Bridge over Routed

[RedLineR]

Hi,

Netgear DG834v4

I would like to setup a routed connection with my uncapped account info.
I then want a little connection icon on my desktop. That is my bridged connection with my unshaped account info. It must override the routed connection.

Can this be done?

 

[FrancTheTank]

Yes
When you "activate" the connection from your PC, it uses that one instead of the routed connection on the router.

I do mine like this so that others can also use the routed connection on my router, and I have my fav unshaped

 

[Pada]

I'm not sure if the Netgear router of yours supports PPPoE Relaying. If it does, then you can simply dial the uncapped account from the router and whenever you want to "override" it with the unshaped account, you simply dial the unshaped account from your PC (using a PPPoE connection just like the router would use).
If the router doesn't support PPPoE Relaying (aka PPPoE Passthrough or Half-Bridge mode), then you'll have to put it into bridge mode and then dial the account you want to use from each PC, otherwise you'll have no Internet connectivity. The problem with this is that the ISP's only allow 1 concurrent connection (maximum simultaneous connections with that username and password) with the uncapped accounts. This would be a major problem if you have more than 1 PC behind the router that you want to use the uncapped account.

 

[RedLineR]

I'm not sure if the Netgear router of yours supports PPPoE Relaying.

That was the word I was looking for!
Luckily I stumbled across the tick box in the router setup.

Got the connections working just like I wanted

Thanks for the help guys!
After struggling to do this the whole of last night on a stupid Billion 5100, it was a breeze on my old Netgear

 

[ChrisB]

Related problem, there must be a guru out there who can help me

That was the word I was looking for!
Luckily I stumbled across the tick box in the router setup.

Well lucky you

I've set up dozens of ADSL routers but always used the PPPoE capability of the router - i.e. entered user name & password in the router's config. Now trying to figure out how to set up the router so that I enter the ISP logon info in the PC and have come unstuck.

What's the trick here? Should the router be set for "Bridged"? If so are the computer and router still supposed to have IP addresses? I have seen linux-based routers where the external interface is configured as a PPPoE port, and no hint of an IP address configured anywhere, so I'm wondering how the router is configured - if I don't know its address, how would I get into its interface to see that.

The D-Link unit I'm currently playing with (DSL-2500U, a single-port unit) has bridged mode, but no "PPPoE relay" under that profile. There is an option to "Bridge PPPoE Frames Between WAN and Local Ports" but I have to select PPPoE to see that.

Who knows where I start? This must be very basic, I feel somewhat stoopid about it...

 

[Pada]

For the D-Link routers to do PPPoE Relaying, you'll have to add a Bridge interface to the WAN connections (Advanced Setup -> WAN), so that you have both a PPPoE and a Bridge interface. Just ensure that you create the bridge interface with the port/vpi/vci settings set at 0/8/35.

The title of this thread is very misleading!

 

[ChrisB]

Hi Pada

Yeah - you don't really know what the thread is about from its title do you. Kind of inherited though... :-D

I discovered pureley by accident (right after posting the above) that I could get a PPPoE connection from my computer when I had both routed & bridged connections "active". A subsequent trace route told me that I was then going "straight out" to the Internet, no intermediate step such as when you have a router active on the network, so that indicated that I was directly connected, like in the old days of dial-up. And the connection wouldn't work without both interfaces active on the DSL box.

Seems (a) a bit idiotic though, doesn't it - what's the point of setting up a PPPoE connection on the router if you are going to do the same thing on the computer (or vice versa), and (b) completely counter-intuitive (and of course not covered in the 67-page manual, which gives useful instructions like "To enable bridging, tick the Enable Bridge Service check box" without any information as to what exactly a bridged connection is).

Well now for the exciting part - getting it to work with Linux. Ah, what would life be like without challenges... ;-)

 

[Pada]

It should be just as easy to create the PPPoE connections in Linux. If you want to do traffic splitting on your linux machine, then it would be worth your while to have a look at Gatecrasher's script for the routers running DD-WRT firmware..

If you're going to be running your Linux box 24/7, then you can actually put your D-Link router in Bridge mode only and dial all the connections that you need from the Linux machine. Unlike Windows, Linux can share multiple connections to the Internet. You'll just have to enable masquerading via iptables on the respective PPPoE interfaces then.

 

[ChrisB]

OK it sounds like you know what you are talking about, so I'm going to impose on you for a little basic noob tutoring please.

The Linux machine I'm attempting to set up is one of those packaged complete firewall / server deals (ClearOS, formerly Clark Connect) which works *very* well as a router & firewall - I've set up many of them with the external interface configured purely as ethernet, either static or getting its IP from the router; and the router doing the PPPoE.

Now I have a requirement to have the PPPoE running from the router, but just can't figure the details of the D-Link router config.

I have the "Bridged" interface or profile or whatever they call it, marked as active and the "PPPoE" one disabled.

1. But there doesn't seem to be any way to configure it without an IP address on its "LAN" port. Whereas the Linux box, when you configure an interface as PPPoE, tells you IP is "N/A". So how does it talk to the DSL router? (Probably a very basic question I know)

2. The Linux OS only has four things you can set on the PPP interface - user credentials, MTU size, and automatic DNS servers or not. The D-Link, on the other hand, has more options, but not much choice... if you see what I mean. I can set

- Port / VPI / VCI : OK, for SA these are 0 / 8 / 35 as you pointed out
- Service category : again, OK - "UBR without PCR"
- Enable QoS : just a preference - off, or whatever
- PPPoE / MAC Encapsulation Routing / Bridging : if I select "PPPoE", I have to enter the DSL username/password in the router; works with the corresponding ClearOS "External" interface in DHCP or Static mode. "MER" doesn't seem to be applicable. Leaving "Bridging" as my only option - well I've read in more than one place that that's right.
- Encapsulation Mode : again, DSL dependent, for South Africa it is LLC.

And that's it. Final choice is to enable this interface or not, so still "no choice". But the Linux interface never gets connected - just keeps whining that it can't find the PPP server. Where am I going wrong?

Eternal gratitude if you can point me in the right direction...

 

[Pada]

1) The D-Link router has separate pages for configuring the WAN and LAN interfaces. To configure the LAN ip address, go to Advanced Setup -> LAN. I don't think you can setup the D-Link DSL2500 to get its LAN IP address from a DHCP server though, so you'll have to set a static one!
With the PPPoE interfaces on the router, you'll have to enter an username, password, select 'Obtain default gateway automatically' and use a MTU of 1492.

I'm not exactly sure what you were asking here, because if you do not assign an IP address for the DSL router on its LAN interface, then you won't be able to configure it in any way!

2) Again, I'm not sure what you're asking...

If you want to put the DSL router in bridge mode and dial PPPoE connections from the Linux box, then you'll need a bridge interface like I have:

Port/Vpi/Vci  	Con. ID  	Category  	Service  	Interface  	Protocol  	Igmp  	QoS  		State
0/8/35 		1 		UBR 		br_0_8_35 	nas_0_8_35 	Bridge 		N/A 	Disabled 	Enabled

In Linux you have to configure the network interface through which it would try to dial the PPPoE connection. Also remember that you can't dial a PPPoE connection over a routed network. Usually you won't have a routed network in your house, unless you're using a wireless AP that's not configured in bridge mode.

 

[ChrisB]

1) To configure the LAN ip address, go to Advanced Setup -> LAN [...]
With the PPPoE interfaces on the router, you'll have to enter an username, password, select 'Obtain default gateway automatically' and use a MTU of 1492.

Yeah - got all that... I can get the D-Link to connect if it runs the PPPoE itself, like that...

I'm not exactly sure what you were asking here, because if you do not assign an IP address for the DSL router on its LAN interface, then you won't be able to configure it in any way!

Yes, exactly. But when you configure the Linux box to use PPPoE, you don't get to assign an IP address to the interface you want to use for PPPoE (which can only be one of the ethernet NICs)

2) [...] If you want to put the DSL router in bridge mode and dial PPPoE connections from the Linux box, then you'll need a bridge interface like I have:

Port/Vpi/Vci  	Con. ID  	Category  	Service  	Interface  	Protocol  	Igmp  	QoS  		State
0/8/35 		1 		UBR 		br_0_8_35 	nas_0_8_35 	Bridge 		N/A 	Disabled 	Enabled

Yip, got that.

In Linux you have to configure the network interface through which it would try to dial the PPPoE connection

Yip. The NIC that in other configurations is an external or WAN port, with an IP address allocated either manually or by DHCP provided by the router. However since I want the Linux machine to *be* the router, I'd prefer not to do double-NATing, it leads to complications.

So the D-Link has (an arbitrary) IP address on its "LAN" interface. I configure the WAN connection to be "Bridged" and activate only that profile. I connect the two together and Voila! Nothing happens.

Very frustrating. I'm trying to get the Linux support forums to help me as well, I know there are many such setups working very happily... :-(

Anyway thanks for the input. I'll buy you a beer next time I'm in the Eikestad!

 

[Pada]

It won't double-NAT if your DSL router is in bridge mode, since it doesn't have a WAN connection that it can NAT.

I really don't know why you don't give the DSL router an IP address on the same subnet as your Linux box. PPPoE is on layer 2 and TCP is on layer 4, which means that your router doesn't even have to have an IP address for PPPoE connection to be established.

Why don't you try SmoothWall? We have brilliant support on myBroadband for that, by our very own The Librarian

 

[ChrisB]

It won't double-NAT if your DSL router is in bridge mode, since it doesn't have a WAN connection that it can NAT

Exactly! That's why I want to use PPPoE on the Linux side rather than on the router

I really don't know why you don't give the DSL router an IP address on the same subnet as your Linux box

But that's my point - the Linux box doesn't *have* a way of allocating an IP address when you tell it to use PPPoE.

PPPoE is on layer 2 and TCP is on layer 4, which means that your router doesn't even have to have an IP address for PPPoE connection to be established

Don't understand what you are tying to tell me here...

Why don't you try SmoothWall? We have brilliant support on myBroadband for that, by our very own The Librarian

Well... it has taken me a lot of midnight oil to learn the ClearOS setup, and I have several live installations running very successfully. Reluctant to start learning from scratch on a new system, and even more reluctant to have different systems to support. Alternative to that is replacing all the existing machines with a new OS, and configuring them, and all their VPN clients... hmmm, maybe next year ;-)