Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

HI,

Signed up to Virgin Business 350/20 with 13 usable public IP addresses (after the router and network have taken theirs).

Sales lady mentioned something about modem mode and having to attach my own Wifi Router. Was a bit sceptical of this so I asked to be be connected to their tech support and spoke to someone who said he was a senior network engineer.
He assured me I just needed a Wifi router that was capable of using public IP addresses after I queried him about it.

So as I had recently bought a NetGear R8000 I have flashed dd-wrt onto it and am all set to go. Or so I thought!

I have been searching the net for advise on configuring it to to see if anyone was using the same setup and I am now very worried.
Reading all sorts of things about GRE Tunnels and the router in modem mode not supporting static public IP addresses? The way it was explained to me was modem mode was there so you could use all the public IPs.

Most of the info I have read has been at least a year old, so I am hoping it is no longer the case. Else why would they have sold me this product?

I am worrying for no reason or have I been sold a dud?

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Does this discussion here help you in any way?

https://community.cisco.com/t5/routi...s/td-p/2533460

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Not sure if it answers my questions here but is strangely related to a question I posted in another forum.

If you are saying I have to do 1:1 nat to fix this GRE, modem mode and public IP issue with virgin business, then yes it does :)

It looks like it will be the way I am setting up my router in any case.

What I need to know is if the issue is resolved, or whether I contact Virgin Media and have it out with them for intentionally selling me a product that does not work.
2-year contract or not if the connection is unreliable and not very close to the advertised speed I will stop paying them and end the contract.

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

I have sent a pm to ccarmock for you and hopefully he'll join us shortly, he has more experience with this stuff than anyone else.

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Thank you very much, General Maximus

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Firstly if you have multiple static IP addresses from VM Business don't put the Hitron into modem mode. In effect when configured with a multiple statics it is as close to modem mode as you will get anyway. In this mode the Hitron will not perform any NAT functions, so you do not suffer multiple NAT as you would without multiple static IP addressing.

Your setup should work fine with a Netgear sitting behind the Hitron. Firstly make a note of the IP address that the Hitron has (it will be your default gateway address when you connect a device to it via ethernet and can browse the internet).

Configure your netgear with a static WAN IP address and use the next IP address in sequence. So as an explample if your Hitron LAN address is 1.1.1.1 configure your Netgear's WAN address to be 1.1.1.2. The Netgear should have a WAN subnet mask of 255.255.255.240

The netgear will need either a static default route or on it's WAN interface configured with a next hop/gateway of the Hitron's LAN address 1.1.1.1 in my example. I am not familiar with it's config to know which will apply.

Once you have done that connect the Netgear WAN port to one of the Hitron LAN ports.

Then configure the rest of the Netgear as you would normally for WiFi, LAN DHCP etc etc. You can use a standard 192.168.xxx.xxx range for the LAN/WiFi on the Netgear.

I have much the same setup working well, except using a Draytek in place of the Netgear.

Once you have done all that and tested the config you need to configure the other remaining public IP addresses as secondary WAN addresses on the Netgear, and can then use them as you describe. Again I have the same config on the Draytek.

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Many thanks. I was informed that I had to do this by the sales person and the *senior* tech I spoke to. They actually advised me that it would come configured in modem mode.
Maybe they did not actually mean it would be in modem mode, but like it, as you describe?

Guess I have to wait to see how it arrives.
Not sure when this will be but was told to expect a couple of weeks and still not a full week yet.

Thanks for the rest of the advice. I have the NetGear setup now with the Hub in modem mode so I guess it will just be a case of leaving, most as it is, setting it with the static IP, setting up the static route (on the Advanced routing tab). Not too sure what I will need to enter there. I have attached a screen shot of the static route box and the current routing table). Are you able to advise me from this what to enter into the boxes? Many thanks if you can. If not I will take a visit to the dd-wrt forum and see if anyone there can assist.
Also it is currently in Gateway Mode. Would I need to change this to Router mode (or anything else)?

Many thanks :)

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

It sounds liek they are confused - there is no way to put the device into Modem Mode when it is being used with a static IP address setup. As you say maybe they interpreted it as a type of modem mode. As I mentioned this is the closest to modem mode you will get, but works well and doesn't cause any issues.

Under the static IP WAN config is there any option for gateway or next hop?

Maybe if you could attach a screenshot of that config area as well, and we'll work out which is best for you to complete.

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Thanks. i have attached the wan and network basic setup area but see nothing about next hop. Ah but now I look closer I do see a gateway entry there.

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Ok I'd expect to see it in the WAN side - but you'll need to change the WAN option from Automatic DHCP to static - maybe that will show more options for it there.

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

OK, Set mine to static IP now. Looks pretty much the same?

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Ok thats the one to use with the VMB service - In Wan IP address enter the first of your usable static IP addresses (ie one greater than the Hitron itself
Subnet mask 255.255.255.240 and gateway will be the static IP address ont he LAN side of the Hitron. That is likely all you need to do.... What I don't see in this firmware is where you would enter the other WAN addresses.

Look for WAN alias, or WAN secondary or simialr terms in the documentation.

Draytek routers can do this and use the term alias for the extra addresses. It isn't a very common home requirement, so you may not find it on the Netgear.

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Thanks for that. Looks like I am good to go :)

Not in default Netgear firmware but there is a way in dd-wrt.

It is done differently though:

https://wiki.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/One-to-one_NAT

does not look too complicated but would prefer a GUI :)

Thanks again for your guidance on this.
Really appreciated.

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

No problem good luck with your setup.

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Well Virgin Media were no-show. Despite them calling me 3 times and emailing me 4 times stating the importance of taking the engineers call today to arrange installation time, they don't bother to do so. They threatened me with a £120 charge if I did not keep today's appointment so I have just sent them an invoice for the same amount for their failings. Copied in their new CEO too. Just what exact do the account/order managers do? Not one of them replied to my emails today. Escalated it to their manager, who thankfully is now following it up. Guess I wait another 2 weeks for another installation date. What an absolutely useless shower of sh*t.

---------- Post added at 19:33 ---------- Previous post was at 18:44 ----------

After a very brief reflection I have decided the virgin media business offering is not fit for purpose. If they cannot even get the install date correct I cannot trust them with anything else important. I have emailed them and told them to cancel the order. I will outsource my priority services and use the residential service for those less important services. I will also get nearly double the upload for free on the 350Mbps residential service (35Mbps against 20Mbps). If they try to charge me a cancellation fee I will counter with my own charges for the no-show. Anyone thinking of trusting your online business services with virgin media, please have a rethink. Do NOT trust them.

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Glad I found this thread - I have been going round and round in circles with this for months on and off.

I've got 5 (usable) IP's with my setup, and HITRON currently in modem mode. I can access the Hitron admin screen directly using the first IP in my allocated range, and the modem behind it (LinkSys EA9500) using the 2nd, but can't get any of the remaining IP's configured.

If I take the HITRON _out_ of modem mode, do I still essentially connect LAN1 from HITRON into the EA9500 and run wifi etc through that?

Still not clear to me how I manage the static IP's as I can't use port forwarding if multiple devices / servers will all be using HTTPS/443

Am I thinking this the wrong way, or do I need a different router (Draytek?) behind the HITRON.

Waaaaaaay more difficult than the enterprise networking kit I work with!

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

I have a similar setup. First thing to do for this to work correctly is to take the Hitron OUT of modem mode. Surprised you can even get it into modem mode when configured for fixed IP addressing, as that should remove the option.

Secondly - check under Admin - VMB IP service at the bottom of the screen that the GRE tunnel status shows CONNECTED.

After that connect your router to any of the LAN ports on the Hitron and configure it to use a static WAN IP address and use the next useable IP address from your IP block. Make sure the subnet mask matches your IP block size. on your LAN side use a range such as 192.168.1.0/24 and ensure your external router is configured to perform NAT, as the Hitron will not do that in this config. Also you will need to define the next hop address on your router to point to the Hitron's IP address - first one in your IP address block.

To use other IP addresses in your fixed IP block you have two options - connect other devices to the Hitron and configure them with other IP addresses in your fixed IP block. OR ensure you use a router behind the Hitron that can use multiple IP addresses on it's WAN port. I am not familiar with the EA9500 so not sure if that router can do it. Draytek routers definitely can and Cisco IOS based routers definitely can. I use a Draytek 2960 in this config with no problems at all. Draytek uses the term IP alias and Cisco IOS routers would use secondary interface addresses.

Give this a try and let us know how it goes - will help more if you need it.

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Away from home for the next couple of days but will give this a go over the long weekend. Many thanks :)

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Have they fixed the performance issues with the Static IP service?

Does the GRE tunnel have issues either connecting to an external VPN service from inside the network.

Does the GRE tunnel have issues with you running your own VPN service (openvpn or L2TP/IPSec)?

I’m considering the 13 IP service and want to make sure they’re are no issues around this.

Thanks

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Yes perforamcne issues with the static IP service was resolved a fair time ago... as an example - speed test I've just carried out:

https://www.cableforum.uk/images/local/2019/08/2.png

I regularly use work VPN services via the GRE tunnel with no issues. This is connecting to both Cisco & Juniper VPN services. I have the 5 static IP address service.

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Cheers, following your post I bit the bullet. I’ve just set it up after receiving the IP details earlier this evening.

As expected, L2TP IPSEC VPN server doesn’t work (I assume some GRE conflict), but outgoing connections to the external LT2P IPSEC servers work.

No biggie as I have OpenVPN on my network here, so I will use that going forward.

Took me a while to figure out that when the modem reprovisioned it stayed in modem mode rather than switching to router mode, but once I switched it back to router mode the GRE tunnel came up and the internet was working on my first static IP.

Thanks for your reply!

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Spoke too soon.....

I have issues playing media from home now, it just constantly buffers, before i switched to the static IP service it worked flawlessly, now its unusable.

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

I’m not sure if something else is at play here, if I put the hitron back into modem mode I get the same IP I had previously on the dynamic service, so I assume it’s working exactly the same as it did before, is this a correct assumption?

If so, then something else has happened as streaming from my house behaves the same on the dynamic up as it does when it’s in router mode with the GRE tunnel enabled and a static IP assigned.

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

I've experienced no issues with streaming, so don't think that is related to the static IP service - which I think you've confirmed when using a dynamic address.

Suspect the cause of that is something else.

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Yep, can’t sleep tonight, think I’ve figured out the cause of the problem! Not sure why it was working before, maybe I had manually modified the offending value on the interface on my unraid server.

My unraid server has a 10G fibre connection, I have a 10G switch as the backbone of my network, when I was playing with getting the connection to max out iperf3 across my LAN I set the MTU to 9000, but never set it back to a sane value.

It seems this was the culprit, creating lots of fragmentation of packets when the WAN became involved, especially with the GRE encapsulation. I’d noticed that unless I carefully selected a Speedtest.net server I got results much lower than I expected, I have changed the MTU on the unraid server down to a better value (although not yet optimum) and I was able to stream from a web browser on my phone without buffering. Running a Speedtest on a VM on unraid now showed decent results on a random server as well.

Need to do a little more testing, by pretty sure I’ve discovered my issue.

Thanks for your responses again.

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Again, seems to be a placebo effect.

I'm really struggling here as to what the problem is, I'm back in modem mode with my dynamic IP and it just won't stream properly now.

The fact that it no longer works in dynamic ip mode seems to imply something else changed, but no configuration changed on the server or gateway barring manually setting the static IP or DHCP for dynamic mode.

The residential service status checker shows no issues for broadband in my area.

I'm clearly overlooking something, but for the life of me I cannot see it.

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

ok, something very weird is happening.

i ran an iperf3 server on same host and forwarded the ports.

running in reverse mode from my office:

Abysmal single thread performance, so i tried 2 parallel and the connection maxed out.

Went back to single thread again and now see this:

Seems to be fluctuating as well.

Edit:

Setting the bandwidth option results in a consistent maxed out upload.

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

My local utilisation must have increased randomly with me switching to static IP’s.

I’ve been running tests on and off all day and the upload has been fine, just ran one now (peak time) and bang it’s not very good at all.

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Is anybody able to run an iperf3 server on another machine and perform tests from their static IP service to it?

I'm running a server and using the following iperf3 command to test:

iperf3 -R -c host.com -O 2 -b 35M -t 62

I'm getting abysmal uploads:

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Am I overthinking this?

I have an assigned range from Virgin: Start: 80.nnn.nnn.24 / End 80.nnn.nnn.31
First USABLE IP auto assigned (?) to the Hitron is 80.nnn.nnn.25

In my modem mode I have managed to get a fixed IP Address on the LinkSys as 80.nnn.nnn.26 coning from LAN1 into WAN port.

Rather than trying to figure out how to configure multiple WAN IP's within LinkSys, and seeing as I have to have the HITRON powered on and active, am I better off taking it out of modem mode, leaving LAN1 connected to WAN but then using LAN2, LAN3 and LAN4 to handle three other fixed IP addresses to e.g. Web / File / LDAP ?

All LAN activity and wireless would be handled via the LinkSys so no need to add or change this part of the network?

Assume I would have to take the HITRON out of DHCP mode and manage the fixed IP routing there, but think this may be preferable.

Thoughts?

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

And now doing and iperf3 test it’s giving me the full upload speed.

I noticed that the upload speed was behaving on my samknows box so ran the iperf3 test and it’s showing as working.

And At peak.

Today every time I tested I was getting 1 or 2 Mbit mostly throughout the day.

Going to ring virgin business support in the morning and see if there’s an issue in my area or something.

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Still struggling, does anybody else have a samknows box? This is my upload and download, spot when I switched to Static IP.

https://www.cableforum.uk/images/local/2019/09/3.jpg

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Still having issues with this.

I mentioned before that I couldn’t stream video (Emby) remotely awesome single connection performance is so bad.

Last night I changed my dns record on Cloudflare to be proxies via their servers, immediately I was able to direct stream video without any buffering, when the IP was direct I had to set quality to 1Mbps, any higher and the video would freeze every 2 seconds constantly.

I have no idea how this has made a difference, I’m baffled.

Speed tests from inside my network are abysmal, my SamKnows box shows the Download and Upload performance has dived.

When I’m downloading stuff in multi connection mode, there’s no issue, it maxes out the connection 24/7, it’s just single connection performance where I have an issue.

---------- Post added at 13:02 ---------- Previous post was at 11:30 ----------

Ok I think I understand what’s going on here.

Now I’m guessing that there is some sort of peering arrangement between VM and Cloudflare? Obviously the Cloudflare route stops at the Cloudflare IP, I’m going to have a look on Cloudflare’s site and see if they have a trace route from their proxy to my WAN IP. The route to the IP shows it going via Manchester for the GRE tunnel as i’d expect.

Just for completeness sake here’s the traceroutes, not that they mean much as the Cloudflare one is obviously not complete.

Route directly to my static IP:

https://cloud.fizzyade.com/s/QKHrRRqndZyCDqy/preview

Route to the Cloudflare proxy.

https://cloud.fizzyade.com/s/6Se6LaX5tJaxosr/preview

---------- Post added at 13:47 ---------- Previous post was at 13:02 ----------

And here’s the route from my VM IP to the Cloudflare Proxy.

The route externally to my IP when going via Cloudflare proxy bypasses Manchester, so there still appears to be performance issues with the static IP addresses. ��

Fortunately the only thing that was annoying me was that I couldn’t play media from outside the house, but that’s now been fixed by using the Cloudflare proxy. This performance hit for single connections sucks though.

https://www.cableforum.uk/images/local/2019/09/11.jpg

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

Apologies, I'm posting on a phone and they didn't look very big.

I've resized them in place, but there's some caching going on as they haven't changed for me yet.

Re: Business Service with 13 Public IP Addresses
 

OK, so this morning I checked the path MTU and realised there was the GRE overhead, so I changed the MTU on my gateway to 1462. I'd noticed in my thinkbroadband that there were more dropped packets than I had seen in a long time.

Immediately my speed test upload went back up to 35Mbit, I've just checked my thinkbroadband graph and where there was a sea of red, since the change its all gone.

Not only that, but my samknows box has jumped back up to full speed.

Fingers crossed.