Netgear WNR2000 and Speedtouch 516 Modem, how to forward ports

[Tonka777]

Hey Folks,

A friend of mine has a Speedtouch 1 port modem connected to his phoneline, and a Netgear WNR2000 wireless router which he uses to connect to the outside world from his mac in the loft.

We are trying to forward some ports for an application, but i have no knowledge of separate modem setups, but a little knowledge about setting up port forwarding on a modem/router. He has zero knowledge of either.

Could someone explain how to go about getting some ports forwarded please? I need to know whether to use bridged mode or routed mode, and how to get into the modem to alter the settings.

I have read online that i need to make the netgear dumb, so traffic just routes through it, and let the speedtouch modem handle all the firewall settings, is this correct?

Any help would be REALLY appreciated!

[watercooled]

If the Speedtouch is only a modem it will have no routing functionality, it just takes what comes in from the ISP and converts it to Ethernet basically so you shouldn't have to access that for anything. Just change settings on the router in exactly the same way you've done in the past, leave everything else the way it is.

[Tonka777]

Thanks for the reply.

Ah, i might have worded that wrong then. From a product page about the 516;

The SpeedTouch 516 single port Ethernet router provides advanced routing features and support for ADSL2+ at an amazingly low price.

So i presume its a router too then, and i do need to access it?

[watercooled]

Ah right, there's a few ways you could go about doing it then, you could use the Speedtouch as the router, set up forwarding etc on that then disable DHCP on the netgear and move the cable from the WAN port to a LAN port. I'm not sure what IP it would be using but you could find out in the manual, a sticker on the bottom of the unit or by looking in the WAN connection info in the Netgear router for the default gateway - that's the IP you want.

[Tonka777]

Thanks again for the reply Watercooled.

So to set the netgear into 'dumb' mode and use the speedtouch for firewall etc, do i just need to disable DHCP on the netgear, or are there other steps i need to follow too?

Where does the ip come in after swapping the cable to a LAN port? Do i need to tell the speedtouch which IP to forward to?

Thanks.

[watercooled]

Some routers do things differently but disabling DHCP and not using the WAN port of the Netgear router should essentially turn it into a network switch + wireless access point. After swapping to a LAN port the Speedtouch should assign IPs through DHCP just as the Netgear did before. For port forwarding you should ideally set a static IP on the PC but make sure it's outside of the DHCP pool so you don't get two systems with the same IP, alternatively you should be able to set up DHCP reservations on the Speedtouch router where you'll enter the MAC address and an IP address you wish to use for the PC. After that you'll forward the ports to that IP, just ignore the fact the Netgear router is there, think of it as a switch. Have you managed to find out the IP of the Speedtouch router yet?

[Jay]

[Tonka777]

That's fantastic, thanks for the help both of you.

The friend with the problem lives many miles away, and has little free time at the moment, so I'm not sure when we'll next get together to fix it.

I have a couple more questions though;

After altering the wireless router to turn off DHCP and plugin the cable in to a LAN port, will we be able to access the modem via a wireless connection? Obviously we'll need to get in there to forward the ports etc, but the modem config page currently doesn't load when we try to access it by typing its IP into a browser. (192.168.0.254 IIRC)

What should I do with firewalls, NAT and SPI etc? should I leave everything like that enabled on both routers, or should i just use the firewalls on the modem and disable everything on the wireless router, or, will disabling DHCP and connecting via LAN port automatically mean the firewall is bypassed?

Thanks again both of you for the really useful info and advice.

[watercooled]

Yes, you will be able to access the modem via WiFi as before.
Are you sure you have the correct IP address, did you check on the WAN details in the netgear router as I suggested before?
The firewall only filters between WAN and LAN so it will be bypassed on the Netgear router no matter how you have it set, as I said you're essentially turning it into a wired+wireless switch.

[Tonka777]

Haven't had a chance to check the WAN details yet, I'll find out next time he comes online.

We couldn't access the modem via wifi before. I could get onto the netgear router, the wireless one, but all the addresses we tried for the modem wouldn't load the page. One of them brought up the username and password dialogue, but wouldn't accept any of the detail we tried. We could have just been using the wrong password though.

Thanks for the info about the firewalls. You'll have to excuse my ignorance too, i know just enough to keep my single router home network running and secure!

Cheers.

[watercooled]

If you have access to the manual have a look in that for the default password, or try a few of these: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum...fm/134146.html

[Tonka777]

Cheers WC.