Hi there, and arrrrrgggggghhhhhhhh
 

Hi there, firstly I'll introduce myself, my name's Rich, I live in Ellesmere Port, and I'm a senior tech support analyst which knowing this may give you insight as to why I'm so stressed out.

A friend of mine has just (without consulting me first) purchased a zyxel prestige 600 router (not designed for NTL, as the WAN port is an RJ11 connection, and not an RJ45). I'm pretty sure that I should however be able to simply use this as a router with the set top box (RUN NAT / DHCP etc through the router), I've just spent an hour and a half trying to get ANYTHING to happen, however I have just read about the power cycling thing (not something you'd know, unless you knew - kind of thing).

So I'll be venturing back tomorrow to retry, but does anyone know how the router should be set up off the top of their heads, eg set for routing or bridging and which sub type of said method to select, please for the love of god help me, before my head explodes!!!

(got to put my own site plug in, it'd be rude not to, we're looking for area reps for www.midnightdrinking.co.uk if any of you enjoy the odd tipple or seven....)

Many thanks in advance

Rich

Re: Hi there, and arrrrrgggggghhhhhhhh
 

:welcome: to Cable Forums :tu:

Sounds like that is an ADSL based router, not a cable router. To work correctly you need an ethernet RJ45 port for the WAN socket.

A cable modem can only speak to a single device be that a computer, or router. There is no way of passing traffic between multiple computers and router using just the switch side (LAN ports) of the router only.

Tell your friend to take it back to the shop.

Re: Hi there, and arrrrrgggggghhhhhhhh
 

ok then, my next suggestion would be to use the router as nothing more than an access point, and use the PC and ICS to handle DHCP / NAT requests... would that work?

(thanks for the quick response too!)

Re: Hi there, and arrrrrgggggghhhhhhhh
 

take it back to the shop and get a cable router instead of an ADSL modem/router.

In theory it could be used as an access point/switch, in practice this idea is riddled with potential difficuilties.

To get it to work you would have to give the router a lan IP that is in a different range to the ones used on the LAN, otherwise you would have two devices in your network trying to act as gatways.

Re: Hi there, and arrrrrgggggghhhhhhhh
 

Cheers Guys, I'll let him know ;) nice friendly site you've got here :)

Re: Hi there, and arrrrrgggggghhhhhhhh
 

why would you ? (not my greatest field so I aim to be corrected) surely the STB would have to be connected to a hosting pc then that would have to serve to work at all using the router as a switch would it not? with ICS enabled the client pcs would then just share the host pcs net connection. Not ideal but imo a working theory however swapping it for a new router would be better

Re: Hi there, and arrrrrgggggghhhhhhhh
 

Zing dont go for ICS thats the worst bloody nightmare you can configure ;)

Rich take JonT's advice and return the modem and get a standard router.

you'll have the new unit installed within 5 mins if you just take the modem off the power otherwise connect main pc wired to the router, log into the router and set the connection type to Dynamic. there the only thing you need to do is clone the mac address of the pc, connect the router to the STB or Modem and bobs your uncle.

Re: Hi there, and arrrrrgggggghhhhhhhh
 

You need to set the router to an IP in a different range to the rest of the network as otherwise the router will look at the traffic flowing through the switch and try and gate it through the built in modem.

I use the above set up with my IP cop firewall/router box and a netgear wireless router, just the switch and the wireless of the router is in use.

My network is on 192.168.100.x addresses, and the IP of the netgear is set to 10.0.0.1.

Re: Hi there, and arrrrrgggggghhhhhhhh
 

I wouldnt anyway ;)

Re: Hi there, and arrrrrgggggghhhhhhhh
 

Jon, setting the ip only needs to be done with a very limited amount of routers as yes some do come standard on the http://192.168.100.* range.

Rich, normally any router you'll be able to configure that via a wizard cd (I hate those) or manually...better and faster imho.

Re: Hi there, and arrrrrgggggghhhhhhhh
 

Think we've got out wires crossed somewhere!

The only reason my network is on a 192.168.100.x subnet is because I manually set it that way as I have a LAN-LAN VPN to my workplace network(for tech support reasons), and we have a VPN links to quite a few oher network using 192.168.x.x, so i chose a 192.168.x.x subnet well out of the way of what was allready in use.

Pre-configured settings are ideal for the vast majority of people, but in this case then the ADSL router needs manually configuring outside the range that everything else is using. Remember, it won't be being used as a router if it's setup the way that Rich has suggested.