PING John Rumm - Vigor 2830 PPPoA->PPPoE relay

[Tim Watts]

Hi,

Do you or anyone else happen to know how to knock a 2830 into a dumb PPPoA->PPPoE bridge/relay

So I can put the PPPoE client on a linux server.

Is it the:

Internet Access/PPPoA client/PPPoE Passthrough here:

And how does this play with VLANs?

When I make the change, the Vigor will only have one link to my switch on a dedicated PPPoE vlan, with my linux box sitting on a trunked (tagged VLAN) link to the switch.

However, I am not sure how this plays with management access to the Vigor...

There's a lot of wobbly contradictory info via google :(

Essentially I want to turn it into a Vigor 120 :)

Cheers,

Tim

[John Rumm]

I *guess* that this is probably the case (note later versions of the firmware have two check boxes - one for wired and one for wireless). However I have never actually tried it.

I seem to recall being told that a V120 basically runs a cut down version of the 2820/2830 firmware, so I expect the functionality you require is a subset of the 2830's capabilities.

You can go to the VLAN sub page of the LAN configuration and select which tags are permittted on each of the four physical ports (assuming you have enabled tagging and specified VIDs).

That's a good question - probably one way to find out!

(you can use the reset button for 5 secs to do a reset to factory defaults if you lose the ability to talk to the command interfaces)

Indeed - and a fair bit from Draytek support at times!

One way to get a 120 with reliable hardware ;-)

[Tim Watts]

Thanks John - I have taken a backup of the current config so I can get it back too.

I'll wait until everyone is out and give it a go!

Funny you should say that - I went down the 120 route once and it blew up...

No point in getting a 130 - once I have my home network re-designed (it has rather evolved) I'll be switching to FTTC so the 2830 will be redundant and A&A/BT will give me a PPPoE modem anyway.

A&A might try and give me a Technicolor router - must tell them not to - it's an unstable piece of junk.

[Andy Burns]

FTTC is *finally* coming to my road, in preparation I've reconfigured my cisco 877 from routed PPPoA mode to bridged PPPoE mode, moving the PPP client to my WNDR3800 running openWRT, using baby jumbos to avoid potential 1492 MTU issues, gained one usable IP address that was assigned to the router before.

I've got a mate who works for BT, I'll nab an extra HG612 modem from him to run the hacked firmware that lets you see the VDSL stats, then I can keep the supplied modem on a shelf somewhere with official firmware just in case.

[John Rumm]

They did admit that they had had a manufacturing issue with some of them when I complained about an unexpectedly high failure rate - but that was supposedly only on recent(ish) models. I recently had my first one fail

- but that was probably 7 years old. Howver I have replaced some for clients more than once now. I have never had a 2830 fail though - they seem to be pretty rock solid.

I have quite a number of clients using the 2830 as a front end for the BT supplied (huawei IIUC) FTTC box. That way they can maintain failover to a second ADSL link and also have secure VPN termination without the need to a net facing computer.

[Tim Watts]

Got a link for the "special" firmware?

[Andy Burns]

Here, or hereabouts

Everything I've read says you need to use one ethernet port for the PPPoE session and the other (normally blanked off one) for the management, I'll have to see if it can use VLANs to squeeze them down a single port.

[Tim Watts]

Awesome - thank you kind sir...

[Tim Watts]

Just done a dry run with my laptop as the PPPoE client.

Yes - it seems ticking the passthrough box disables the PPP client on the router and lets the packets escape to the wired LAN.

And the management IP is whatever IP is set on the LAN

So it will need a private VLAN to contain the PPPoE packets and this VLAN can also have an IP each end to the linux box can route management connections to the Vigor.

Gawd knows what happens with VLANs on the vigor. I suspect the PPPoE gets shoved out everywhere unless there is a notion of the default VLAN -

[Andy Burns]

About six years ago I made enquiries to DrayTek about V120 modems, the manual implied it could do SNMP, but they insisted it couldn't, it was a section incorrectly copied from the 27x0 manual.

They also said that in bridge mode, once it was online the modem was no longer IP accessible anyway, so there must be differences between the cut-down firmware of the modems and a router running in modem mode ...

[Tim Watts]

They told you incorrectly...

My 120 before it died was quite happy to present a management interface, with the caveat I mentioned.

[Andy Burns]

Yes, I found that was a handy way to debug it, while having a serial console to the 877 itself and wireshark on the laptop to see the traffic

- bridging wasn't working properly so no PADO response to the PADI query, Windows helpfully just said "651 error".

Have now got a 6in4 tunnel on the openWRT box for laughs (Plusnet not showing much sign of making native IPv6 live, but I don't want to fork out more to move from them, or lose my /29).

[John Rumm]

In bridge mode (if a two layer 2 style bridge) then that makes sense. However when used on a 2820 using it on WAN2 for the PPPoE connection to a second ADSL connection you *could" still see the management interface so long as you wired it with the WAN connection looped through a switch that was also on the lan.

So for example, you connected WAN2 to LAN4 on the 2820, then LAN3 to the

120, and LAN1 or LAN2 to the main LAN switch. Gave the 2820 a management interface address of say 192.168.1.1, and the 120 one of 192.168.1.2 and then it all plays nicely and you can see the ADSL state etc on the 120 any time you like, or reboot it independently.

However for reasons I have never quite worked out, the same trick does not work with a 2830 - the the presence of the the switch between the WAN2 port and the V120 stops the 2830 establishing a connection with the V120

[Andy Burns]

With the cisco, you can use either an IRB interface (integrated routing and bridging) so the PPP packets are bridged, and the management traffic is routed on the same ethenet port, or you can have the PPP and management on separate VLANs ... as it happens I've not bothered with either, so long as FTTC arrives soon I'll try to do the latter with the BT modem, to avoid eating two gigabit ports on the router.

[nimbusjunk]

Here are my experiences for what it is worth

Draytek 120 would not connect to Sonicwall via PPPoE authentication in the Sonicwall there was some talk of firmware repairing but since the principle it co was in NYC and I was in London I was not inclined

Linux server running asterisk would not authenticate using PPPoE on the ast erisk card

The best way of doing this has in my experience has been to spend £30.00 on a billion router which goes into half-bridge mode and presents the stati c ip Or buy a Draytek 2860 with ADSL/VDSL port and 6 Gigabit LAN ports We also always ask for bt free infinity modems and place on a 2830 which w orks well as johna says below We junk the homehubs as a matter of course

[John Rumm]

Possibly worth mentioning that if you have a old firmware in the 2830 then it may have difficulty exploiting more than about 50Mbps on the WAN2 port. So its worth updating with a recent firmware if you have VDSL working full chat on the WAN2