My good old NETGEAR GS108 8-port GigE switch died overnight (2012-02-27/28). This Sunday, 26th, I was watching some Showtime VoD on U-verse, and noticed some occasional packet loss, which, apparently, completely interrupts the stream with U-verse PoS STB. Also the packet loss was present at the very same time on my laptop, trying to ping www.google.com, but was very-very minimal.

What I thought AT&T was to blame, seems like the switch was responsible for.

I honestly didn’t know that switches can fail. :-) It lasted a few years, got it back in North Carolina prior to my grad studies in Canada.

Supposedly, NETGEAR has a lifetime warranty on these ProSafe switches, so, I’ll take a look if it can still be replaced.

A couple of months earlier, I’ve got a ZyXEL NBG4615 and a NETGEAR WNR3500L GigE 802.11n routers in the attempt to replace my buggy 2Wire. Anyhow, it seems like neither one wants to work with my static ip setup, trying to NAT my static subnet instead of simply passing it through.

The WNR3500L is marketed by NETGEAR as their “open-source router”. So, what does this actually entail?

First off, NETGEAR has been selling the v2 version of 3500L since the summer of 2011, in other words, since about 5 months ago, and there is still not a single open-source firmware released for the “open-source router” WNR3500Lv2, which has been on the market, as just mentioned a sec ago, for almost half a year now!

Second, what is actually behind all those firmwares, that are advertised to work with 3500L? The myopenrouter.com has a whole list!

DD-WRT.com. Turns out, it has become commercial a few years back, and either way, the last update for the 3500L firmware, and the whole release in general, is dated quite a while back; seems like the whole project is no longer really active or engaged in much development. I cannot believe they haven’t had any bugs in about 2 to 4 years since the last v24 release in 2008/2009. Supposedly, IPv6 wouldn’t work by default, either. In addition, it seems like DD-WRT has a history of GPL violations itself, and in general seems kinda fishy. Some good story about DD-WRT and stuff at http://bitsum.com/about-ddwrt.htm, not sure how much is true, but I think stuff adds up very much so.

OpenWrt.org? Seems interesting, and seems like it’s probably the one I might be interested in using, since they have a CLI philosophy (by default comes with no GUI?), and seem to be really a true OSS project, instead of being a commercial product disguised to be an OSS one like DD-WRT. But, apparently, the official web-site states that WNR3500L is not supported, or, only “may be supported”. WTF?

Tomato. Apparently, a few variations exist, and the project indeed sounds interesting. The last official incarnation is called TomatoUSB.org, but it has been stagnant for a little over a year, too. Might be worth checking out, however, IPv6 GUI is only available in git, without any official builds yet, supposedly.

Now, let’s go back to myopenrouter.com. The site is a joke. NETGEAR pays a company called CaptiveNetworks.com to run the site for them, and CaptiveNetworks employs some annoying lamer to act as an administrator of the site. The site is a questionable and made up fake “community”, full of confused users, unsorted info and mods of questionable origins. Apparently, some mods they publish are authored by anonymous users which don’t even have any kind of web-site whatsoever! Imagine, running software on your gateway that’s been written by a guy named Toastman, who hosts this said software on some file host web-site, with no contact information, or changelogs, or anything. Nice, eh? Nothing against Toastman personally, seems like a nice guy with a friendly userpic, and I’m sure his builds are good, too.

Anyhow, the whole open router thing is a big disappointment. Should probably find an x86 box, and install pfSense or even straight my own version of OpenBSD. Shuttle XG41 with dual GigE, DDR3 and LGA775 for 154 USD seems like an attractive offer, LGA775 Dual-Core 45nm Wolfdale processors start at just under 50 bucks (Celeron and Pentium). The http://pcengines.ch/alix2d13.htm and «Netgate m1n1wall 2D13 Red» (http://store.netgate.com/-P218.aspx) seems very interesting, too, although with shipping and stuff, it’s essentially in the same price range as a GigE solution for a mere 100Mbps system. However, pcengines.ch is definitely much more competitive than the overpriced Soekris (checkout their official stores: PC Engines Alix.2d13 (LX800 / 256MB / 3 LAN) costs only 115 USD! Enclosures are 10 bucks! Compare to Soekris, where similar net5501-60 runs for 253 USD, over twice as much!), so I do have a feeling that when their GigE solutions will come out, it’ll make a very reasonable x86 router.

I’m looking for a robust consumer router that can do the simplest routing function of all — simply forward packets between the WAN and LAN interfaces. The option of NAT’ing the RFC 1918 addresses would be awesome, too.

Spoiler alert: after several very long conversations with ZyXEL NA tech support (including the managers; by the way, ZyXEL’s tech support is outsourced to Anaheim, CA), I was told that noone makes such devices for the consumer market at all. Is that really true?

I have a 99.124.xxx.xxx/27 Static IP address allocation from AT&T U-verse FTTP; however, the way it worked with 2Wire is that you still get a single regular “dynamic” IP address via DHCP from their common and shared 76.220.xx.xx/22 pool, through which all your traffic to your static IP addresses (in a totally different subnet, as you may have noticed) is then routed. The 2Wire 3800HGV-B then has a setting called “Public Networks” → “User Defined Supplemental Networks”, where the user has to manually specify the allocation they have received; subsequently, for each individual device on the LAN (as well as in the default options for the LAN DHCP server itself) you can either assign a public address from the public pool, or a private address from the private pool (with the option of specifying which public address the private address will be NAT’ed to). However, I’m getting rid of 2Wire PoS due to the unlimited number of bugs, stability issues, as well as unacceptable power consumption (2× to 3× higher than the devices below, without even supporting GigE or 802.11n).

Prior to buying the routers as below, I’ve tried connecting my OpenBSD netbook to the Ethernet port on the SBC ONT directly, to see if I can indeed ditch 2Wire 3800HGV-B PoS, and after some playing with `ifconfig` and `route`, indeed was I getting all the packets for the static block from the internet without any problems!

I’ve got a ZyXEL NBG4615 to replace 2Wire, then subsequently NETGEAR WNR3500L to replace ZyXEL. Both were (and still are) marketed as routers. When setting up each, I’ve changed the MAC-address to the one used by 2Wire, and set up my /27 subnet to be used for their LAN interfaces. Apparently, both ZyXEL and NETGEAR happily do NAT of publicly routable IP addresses instead of passing it straight, and neither one can do packet forwarding (also known as “routing”, surprise!) between the WAN and LAN interfaces without the NAT.

The ZyXEL does have an option of disabling NAT, so, according to their interface, it’s all supposed to work just dandy. However, apparently, in practice it doesn’t do any routing between the two interfaces once the NAT is disabled (I presume they erroneously also do something like `sysctl net.inet.ip.forwarding=0` or `sysctl net.ipv4.ip_forward=0` when you disable NAT), so my internet simply stops working immediately and as soon as I disable NAT within their interface. I’ve contacted the ZyXEL tech support, and they seem to misunderstand what routing is all about, they also claim that no consumer-oriented router can do routing without [also] doing NAT. Is that really true?

In any case, I tell them they have a clear bug with their user interface not functioning the way anyone would expect it to, yet they repeatedly conclude that they’ll only address the problem if other comparable products on the market also have the feature (“have implemented their own feature set correctly”, they mean?). Pardon me, but how are the obvious bugs in one’s interface are related to any other products by any other manufacturer? Especially if all that’s concerned is literally a one-byte change (0 to 1, that’s merely a bit even!); strike that, most likely is merely a matter of actually removing one or more lines of code that disables ip forwarding through sysctl when NAT is disabled through the interface. After all, this GigE router is based on Linux 2.6, from what I gather and based on nmap.

The NETGEAR doesn’t have any options to disable NAT in their default firmware. Although, to be fair, I would argue that having a default of doing NAT of non-RFC1918 addresses is a major bug in and of itself, and any NAT-disable options in any interface are only really meant to apply to the RFC1918 addresses in the first place.

So, just out of curiosity, any consumer routers that can actually do the simple routing, please?

Is AT&T’s setup of two different subnets (as explained above) really so uncommon in the ISP world to not get any attention of third-party consumer router manufacturers?

Am I actually doing something wrong, and is this whole thing supposed to be configured some other way? Or is this really too advanced and is not supposed to work with consumer off-the-shelf routers at all?

Any firmwares to recommend for WNR3500L that were actually thought out to be a great fit for packet forwarding and multiple routable IP addresses, over two subnets as above? I just want my subnet to work, nothing too fancy, really. That said, it would be disappointing to actually have fewer features than what was available back with 2Wire, e.g. it would be nice to continue having the ability to have two IP-address pools for my LAN, one public and one private. A SIP registration server, HE’s IPv6 TunnelBroker.net support and authoritative DNS would be a plus, too, though. SNMP won’t hurt, either. (-: Looking for something stable that I could install with uptime of months, and which would not break when I need to make simple changes of adding new LAN devices etc.

P.S. BTW, apparently, the ZyXEL tech support guys in Anaheim quite misunderstand what routing between two interfaces is all about. They claim that I want some kind of “advanced router”, whereas their product only offers NAT routing (what is “NAT routing” anyways? do they mean “routing + NAT”?), disregarding the fact that they explicitly have the option of disabling NAT in their interface, where the router is still advertised to be in the Router mode (they have a separate option to select the Mode between Router Mode, Access Point Mode etc). I assume that their NAT-disable option not only disables NAT, but also sets `sysctl net.ipv4.ip_forward` to 0. ZyXEL tech support suggested all sorts of things, from using the router in bridge mode, and configuring my host computers to be on my /27, yet somehow have me specify the AT&T gateway from the shared /22 (I’m, like, really?).

Written for, and discussion at, http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r26754312-Any-consumer-routers-that-can-do-routing-

Oh, Netgear, you are so special! From the outside, isn’t it nice, a company releasing an “open source” router, and specifically advertising it as such? Even going as far as creating a web-site / paying some unrelated entity to create and maintain one — http://www.myopenrouter.com/.

But what’s behind the doors of this seemingly genuine approach of embracing the open source community? First off, they’re merely trying to copy the fame of Linksys WRT54GL, notice the L in the name, which stands for Linux.

It all seems nice, the advertising materials seem nice and all that. However, let’s take a closer look at the v1 vs. v2 of this very WNR3500L.

Supposedly, v1 was released somewhere in late 2009, and is a rebranded version of WNR3500v2 (notice the missing L); however, the new L v2, WNR3500Lv2, got FCC approvals only this summer 2011, and is a significant redesign, supposedly ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by any open source firmware project.

For starters, it’s already being shipped by Amazon, so if you purchase WNR3500L, you’ll more than likely get WNR3500Lv2.

Not only is this new WNR3500Lv2 not supported, but open-source projects in question don’t even seem to know any kind of details about it (chipsets etc), other than some OSS volunteers finding their own money to purchase the product off of amazon.com in the hopes of getting a v2 version, after regular consumers volunteer to report that the stuff they’ve bought is not actually supported by the 3 open-source router firmwares that were quite explicitly advertised to work with the router in question.

Good job, NETGEAR, good job! Re-design the insides from scratch, name it v2, yet advertise the thing as still being supported by open-source without even publishing the slightest hints about what hardware changes were performed whatsoever. No chipset info, no nothing. If you go to myopenrouter.com, it still lists all the old stuff from 2009 in regards to WNR3500L; the only mentions of WNR3500Lv2 is from the user threads where people report that their newly purchased router from amazon.com does not accept any existing firmwares. And this new 2011 v2 of WNR3500L has been shipping from amazon.com for days (or maybe even weeks) now.

http://www.myopenrouter.com/forum/thread/30718/3500L-V2/

Netgear GEARHEAD is an absolutely horrible customer support service.

I was looking to buy NETGEAR WNR3500L from Amazon, but my experience with GEARHEAD made me very much less interested in Netgear. I’d rather not have 24/7 support, than have one that merely wastes my time and accomplishes nothing.

Here’s the review I’m posting on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002RYYZZS

“horrible customer support experience: no documentation, their outsourced support line is below whisper quiet and incomprehensible”

«I’m looking for an IGMPv3-compatible router. This router has absolutely no documentation from which it can be determined what exact features it supports. Most routers support IGMPv1/v2, but not v3. I require v3 in order for my U-verse TV to work.

I called the tech support number listed on Netgear’s page, +1 888 939 9092. You are immediately connected with a live operator when you call this number. You can only wish it was an automated system instead, because the operator is pretty impossible to understand.

After more than 3 transfers, I ended up with someone on the other side whom I couldn’t hear at all whatsoever. I have T-Mobile, and my service is excellent and I could always hear the other side clearly; however, with Netgear support, the volume is so low that you can’t possibly hear them. If you actually do, it’s impossible to understand them anyways, their English is so monotone and lacks any kind of intonation whatsoever.

I then called back again, this time from my business-grade landline VoIP hardware SIP phone, which always delivers crystal clear sound and excellent volume levels. I still couldn’t hear a thing from Netgear GEARHEAD support line! They’ve transferred me several times again, where I ended up at an automated system in the end, where the volume was so low that it was impossible to distinguish any options. Yes, Netgear can make it so that you won’t even understand their automated system that speaks perfect English, due to ridiculously low volume levels!

Mind you, I’m fluent in technical English, but I’m not a native English speaker, so in general I’m pretty comfortable with talking to foreigners in English. But Netgear is like no other support line! If you have trouble with HSBC outsourced customer support, then you should not even attempt to call Netgear, you won’t understand a thing!»