Bell Home Hub 3000 (fibe) config for advanced network?

[sswilson]

Anybody out there currently have one of these set up with most of the router functions disabled for use with a secondary router/controller/firewall? If so, what are your settings, and anything I should be looking out for?

I'm going to do my own research on this, but in the past the available info was all over the place with some postings suggesting that it can be made to work, but others stating that it's flaky at best, and purty near impossible at worst so I'm wondering if anybody here has a current config that's working who can point me in the right direction.

Not looking for anything too fancy... my intention is to leave the IPTV connections (both wireless and wired) to the home hub 3000 (don't want to be bothered with the VLAN setup(s), but hopefully get my internal home network running off of a ubiquiti USG (and cloud key) along with a couple of ubiquiti APs (one at either end of the house).

So far, it looks like I can get away with setting advanced DMZ which will allow the USG to use the external WAN and bypass the router's firewall. If that works then great.... but what about DHCP? I'm still going to be connecting 1 wired port + multiple wireless STBs for the IPTV.... so I'm not sure I can just disable DHCP on the router. Would avoiding DHCP conflicts be as simple as assigning a different IP range to the USG?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.... probabaly not going to have the hardware in hand for a couple of weeks but I'd like to get a game plan in place for when it does show up.

 

[sswilson]

Or maybe I'm overthinking this? Maybe the cloud key controller on it's own would be sufficient for the two APs if I'm not overly concerned about the security features of the USG?

 

[JD]

I think the Advanced DMZ is broken on the HH3000 but YMMV. Since you're in Atlantic Canada too, I believe your Internet is DHCP and not PPPoE, so you don't have much choices...

Do you actually care if you are double NAT? If you don't do any port forwarding or hosting, I don't think you'd really notice. Online gaming might be partially impacted, but it generally just means you can only play with people who have open NAT.

You could get a media convertor for the fiber and use the USG solely. There's guides floating around on how to set it up with Bell Fibe TV, though may be a tad complex.

 

[sswilson]

I think the Advanced DMZ is broken on the HH3000 but YMMV. Since you're in Atlantic Canada too, I believe your Internet is DHCP and not PPPoE, so you don't have much choices...

Do you actually care if you are double NAT? If you don't do any port forwarding or hosting, I don't think you'd really notice. Online gaming might be partially impacted, but it generally just means you can only play with people who have open NAT.

You could get a media convertor for the fiber and use the USG solely. There's guides floating around on how to set it up with Bell Fibe TV, though may be a tad complex.

I've looked at quite a few of the media converter + USG setups, but IIRC they only work if you're doing hard wired to the set top boxes. As you said... I don't need port forwarding for anything I personally do so I can probably get away with putting the USG in line with my internal network.

Maybe I'll just ensure the IP range is different for DHCP and set the HH3000 for normal DMZ and count on the security features of the USG for my internal network. (I really wish I knew more about networking.... ).

I'll just have to book some time with my better half to do this so that she know's she'll lose TV while I play with it.

 

[JD]

Maybe I'll just ensure the IP range is different for DHCP and set the HH3000 for normal DMZ and count on the security features of the USG for my internal network.

Yup that work would fine. If you did need to open something up, it would be on the USG end, but it's default deny so you wouldn't be opening any notable security holes.

The HH3000 is 192.168.2.x, the USG would default to 192.168.1.x I believe. You shouldn't need to touch anything on the HH3000 really, so no impact to TV

 

[Solace]

Your over complicating things, I would just simplify the setup to use the secondary router as most modem/router solutions are poorly designed unless the hardware they provide beats your own solution which is rare. DHCP issues from the subnet that it operates on, two devices will issue two different IP ranges to the devices that connect to each individual device. They will not be able to interact with each other without a more advanced configuration and the IP ranges are defined under the DHCP page. If you opt for the same subnet you can still split the range accross two devices. Also may be worth manually assigning IP's to devices instead of relying on DHCP if you want to log/audit a device. If anyone tells you something is impossible around networking its generally due to a lack of knowledge more so than anything.

The intent is somewhat vaguely defined, I assumed you want to just use both devices because you are too lazy to setup a VLAN as a requirement for the IPTV devices for whatever reason.

 

[sswilson]

I'm not sure I'd use the word "lazy" to describe it....

From all accounts, setting up a third party modem/router for a full Bell Fibe package which includes Phone, and wireless access for multiple set top boxes (IGMP?) is damn near impossible. I did pick up a pair of managed switches a couple of years ago in the hopes that I could use one of the ports for a hard wired 4K PVR install, but that ended up being intermittent, and a bit of a pain to power up (relied on some old school "make sure you apply power in sequence and allow each device to come fully online before powering the next" action) so I shelved that in favour of a single long ethernet cable from the router going through a powerline pair.

The other side of this is that I really don't know much about networking.... I have no idea what a VLAN is (I know it stands for virtual lan and I suspect it is a method of creating stand-alone networks within an existing network but I don't know for sure). Hell.... I don't even know what a subnet mask does.

A big part of this also goes on Bell in that they didn't provide a bridge mode, and that their advanced DMZ has apparently been broken from day one and hasn't been fixed.

Apparently Rogers is rolling out FTTH in NB, so there's a distinct possibility I may jump ship in the spring when the third party salespersons come knocking.

 

[clshades]

I'm not sure I'd use the word "lazy" to describe it....

From all accounts, setting up a third party modem/router for a full Bell Fibe package which includes Phone, and wireless access for multiple set top boxes (IGMP?) is damn near impossible. I did pick up a pair of managed switches a couple of years ago in the hopes that I could use one of the ports for a hard wired 4K PVR install, but that ended up being intermittent, and a bit of a pain to power up (relied on some old school "make sure you apply power in sequence and allow each device to come fully online before powering the next" action) so I shelved that in favour of a single long ethernet cable from the router going through a powerline pair.

The other side of this is that I really don't know much about networking.... I have no idea what a VLAN is (I know it stands for virtual lan and I suspect it is a method of creating stand-alone networks within an existing network but I don't know for sure). Hell.... I don't even know what a subnet mask does.

A big part of this also goes on Bell in that they didn't provide a bridge mode, and that their advanced DMZ has apparently been broken from day one and hasn't been fixed.

Apparently Rogers is rolling out FTTH in NB, so there's a distinct possibility I may jump ship in the spring when the third party salespersons come knocking.

I couldn't function without bridge mode. I learned the hard way that the top set boxes will not function through a switch. -Stupid.

 

[Solace]

I'm not sure I'd use the word "lazy" to describe it....

From all accounts, setting up a third party modem/router for a full Bell Fibe package which includes Phone, and wireless access for multiple set top boxes (IGMP?) is damn near impossible. I did pick up a pair of managed switches a couple of years ago in the hopes that I could use one of the ports for a hard wired 4K PVR install, but that ended up being intermittent, and a bit of a pain to power up (relied on some old school "make sure you apply power in sequence and allow each device to come fully online before powering the next" action) so I shelved that in favour of a single long ethernet cable from the router going through a powerline pair.

The other side of this is that I really don't know much about networking.... I have no idea what a VLAN is (I know it stands for virtual lan and I suspect it is a method of creating stand-alone networks within an existing network but I don't know for sure). Hell.... I don't even know what a subnet mask does.

A big part of this also goes on Bell in that they didn't provide a bridge mode, and that their advanced DMZ has apparently been broken from day one and hasn't been fixed.

Apparently Rogers is rolling out FTTH in NB, so there's a distinct possibility I may jump ship in the spring when the third party salespersons come knocking.

Try contracting them, Shaw used to have it on request instead of a native toggle in the UI. If DMZ is not broken then it would be a pain in the ass to setup portforwarding for each device across two different devices instead of one. VLANs are used for isolating devices on a network, unlikely you need this and can just stick everything into one subnet/LAN. As I mentioned if interconectivity is not an issue then you have very little to worry about. The devices will still pull an IP from either device that it connects to and will have internet access.

 

[JD]

I did pick up a pair of managed switches a couple of years ago in the hopes that I could use one of the ports for a hard wired 4K PVR install, but that ended up being intermittent, and a bit of a pain to power up

That's odd, do you recall enabling IGMP Snooping? That should have fixed it, and I run my PVR through 3 switches, so it's definitely doable.