which is easy to set up. I tried using it for my DNS Unlocator service, but it didn't work. I did some googling, and it seems that due to the mess with the ip addresses, a DDNS service will not work.
Have I misunderstood something, or can you confirm that DDNS will not work with my AIS setup?

My public IP seemed to change every 10-15 minutes, when I was trying to run the DDNS service.

 

 

DDNS will always work, provided the DDNS client is compatible with the DDNS service provider and is retrieving the correct Wan ip.  I find that the embedded DDNS client in routers and video cameras are often limited.  For example, they may support only the dyndns protocol, but not every DDNS service supports that, although most claim to.  The embedded clients on routers expect that the Wan ip of that router is the internet address, but that won't be true if there is another router that actually has the real Wan ip.

 

All in all it is more flexible to run a DDNS client on a computer on the network if you have an appropriate client that is always up and running.  The DDNS client should get the internet ip from a remote internet website like whatismyipaddress.com, not from a local router.  You should test the DDNS client with the service to make sure it works.  Often the documentation is incomplete and it takes some trial and error to get it to report. 

 

Since you always have an internet address (assigned to your outermost router) and your DDNS service will function as the authoritative server for you, DDNS will always work if you can retrieve your internet address correctly and report it to your service.

 

I use the DDNS client, ddclient, running on a raspberry pi linux installation, to update now-ip.org.  It works quite reliably with my two router configuration.