srgeringer's profile

Tutor

 • 

4 Messages

Tuesday, April 4th, 2017 6:26 PM

adding a cascading router to existing AT&T router/modem

have some issues, i need to configure my moden and netgear router, currently I am having trouble getting to secured websites, and after 4 hours with AT&t support that did nothing I though I would reach out here.

 

the modem see the netgear router as a cascade router but will not accept the IP address I have for it. it there a walk thru on doing this anywhere or some advice anyone has on how it works the best

 

my current setup is, wall to the AT&t modem/Router, off that I have the AT&T wireless router for the TVs and my netgear Router. all wired and wireless devises go thru the netgear router. also of what I have read says to shut the other wireless off on the AT&T box but wont that shut down my TVs?

 

any advise is helpfull

Professor

 • 

2.2K Messages

7 years ago

@srgeringer

Let me know if the diagram matches your home network:

Screen Shot 2017-04-04 at 3.37.27 PM.JPG

The home network provided by AT&T should be a 192.168.1.0 network with the router/gateway being 192.168.1.254 and your Netgear router being assigned a DHCHP assigned IP address of 192.168.1.?. Your Netgear router should be using Network Address Translation (NAT) wherein its downstream network will be something other than 192.168.1.0.

 

"the modem see the netgear router as a cascade router but will not accept the IP address I have for it." I have no idea what you are talking about could you provide more detail.

 

Do not turn off your WiFi!

 

"I am having trouble getting to secured websites." Can you provide a URL so that I can try.

1 Attachment

Tutor

 • 

4 Messages

7 years ago

Hi ApexRon, that is pretty much what I got. when I went into the modem/router setting to add a cascade router, it shows my router and ip address  but asks to input the ip adress and mask, when I put that in it gives me an error

Professor

 • 

2.2K Messages

7 years ago

Ah, what you put in is your router's IP network address not its specific IP address. In other words, 192.168.2.0 not 192.168.2.1.

Tutor

 • 

4 Messages

7 years ago

thanks, do I need any specific setting on my netgear router?

Professor

 • 

2.2K Messages

7 years ago

Other than your downstream IP network addressing, there should not be much but that depends on capabilities of the Netgear as well as your specific needs. You never did state the model Netgear, so that's the best answer I can give.

Tutor

 • 

4 Messages

7 years ago

the Router is a netgear R6400

Professor

 • 

2.2K Messages

7 years ago

This is an excellent product with many capabilities, as per the manual R6400 Manual. However, unless you have a specific need for any of those capabilities and understand their exact function, stay away. Using the product's Wizard should provide you with basics; connection to AT&T provided equipment and setup of your home network.

Tutor

 • 

1 Message

6 years ago

I just want to take a moment to express my hatred with AT&T's Modem/Router combination device (the AT&T U-Verse to e exact, which are so carefully designed to be a nightmare for the victims that signed up for AT&T's internet service hoping to be solely responsible to manage all their own network's inbound/outbound internet traffic). Unfortunately, these have been known to be completely incapable of disabling all routing functionality - why can't we have the option to use a simple modem? After spending countless hours trying to setup from one business after another yields the same story on some models of the AT&T U-Verse. They WILL deny your request to be provisioned with the versions that are capable of true 'bridge-mode.' To get much needed answers concerning the U-Verse's routing configuration settings and a complete explanation of what each firewall 'setting' is programed to do we had to speak to the U-Verse experts. The modem is AT&T's hardware, but the U-Verse is a separate company. You have to spend $50 to be added to your monthly bill in order to be connected with the U-Verse experts. I asked if IP Pass through settings with the Cascade router settings would completely negate the firewall policy list, NAT'ing, and DHCP. The U-Verse expert told me and my client (their victim) on the phone that we should be able to find that answer by searching around on Google (why are we reading this thread instead of being on the phone with AT&T? Hahah!). I'll just end the story from here (you can imagine the awkward 10 seconds of silence between me and my client's astonished reaction.

Your topology: Wall jack > AT&T U-Verse > AT&T U-Verse LAN ports connect to both your Netgear Nighthawk router and your Wireless AT&T access point? If so - first improvement is to connect your Wireless AT&T access point to one of your available LAN ports on your Netgear Nighthawk (or the switch connected to your Netgear Nighthawk if you've ran of the switchports it offers). This will still be a problem because your network's inbound and outbound traffic has to traverse 2 entire networks between the Netgear Nighthawk and the AT&T U-Verse which look very similar as well - it would be possible to see an IP 192.168.1.50 assigned to a host in your AT&T U-Verse's network as well a 192.168.1.50 in your Netgear Nighthawk's network. Packet forwarding from NAT will absolutely run in to problems randomly for a full day or two - on and off. AT&T U-Verse's DHCP pool's lease time is default set for 24 hours before that assigned IP address lease expires to require a new assignment for the next 24 hours. If you've ran into problems which get resolved by rebooting routers under a network wired like this - then you'll understand why it sometimes temporarily fixes issues because all IP address leases have been reset, and reassigned but will eventually have problems again (perhaps error messages such as IP conflict? or no access to the internet?

You're ACTUAL ANSWER: You need to set up IP Pass through in your AT&T U-Verse settings by obtaining the MAC address of the WAN/Internet port of your Netgear Nighthawk (which should be found by clicking the ADVANCED tab and be brought to the next page containing 'Internet Port' (look for MAC address - might start off with these 6 characters 2C:30:33)

Once IP Pass through has been set, and saved you'll want to be absolutely sure the only wired device connected to your AT&T U-Verse is your Netgear router, also all of your WiFi connections need to switch to use your Netgear Nighthawk's WiFi (fyi - these Nighthawks start to fail in performance once you reach up to around 14-15 wireless connected devices by the way - even if they are sitting idle on the network. Netgear Nighthawks are small office to home office grade, or SoHo, which all of SoHo's were built to be routers first and wireless access points second). After all connections are connected to your Netgear Nighthawk you'll want to be certain your Nighthawk's internet connection is setup using DHCP - which is the factory defaulted choice. Now reboot your AT&T U-Verse and your Netgear Nighthawk.

Last step - after both your AT&T U-Verse and Netgear Nighthawk have had plenty of time to come back online (usually from 90 to 120 seconds) check to see if your Netgear Nighthawk's Internet connection details shows your public IP address from AT&T. At that point the WAN assignment has been passed off from the AT&T U-Verse to the Netgear Nighthawk but it's still making routing decisions (for some weird and intentional reason...). Now you'll want to setup CASCADE by entering in the WAN IP address settings found in your Netgear Nighthawk router > ADVANCED tab > Setup on the left side column menu > Internet Setup: Internet IP Address: "IP ADDRESS" / "IP SUBNET MASK" / "GATEWAY IP ADDRESS

For entering in CASCADE settings in your AT&T U-Verse:
IP Address: enter in the IP ADDRESS mentioned in your Netgear Nighthawk's Internet Setup
Network Address: Look at the GATEWAY IP ADDRESS in your Netgear Nighthawk's Internet Setup, and subtract the last number mentioned on the very right side by 1 (when in doubt you can fat finger this with the last digit entered in as 0. For example 74.120.34.0 <-- like that)
Subnet Mask: Enter in the IP SUBNET MASK as it's shown in your Netgear Nighthawk's Internet Setup
If you can't get this working right - call AT&T and find out what the correct settings are for your CASCADE setup, and tell them to chew on a lemon for me while you're at it.

Save and reboot both your AT&T U-Verse and your Netgear Nighthawk.

At this point you will have a proper cascade configuration, however there is still more you need to do such as disable DHCP, NAT, Firewall, and the WiFi interfaces built-in your AT&T U-Verse by turning off wireless broadcasting to all your WiFi profiles. AT&T should now be able to help you from here - if not then keep enjoying one of the worst internet services in the United States (completely serious). I can assure you that AT&T's internet service truly doesn't care how upset you get (their customer support employment has a huge turn over rate) or the 'almost internet' connection they offer. What they CAN assure you is you probably need to upgrade your internet service and everything on their end looks fine.... or they'll send you a new AT&T U-Verse except it will always be the same exact one but with less dust. Once you have that done - test this out in case you've been able to perform bridge-mode by running an IPv4 trace route from a computer connected to your Netgear Nighthawk. The first trace route hop will show the IP Gateway Address of your Netgear Nighthawk, and HOPEFULLY you will NOT see 192.168.1.254 on the second hop. If it's there then guess what - it's still fondling your packets maliciously - seriously though it is still making routing decisions that you cant instruct it to stop doing in your own private network. This is where AT&T has no respect for their customers in this line of business, and they don't care that their own modem causes service impacting issues which you or even AT&T can't fix. They can't because they won't, your internet service terms of agreements doesn't express their loyalty to their customers' concerns in their service, however that can be found in all other ISP's like Comcast that states something to the effect that they promise the best quality connection to all ranges of paying customers all they way to their private network. Statements like that protect you and your service with no expenses spared towards fixing service impacting issues.

 

Deep dark secret - yes you can get a DSL modem rated for the bandwidth of your service by 3rd party, plug it in and it will naturally provide your router an internet connection that is completely untouched and unfettered. They will not tell you that, and they will recommend not to. But in reality they are only responsible for providing their best quality internet connection (no matter if you're paying the cheapest or most expensive package) up to their obligated "DEMARCATION POINT" which is the roughly located at the end of that cable that plugs into your local network (or junction box they've terminated a connection for you to use). From that point forward you're completely responsible for your own network. Buuut, AT&T doesn't want their grimy little hands locked away from fondling your packets

New Member

 • 

1 Message

I've gotten everything above to work except when I turn off the BGW210's DHCP server, my router won't pick up an IP address. I'm not signed up for static IP (not offered where I am).

Config:

IP Passthrough: DHCPS Fixed <-- should I use Manual and set my router to the static address?

Cascaded Router Address: 0.0.0.0 <-- should I use the actual IP address instead of this (which is indicated for IP Passthrough?

New Member

 • 

1 Message

@VoIP-Engineer You are a hero among villains. Your walk-through saved me days of frustration that I would have encountered in order to solve the cascaded router issue. Thank you!

Tutor

 • 

2 Messages

6 years ago

After wasting 2 hours of my life having AT&T's worthless tech support try and set this up... Your above walkthrough was perfect. They had no idea about the Cascaded Router settings and told me to call a paid for tech support line... People give me a break I'm trying to configure YOUR router that you sent me with no instructions. 

 

Bottom line. Thank You. It's good to hear someone else is fed up with their lack of support. I only wish I had some other "high speed" option. But this is my only option at this house.

Contributor

 • 

1 Message

5 years ago

Seriously total agreed with you guys. I will quite when my contract end. 

Not finding what you're looking for?
New to AT&T Community?
New to the AT&T Community? Start by visiting the Community How-To.
New to the AT&T Community?
Visit the Community How-To.