ISP planning to abandon bridge-mode in their issued cable modems

[PartisanEntity]

Hi there,

I am a Meganta customer (formerly UPC) and have been using my own private routers behind the company issued cable modems for many years. Up until recently Magenta offered cable modems where the customer could enable bridge-mode in order to operate their own private router behind the Magenta modem.

With their upcoming generation of modems Meganta plans to disable the option to enable bridge-mode. Hence customers like myself would not be able to operate their own private routers anymore.

Is my understanding correct and is there a way to continue to operate my own private router behind the company issued modem if bridge-mode is not enabled on their modems anymore?

 

[ColinTaylor]

I don't know anything about Meganta's equipment but I don't see why not having bridge mode would stop you using your own router. Many people have this kind of two-router setup. It does create a double NAT situation but that's not really a problem provided you can put your router in the DMZ of the Meganta router.

 

[PartisanEntity]

I would have to read up on "double NAT" as I am not familiar with this setup but as far as I understood the new modems will not allow any configuration apart from password changes. Apparently only 2.3% of Magenta customers use their own private routers so it seems they don't see any need to offer bridge-mode enabled and configurable modems.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Double NAT only becomes a concern if you are running a server on your LAN that you want to be publicly available or you want to remotely connect to your router. For most "normal" internet activities it's not an issue.

 

[PartisanEntity]

I have an internal server so that is not a concern for me. But I do have a VPN running to be able to access files from outside the home, so that would be an issue I assume.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Yes, access to your VPN server would be a problem if you can't forward its port on the Meganta device.

It doesn't sound like you have any choice in this so I guess you'll have to wait for the new equipment to arrive and then see how configurable it is.

 

[sfx2000]

I get what OP is saying...

The ISP's are starting to remove capabilities such as bridging...

This is not a surprise - it's been approaching for a long time now - and much of this is the contract to the end user, and service level agreements.

By locking down the endpoints - they can meet those agreements with the end-user - it's all in the terms/conditions that nobody reads when signing up for services

Once the lawyers get involved...

 

[Christos]

They still offer PPPoE passthrough, that is similar to bridge mode.