Router Reminders

Over the years, I like to think that I have become fairly in-tune with what my networking needs are. Which ports need to be opened, which devices need to be added into the networking scheme of things and, of course, how to set all of this up. As luck would have it, apparently I had a brain lapse somewhere along the way.

As things turned out, Saturday was not a good day for my Internet to suddenly stop working. I am on FiOS, which also means that my specific setup was using Coax instead of the CAT5/6 method. And because of this, I run a Draytek Vigor 2820N router along with the Verizon provided Actiontec model. I use the Actiontec as a bridge, as it is craptastic when it comes to NAT errors.

Well, I went through what I figured would get everything back to working order. Reset my ONT, bother routers, and so on. No love. Finally after some more troubleshooting, I discovered that it appears that something had changed with the Actiontec router itself. After speaking with a few others about it, the claim was it did not appear that there was a firmware upgrade, despite the fact that it took place at 12 am on the nose, PST.

In a blind moment of common sense, I reset both routers WITHOUT remembering to back up my router(’s) configuration(s). Crap, this is a problem as I do not remember what all I had in the way of port configurations. Oh well, the most important was no-IP and SSH.

Unfortunately, no matter what I tried, I could not get my bridge and router to play ball. At first, I could not get Internet access at all. Then I realized that going with 192.168.1.1 for the Actiontec and 192.168.2.1 for my own router was not working. So it came down to going with different subnet — on my router was then set for 192.168.10.1 — bingo. This did the trick. Despite the router admin being inaccessible once set up as a bridge when connected to the other router, the Actiontec needed to have access to … 2.1, apparently.

Then I needed to figure out why I was not having any luck with my port forwarding. After a lot of going back and forth, it turned out that again, it was the Actiontec at fault. Rather, the guy setting up the Actiontec — me.

While I did tone down the built in firewall as much as possioble, there was an additional firewall checkbox in the Coax settings in the advanced settings. Unchecking this, I was back in business.

So what is the moral of the story? Be patient, double check the obvious, and never assume that your configuration is “perfect” no matter how many times you double check it. In the end, it is the most obvious mistakes that can be the most eluding.