Bye Bye Singtel's 2Wire 5012NV

Date: May 31, 2011

This article is to teach you how to dump Singtel's 2Wire 5012NV Router for your Internet High Speed Fiber Broadband.  This is for those people who ONLY needs Internet at home, and no need to have MIO TV at home.  Although SingTel always bundled both together, means, they give you FREE MIO TV.  But still, I will keep on researching to see how to make it work for MIO TV.  Stay tune.  For now, only for Internet uses.

1.  What do I subscribe?

I had my fiber Internet for almost 2 months now.  I have been enjoying the high speed internet very much.  I had the following plan from SingTel...  At this home, Internet is important as almost every night there are teleconference to US, Europe using collaboration tools such as WebEx.  What I had before is a 15Mbps High Speed ADSL2+ Plan.  So, upgrading to the 50Mbps will give you true 50Mbps LOCAL download, 25Mbps LOCAL upload, and real 15Mbps International download.  I have been testing it, and so far, it is a true upgrade for me.  As for MIO TV, it never work at my home, it freezes every 20 seconds or so.  So, at this point, I don't care about MIO TV.  But with the method described below, may be it will also work for your MIO TV.

2.  What I have before?

This is my home settings.  I asked the OpenNet to pull the fiber into my Kitchen / Washing area.  Because I don't want UGLY cabling in my home.  From there, I used Aztech Homeplus (using Power Line) to bring the network to my Switch/Router cabinet that hooks into my internal cabling at home.  As me and my wife each has iPhone4 and iPad2.  So, we need 3x Wifi Zone to provide maximum coverage of the Wireless Access for our Apple handheld devices and those will talk to my Apple TV2 and AirPlay movies, Photos onto my TV.

 

 

A bit complicated for me, but it is necessary at my home.

3.  So, What is the problem with SingTel 2Wire 5012NV Router?

This router provided by SingTel, does not work well with my AirPort Extreme or AirPort Express.  70% of the major appliance in my home is Apple, so, I would pretty much want to use Apple AirPort here fore the wireless.  I cannot throw away my Apple AirPort.

The symptom are, even when you set the AirPort Extreme or Express to BRIDGE MODE, all the wireless devices at home does not get a DYNAMIC IP address from the DHCP running on the 2Wire 5012NV.  I google it and found that it is indeed a major problem.  And every one suspect that the 2Wire DHCP is non-standard.  Because my AirPorts work with the previous SIngTel ADSL modem plus DLINK AP Router.

So, I end up have to set STATIC IP on every Wireless Devices.  And worst has yet to come, AirPort Extreme or Express will sometime loses Internet, and blink amber lights.  And when you check it, double NAT detected.  It has to be some conflict somewhere, and all finger points to this SingTel 2Wire 5012NV Router.  It's crapy.

4.  Can I simply plug another router to replace the SingTel 2Wire 5012NV?

The answer is NO.  Because SingTel push VLANS onto the Singtel 2Wire 5012NV.  Unless your Wireless AP support VLAN tagging, you are not able to change the 2Wire 5012NV.  Now, that's evil.  May be SingTel don't want users to simply anyhow change the router so that they do not need to support any other brand of routers except their own.

5.  So what are the VLAN tagging needed?

SingTel tag the following VLANs.  So, you make sure you tag the port with these VLAN ID, then, you should be able to get the IP from SingTel.  I did this using the 2nd and 3rd Aztech HL280e Gigabits Switch, and I actually can get 2x SingTel IP for the Fiber Internet.  (This is interesting!!)  Does it mean that I can get 2x 50Mbps??  I will test it out and let you know.

VLAN 10 = Internet

VLAN 20 = MIO TV

VLAN 30 = VoIP

VLAN 40 = Management

6.  So, the solution is to put a Managed Switch that support VLAN tagging.

After google it on hardware zone, the recommended switch is Cisco Linksys SLM2008 Switch.  You can buy this from Bizgram at 5th Floor Sim Lim.  And it cost about S$165.

And then, you simply plug in any Wireless AP behind the switch to do the routing and provide DHCP address.  In my case, I used back my old DLink Wireless AP.  Configure it to get IP from Singtel, and then provide your Internet Network.

 

7.  How to configure it?

You log in first.  Configure your laptop to have manual IP of 192.168.1.xx, with sub netmask of 255.255.255.0, plug into the switch.

Create VLAN of 10, 20, 30, 40

This is how I do for VLAN 10, 20, 30 40.

After you created the VLAN ID, and make it a member to 1, 2 and 3.  You have to set the VLAN Port Settings.

So, in my case, the ONT will come into Port 1.  So, I will need to Enable Ingress Filter, and select Tagged Only.  For PVID, I leave it at 1.

For Port 2, that will go into my DLink Wireless AP Router, so, I tagged 10 and Enable Tx Force Untag.  Once you have done this, plug in your laptop to test it, and you will get a Dynamic IP from SingTel.  So, on your DLink Wireless AP, you simply need to do DHCP address from the Internet.

So, every things work!  I plug in my Wireless AP Router, and then all my AirPort Extreme, Express works seamlessly as before.  And I do not need to configure Static IP on my wireless devices and they do not lost Internet connections.

8.  What else that I have found out?

I also put everything behind the Aztech HL280e.  That means, I don't need to put the router in front of it.  The Aztech HL280e magically acts as a MEDIA in this case.  i.e. a wire/cable.  If your home does not need to run Internal Network as I need, (because of the NAS), then, you can buy lots of Aztech HL280e just to run Internet into every devices (which able to get Dynamic IP from SingTel).

9.  What's Next?

Next, I will try to replace the DLink Wireless AP to Gigabits version.  Now it is still 100baseT.

Also, I need to figure out why Synology and iMac does not run stable on 1Gbits.

I will try Jumbo Frame.

Lastly, I will try to make MIO TV work, since now I found a way to do all these.  Let's see how.

I will update more.

[UPDATES] - Sep 13, 2011

Related Posts:

1.  Phase 2 of my network.  http://miniliew.blogspot.com/2011/06/my-home-fiber-network-after-revamping.html

2.  Initially, I got an Aztech HL280E, the fastest 1Gbps Powerline/Homeplug.  But it keeps going down.  And I finally figure out why.  http://miniliew.blogspot.com/2011/07/home-networking-why-my-aztech-hl280e.html

3.  So, I dumped the 1Gbps power line, and switch it to the latest HomePlug from Aztech, HL115EP.  And it has been running for almost 6 weeks now, and I have not had any problem with it.  http://miniliew.blogspot.com/2011/07/home-network-improvement-plan-homeplug.html

4.  I did my bench mark test for my ASUS Black Diamond.  It is really the LAN-to-WAN speed super performance that I like. http://miniliew.blogspot.com/2011/07/home-network-improvement-plan-asus.html

5.  How I benchmark and improve my wireless at home.  http://miniliew.blogspot.com/2011/08/network-performance-1-wireless.html

6.  I also satisfy with my gigabits network at home.  And here is how I bench mark it.  http://miniliew.blogspot.com/2011/08/network-performance-2-is-gigabits.html

7.  Oh ya, about the black diamond.  In Malaysia, LoYat building, you can get it at least S$30 cheaper. http://miniliew.blogspot.com/2011/08/malaysia-boleh-buy-this-toy.html

8.  I tried to explained why it is important to watch out the power plug and what is the surrounding power noise.  Understanding it, then, you can improve your powerline/Homeplug experience.  http://miniliew.blogspot.com/2011/08/slow-homeplug-try-powerline-filter.html

9.  The latest benchmark I have done.  I switch to use AFP instead of SMB on my Synology box. http://miniliew.blogspot.com/2011/09/afp-or-smb-synology-dsm-32-for-ds411ii.html

10.  If you read KLSeet.Com website, you will now that now ASUS Black Diamond has a Beta Firmware 8.1.1.4 that is supporting both Malaysia Unifi and Singapore Sintel exStream Fiber.

http://www.asus.com/Networks/Wireless_Routers/RTN56U/#download &

http://klseet.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=93&Itemid=87

Again, I am not a tech reviewer etc... I am just an average guy trying to enjoy building my own network, and share whatever I have learn at my blog.  So I have not try to install the 8.1.1.4 yet, because I already have SLM2008 running, there is no urge for me to upgrade it to test out.  I always believe a router is a router, a switch is a switch, and try not to "overload" everything in a single box.  :)  Have fun readings the updates.