Need advice: Home setup with ZTE ZxDSL 931WII and Linksys EA4500

[Mauscs]

Hello all,

I'm having problems with my home setup and my new ISP, and it would be really great if you could provide me with some insights on how to solve them.

I've recently subscribed to a new, faster ISP. Their standard installation comes with a ZTE ZxDSL 931WII modem/router.

My setup at home includes:

- Synology DS 213+
- Apple TV (3rd gen)
- Playstation 3
- Sony Bravia TV 46"

All these devices were wired to a Linksys EA4500 router and worked like a charm. I use a Macbook Air to connect to the network. The first problem is: now I have to use the ZTE modem/router to connect to the internet, and it's not getting along with the other devices. I've tried connecting the devices to the ZTE, but they are conflicting with each other. When I connect only the NAS, it works. When I connect only the Apple TV, it works. When I connect both, none of them works they should. They are not recognised properly, the NAS is not accessible even when it appears on the network, etc. The ISP told me that this issue was also reported by other users, so what I can suppose is that the ZTE has problems handling multiple devices.

The ideal scenario then would be to use the ZTE modem in bridge mode, and use the routing/wi-fi capabilities of the EA4500. The obstacle here is that the ISP tweaked the ZTE's firmware, and restricted what can be done with it. This means that I have to rely upon them to do most of the modem's setup remotely. Yesterday I tried for the whole day to make it work, but without any success. The ISP set the modem to be "transparent", leaving everything to be handled by the router. They told me I should set it up to connect via PPPoE, and said I should choose "CHAP" as the authentication method. I couldn't find this setting anywhere on the interface. The result was that my router could identify the connection to the internet, I could ping URLs without any problems, but I couldn't load any web pages. The browser kept "loading" the pages forever, waiting for server response, etc.

My question is: do you have any clues about how I could solve this situation? What would be the best way to "share responsibilities" between the ZTE and the Linksys (i.e. what should be handled by each of the devices)? How should I setup DNS servers?

I used 192.168.1.1 as the modem's IP and 192.168.2.1 as the router's.

Thanks!

Mauricio

 

[stevech]

just use one router.
The older router probably had some port-forward settings.
The NAS and other devices should have had static IPs in your LAN's non-DHCP range. Your new router may have a default different DHCP range. The old router may have had some "DHCP reservations" so that, e.g., the NAS used DHCP but the reservation caused it to always have the same IP.

And so on.

Essentially, the new router needs to be config'd with the same subnet, e.g., 192.168.1.x, same DHCP begin/end range, same DHCP reservations, same dynamic DNS if that was used, same port-forward settings.

You may have to reinstall the old router so you can see all these settings, write them all down or print them out. Then do the same settings in the new router.

That done, be sure to backup-settings for the new router and save that file on your PC or a thumb drive.

 

[rodipo]

Zxdsl 931wii

Hi All

I too have had this modem (ZXDSL 931WII) jammed down my throat against my wishes by my ISP. I also have a smart TV and a NAS on the inside of the LAN which used to work perfectly fine with DDNS before I had to switch modems... All I did was switch modems and all of a sudden I cannot access my NAS from the Internet any longer. Config is as follows;

ZXDSL 931WII is the perimeter modem (WAN is DHCP), LAN is 192.168.1.254. I have a TPLink router directly connect to this and its WAN address is 192.168.1.1. The LAN port is on a 10.100.x.x. along with all other devices on the LAN (NAS, PCs, printer, TV, PS3 etc..). The Synology NAS is configured to register DDNS on a free DDNS provider but somehow because of the dual layer network, this is not working.. It tries to register its DG address with DDNS instead of its proper static internal IP.

Has anybody ever seen this? Any ideas?

 

[rodipo]

Zxdsl 931wii

Hi Mauricio

Did you manage to get your problem resolved? You wouldn't happen to be in Brazil using TIM Live as an ISP would you? Your story sounds remarkably similar to mine that's all...

Cheers

Rod

 

[Breno]

I also can't make a wifi extender using this modem

I have a ZTE ZXDSL 931WII and a Tenda W311R, in which the internet signal comes through the ZTE as it is the only one that has the DSL connector.

I want to use Tenda only for repeating (I'm not sure if this is the right way to set it up), but all I need is to improve the area coverage using it.

I'm from Sao Paulo and use LIVE TIM as the ISP.

Does anyone here has a step by step to do so using these routers?

Thanks a lot for your support and help.

Breno

 

[coxhaus]

If you can ping the outside network but cannot load web pages it sounds like a problem with DNS. I would check my setting on the machine which is trying to load the web pages. The EA4500 will need to hand down DNS IP addresses from the ISP DHCP if you are using DHCP on the EA4500. If you are setting statics then you will need to set the DNS on all the clients.