Fiber optic router question

[coffee]

I posted about the Marshall, MI Fiber optic service that came in last week. I guess I was in dream land because I am seeing a flaw with the system. It is appearing that I have no control over open/closing ports or anything.

Before when they had cable internet only they had a modem only. Not a combo modem/router/wireless unit. Now the new fiber router has the router and wireless built in. This is going to cause problems as this is a business account with static ip to handle mail service /vpn ect... and I have no control over the ports/firewall on this unit. They refused to release that to me. They will give the login credentials for working with wireless settings but I have not had a chance to check this out yet. My earliest chance is tomorrow to see if port forwarding ect is included. Whats interesting is that my client was in a lengthy discussion just to get the credentials for the wireless settings of the FO router.

I will be calling them in the morning to discuss the issue and Iam thinking just a straight modem (FO) would be the best fit for this setup. Im not big into FO's and dont know if such a thing is common in the industry.

I smell trouble here....

coffee

 

[Mercenary Roadie]

Just tell them to put it in 'bridge mode' and you'll have no worries. I always have whatever the ISP provide changed to 'bridge mode' for every business I do.

 

[Markverhyden]

If they are like other providers I've worked with you are stuck using their provided ONT. Now maybe you can get them to provide just the media converter. Do they have a business account?

 

[coffee]

Hi Everyone

Ok, I had a chat with their department at the city and expressed my concerns. I dont think they had a good idea of the difference between a simple residential connection and a true business connection. So, They came out on site and setup a new modem in bridged mode and I was able to get the network information to manually configure the second nic in the server to chat with it.

I have to say that they were a bit scared I think. The server runs CentOS7.4 and windoz in a VM. I remoted in and minimized windows and the tech was "wtf?". lol..

I got everything working pretty easily. They are now up but I did have a question on the static ip address as it looked like a private address. It started out as 198.109.xx.xx . Should be ok I guess as private is actually 192.xxx.xxx.xxx .



Not too shabby eh?

Thanks!

coffee

 

[Markverhyden]

Actually the private part of 192..x.x.x is 192.168.x.x. So .167.x.x and below and .169.x.x and above are all public.

 

[HCHTech]

If they are like other providers I've worked with you are stuck using their provided ONT. Now maybe you can get them to provide just the media converter.

I got this when I had FIOS business service installed a couple of years ago. I had to stamp my feet a little bit, but ended up with no router at all. I have ethernet straight from the ONT going into my Sonicwall. It's been just shy of 2 and a half years now, and I've had zero problems. Amazing how much better their service is if you can get rid of their equipment - haha. It's not like they lowered the price any, though.

 

[coffee]

I was really ready for a battle this morning with the ISP. I envisioned comcast type tactics to delay and not produce what I needed. This is how it turned out.

I called around 9am. I got an actual human and she lives in the same city and speaks perfect english. She was nice to me. She answered all my questions and immediately opened a ticket to get the problem taken care of.

A few hours later I got a call from their technician. He was enroute to the clients site to swap out the modem. He called me again when he got there and I remoted in. We went over the technical stuff and I reset the external nic settings. He installed the new modem and swapped the nic cable over. I rebooted the server as "systemctl restart network" didnt cut it. We were back up on the new fibernet

I cannot think of anything that Marshall FiberNET didnt leave out. They are doing an extremely good job at this point. Its great to know that these issues can be an actual care free experience where I am not talking to some one that cannot speak english or perhaps having to wait days for an actual service call to get a tech on site.

If this is the wave of the future then I am all in on this! As far as Iam concerned Comcrap / AT&T and the others really do not stand a chance here.

Now I can move on to setting up their VPN and working on cleaning up their dismal email situation.

coffee