-= IDS Communications Blog =-
Bell Fibe with your own Router
If you are like me, you like using your own device instead of the one provided by your Internet provider. In my case my Internet provider is Bell Aliant and they provided me with this "high tech" Bell Home Hub 3000! Do I need it, the answer is absolutely NOT! Do I have the choice... Well most will say No, but here's the kicker: There's way to work things out! Over the last few years I did some research and tried many types of configuration. You will find a lot of scattered information regarding this topic, some posts from technical people, other posts from not so technical people if you know what I mean. I am hoping to help you out a bit here with these 2 "best" alternatives I found (so far).
The first one let you configure the Bell Home Hub 3000 in a way where you can use your own router/firewall with the Home Hub in a mode where your device will receive a Public IP address from the Hub.
The second one is to completely remove the Home Hub 3000 from your network and use your own device instead. This option sounds great I have to admit but as far as I know, you WON'T be able to use the Bell Home Phone Service with this configuration (until the issue has not been resolved, if this is the case, let me know so I can update my post).
In my current situation, I decided to keep the Bell Home Hub 3000 as I was satisfied with the fact that my Firewall was receiving a Public IP from the Home Hub and I am not using Bell Home Phone. I decided to go with IP Phone Service instead since the longue distance plans were cheaper for me.
I had to tweak the configuration a bit as it was not working at first. My Firewall had an option that automatically detect loss of connectivity to the default gateway. This was done by sending ARP requests to the default gateway, in my case this option was activated and prevented my Firewall from receiving its Public IP from the Hub. Once deactivated it worked right away. (see below)
First Configuration Option - Keeping the Home Hub
To accomplish that, read this PDF document published by Bell. It explains all the steps one by one, it's short but effective. It all worked for me, like I said earlier the only tricky part was to deactivate the loss of connectivity monitoring. Feel free to download your copy of the document as well.
Second Configuration - Removing the Home Hub completely
This configuration can by a bit more tricky but based on this Forum it seems to work well as long as your equipment can accept VLAN. I read the entire thread and it contains really good information and details on how people managed to accomplish this.
If the Fibe comes straight to your home, you will need something like this (see below) which seemed to do the job quite well for minimal price.
If you have a Router or a switch that accepts GBIC or Fibe connection (see below), you won't need this converter.
If you vote to completely remove you Home Hub Router, you have many options i.e.: using the TP-Link type converter from Fiber to UTP, using the Fibe connected to your Router, using the Fibe connected to your Switch etc.
Although I have the TP-Link converter, I haven't tried this configuration yet but I am planning on it soon. Like I mentioned earlier, I do not have the Bell phone service therefore it should not be an issue for me.
Let me know what you think, feel free to share your configuration is you found other way to accomplish this, I am always open and interested by the options out there.
Hoping that this post helped you solving some of your issues.
***** UPDATE FROM DECEMBER 4th, 2019 *****
Since I wrote this article, a lot of things have changed in my setup. I am now happy to say that I am using Pfsense with my TP-Link converter completely bypassing the Home Hub 3000! My Internet and IPTV Services with Bell Aliant are working fine including apps like YouTube, Netflix and On Demand! Unfortunately my phone service is not working but like I mentioned earlier, I am using IP Phone therefore this does not impact me whatsoever.
If like me you would like to accomplish the same thing and ditch your HH3000, read this post!
Comments 13
Disabling wan down browser redirect notice I think fixed it on asuswrt as I wasnt getting a similar ip to what hh2k was showing & it seemed that crackle on xb1 was being blocked(not that it will matter on wednesday unless your using something like unotelly)
1 other thing how can I get asus ddns to work?
I still need to figure out how to have my Fibe TV up and running. I had no issue having my Internet working following this guide but I have the HH3 so not sure if it made a difference ... Guest 8675309 I believe you have the HH2. I am getting an external IP on my HH3 and on my firewall as well which is good. You can get that under the DMZ section and activating the 'Advanced DMZ' but I believe this is only for HH3 like I said. Do you have a DDNS integrated function on your Asus? What is the model you have?
Yeah the hh2 is the 1 on F T T N & the model is the GT. As mentioned the dmz worked but when I enable ddns all I get is initializing in the status for ddns. My understanding is that bells running a snat which can cause problems for this kind of thing(besides the rotating ip address if I restart the modem) I may giveup on trying to use LE https untill either bell upgrades to fttp or rogers finally rolls out their xpon(as I understand their not doing rfog installs anymore)
Would you be able to install a DDNS client? I did this on my side, I am not using the internal one from the Bell Modem. Most services have clients that can be installed either on Windows or Linux (Unix) platform. I am running the NOIP DUC client on my computer, works great and yes, if you restart your modem you'll get a new IP pretty much every time!
Forgot to mention this is what I was trying to do https://www.asus.com/US/support/FAQ/1034294 sadly it seems it doesnt account for bell's nat. Not the 1st time ive had problems with bell I quickly found out even nintendo's usb dongle didnt work(bought it for Wii) luckily bell introduced the speedstream network modem back then
Just an update to this it appears for the router implementation they screwed up whereas the 1 their nas os is running just works https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/asus-router-feature-lets-encrypt/51751/9
Hi. I had Virgin Mobile installed and found that port forwarding didn't work on the "Valerie" modem (=HomeHub3000). Support was useless but I found a very simple solution: connect the WAN port on an ordinary router to one of the LAN ports of the modem and configure the router to connect to the internet using PPPoE with the Virgin Moble credentials (User Id and Password) which can be obtained from Support if one doesn't have them already. Then the router gets a public IP address and can be configured as usual with port forwarding, QoS, etc.
True. I heard that, I tried and it worked. It is possible to obtain more than 1 Public IP addresses by doing so.
I find that life was easier back in the days with Cable Modem, only 1 function and it was to establish your Internet connection, nothing complicated, easier to manage! God I miss those days!
About a month or 2 ago they pushed out SG98152014/SG981310036 for hh2k(good to know they take customers security a priority 2 years after 2 major networking flaws lol) it now mentions in sys log that pppoe passthough is happening(automaticly on their side) also it revealed that vlan 36 must be broadcasting eventhough we dont have tv(though we did trial alt tv). Nice thing is the gt-ac5300 seems stable now. While I was pokeing around in asuswrt I seen a new option pppoe relay not sure if I need this or not
Does bell d a roter that run on the 5ghz
Yes the Homehub 3000 Modem/Router has 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz WIFI integrated.