Windows 8 router and gateway

Peterr

Fantastic Member
Joined
Mar 31, 2011
Location
MD USA
Is there someone who could help me set up my Belkin(I used to use with modem until digital phone required the gateway) with my gateway so I can use bride to use only my own router for Wi-Fi?
I have the firmware update link for Belkin on my desk but am not sure how to rewire the setup so I can integrate my router.
Cables/wires from my gateway are;
top has a port for a splitter which goes to the phone jack and the other half goes to another splitter. The second splitter has one side going to the digital phone and the other side to the printer.
Comcast cable is installed and the ac power is on. I have one Ethernet cable from the gateway to the printer and another from the gateway to the pc.

Do I remove the wire from the pc to the gateway and use it to go to the pc instead?

Once the wiring is set up I can then open my router and do the firmware update - I think I click to do an update, browse to the file on desktop and proceed. Then I can set up my router.
 
fHi Peter,

I think there is always some confusion on a written description of this type of problem; home networking can be quite complex. I've been setting up and fixing networks for 35 years. A drawing or sketch of your devices and the interconnections would be quite helpful. Nevertheless, I'll try to help you, but you've left out some information and I have to fill in the gaps.

You say your ISP (Internet Service Provider) is ComCast, correct? Is it Cable-speed broadband Internet, or DSL Internet. Cable-speed broadband uses the round Coax cable like your TV. DSL uses your telepone jack & lines.

From your description, you are attempting to use a Belkin wifi router that was previously connected to a DSL modem box on a Cable-speed broadband Gateway box, correct?

If this is the case, yes, it's possible, but you certainly don't need to download a firmware update from Belkin to do so.

I'm attaching a typical diagram showing you how to do this with a Netgear router. Belkins are cheaper copies of Netgear & Cisco routers.
NETGEAR DIAGRAM WIFI ROUTER TO CABLE_DSL MODEM INSTALLATION.jpg


This should help explain things a little bit. Since you mentioned splitters; I believe you are talking about Coax splitters not RJ-11 phone line splitters, right? You'll need to come off the 2nd splitter it sounds like, that's the one with the cable going to your printer. Some ISPs like Charter here where I live, use 2 boxes to further confuse things. They have a Cable-speed modem box that connects to the unsplit coax coming into your home or apartment. This is usually just a 1/4" round Coax cable coming right out of the wall, floor, or ceiling of your home or apartment. Sometimes, the Coax will be coming out of a wall jack with a single round-hole for the 1/4" black Coax cable. This Coax cable attaches to your Cable-modem box (like a Motorola Surfboard modem for example), and then an ethernet cable (usually Yellow or Blue) connects to the Gateway box (the 2nd box). You'll need to connect a 2nd ethernet cable from the 1-port on the back of the Gateway to your PC. The Gateway 2nd box may be wirted differently in your situation--a photo would sure help. You can use your Camera phone and post it back here.

If you have the above 2-box setup, it's a lot more complicated. In this case, you'll need to run a 3rd ethernet cable from one of the ports on the back of the Gateway box to the Belkin router. Make sure that ethernet cable plugs into WAN port on the back of the Belkin router. Once you do this, you'll be able to use the other 4 ports on the back of the Belkin router (numbered #1-#4) to physically connect additional devices to the Belkin router such as your printer, and your desktop or laptop PC. Additionally, if your Belkin router is a wifi router (you didn't mention it, and no model number so I can't lookup for your), your wireless devices in your home or apartment such as laptops, tablets, & smartphones can now all connect through the Belkin router without the need for additional ethernet cables. You can expect to run about 50 wireless devices concurrently on your Belkin router if it does have wifi.

Hopefully, this will get you going. At the least, you can write back, with or without diagrams or photos and we'll do out best to get you going.

Best of luck to you,:thumbs_up:
<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>
 
Hi BigBear
I am going to do 2 things, first let you know that since Comcast has installed some file, what ever it was,
my Galaxy speed is as snappy as it was.
Also, I have established a password to enter my gateway besides the passphrase within so it would take a little more doing to snoop. I feel more secure, a little bit.
I'd like to know what it was as the gateway went out for a second then repopulated. It was as though he just sent a signal but he said it was a file.
So I am not going to disturb things as they are but want to thank you for responding with so much information.
I still would like to respond to your post if ok with you.
We have Comcast cable broadband internet with the 75 ohm(I believe) white cable. We have not had dsl due to speed issues with it.
About 4 years ago, I used to use the Belkin router with a regular cable-speed broadband Internet modem before we got digital phone. The phone is what caused the grief and necessitated the gateway from which the digital phone works.
I liked the former set up.
I was considering upgrading the firmware of the Belkin router only because I thought it would update it. I notice it works with Win 7 but I have 8.1 and will soon be upgrading to 10, if it is better than 8.1 which I love.
The tan
IMG_0028.JPG
IMG_0029.JPG
IMG_0030.JPG
IMG_0031.JPG
IMG_0028.JPG IMG_0029.JPG IMG_0030.JPG IMG_0031.JPG IMG_0028.JPG IMG_0029.JPG IMG_0030.JPG IMG_0031.JPG splitter is a about 3/4 inch square which seems to be maintaining digital signals. I think it is the RJ phone splitter as phone wires come out of it and a male stem is inserted into one of two ports at the top of the gateway.
If you are interested I will send some pictures and if you wish to stop here I will certainly understand as any further communication would be hypothetical and not practical.
In any case thank you for the diagrams and message. I do appreciate the effort and reply. Sorry about messing up the pix.
 
That's a typical eMTA ( Embedded Multimedia Terminal Adapter) provided by Comcast, exactly the same as the one I use.
I just went into the configuration page of the device and set it to Bridge Mode.
Then plugged a single RJ45 cable from the Comcast device into the WAN port on my Wireless router and let the router do its' thing.
Leave the RJ11 telephone wires alone I assume there is a splitter because you have a single line and you're using it for two devices (maybe a phone and modem on your printer for faxing) just a guess.
 
Do you see an RJ45 device in my pictures?
I need to look one up for the sake of learning..
Thank you
 
RJ45 is not actually a device exactly. It's a type of cable / port.
Similar to a typical phone cable / port (RJ 11) only larger.
Often referred to as 8 pin keystone jacks or ports.
 
I will go to Best Buy to see what it is. I have Ethernet cables with the large phone line type connectors and maybe it looks like that. What purpose or function does it serve other than transmission like the Ethernet cable; is it converting or providing something? I'll look it up .

I am glad I posted b/c I think all I have to do is connect the Comcast device(not sure what port) with an Ethernet cable to the Wan on my router and set up.
 
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I think all I have to do is connect the Comcast device(not sure what port) with an Ethernet cable to the Wan on my router and set up.
Yes that will work also, but.....
Since your Comcast device is also a router, that will produce something called "Double NAT" which is not necessarily a bad thing but not always good.
Also since both devices are capable of DHCP that may also result in some confusion going forward and that is why I switch my Comcast device to "Bridge Mode"
Additionally if your Comcast device is identical to mine it is also capable of WiFi which may also cause a bit of confusion.

If you don't have any problems sorting through those issues then by all means plug away.

Let us know how you progress.
 
I forgot to mention I was going to turn off wifi and attend to the bridge adjustment I have in the Comcast router.
Thank you.
 
Hi Peter,

Thanks for getting back to me (us), and thanks to Trouble for pitching in here with the information.
As Trouble mentioned, yes you DO have RJ45 ports on your Comcast cable-modem box in your pics (thanks for posting those back by the way; that's a tremendous help!). There appear to be 4 of them. The thick yellow cable with RJ45 and the thick grey cables are plugged into those ports in the middle of the Comcast box.

Here's a link to a wikipedia article on RJ45 & Ethernet which more fully explains the connectors (physical media) and the Ethernet standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet
There are also photos of Ethernet cables. These are the same ones you can buy at Radio Shack, Staples, Walmart, and yes even Home Depot & Lowes and most Ace hardware stores. In other words they are readily available everywhere.:)

The photos you have clearly show the main Comcast Cable-modem box, and the eMTA box, but the eMTA box it's hard to see the entire box; it's probably what you are referring to as the Gateway. This is comparable to the 2nd box that Charter and Cox use for digital phone or TV connections here in SoCal. I have a good friend who also lives in SoCal who has been on Comcast for years, and does not have this setup you have (she's about 100 miles from me). I'm guessing this is an East-Coast or possible Midwest implementation that Comcast is using (a la Charter & Cox) when you add a digital phone or digital TV service to your Internet. Your profile says you live in Maryland, so it's something they do back there, but not here on the West Coast.

Since it sounds like you have things working, thanks to Trouble and I, you're probably good to go if you Galaxy wifi speed is ok, you may be running on the wifi part of the Comcast box, and that's fine. You can also connect the Belkin wifi router (so you do have wifi on that device!!), to your Comcast box as shown in my diagram on my previous post, and also use your Belkin wifi router to connect your wireless devices such as laptops, tables, or smartphones to your Comcast Internet. The Bridging setting Trouble mentions helps to define 2 "sub-networks" and link them together via the Gateway box to prevent IP address conflicts and routing issues between the 2 wireless networks you are creating when you plug the external Belkin wifi router into your Comcast Cable-modem box.

In my neck of the woods, SoCal, major ISPs do not require your 2 wireless networks to be bridged as in Trouble's case. I have both business and home Customers running 2 wifi networks together simultaneously on both Charter & Verizon without necessitating the Bridging function.:eek: This is probably due to the internal differences on how Comcast routes their ethernet traffic and the configuration of their servers and networks. Comcast is also using a device that cannot separate 2 subnets, and therefore the DHCP and the duplicate IP addresses (along with NAT) are handled properly by using the Briding function in the Gateway box (my guess). This is a crude workaround, and eventually I suspect they will replace the Cable-modem box you have with a smarter one such as the Actiontec's that Verizon is using or the Motorola Surfboard's that Charter is using here. The boxes Comcast are using aren't dumb exactly, but when it comes to wireless subnetting, they appear to be mildly-retarded compared to smarter hardare being used out here on the West Coast! LOL.

In fact, on my personal home network I can flip between the DSL modem internal wifi and my Cisco/Linksys external device wifi at will on multiple devices without the need for Bridging between the 2 different subnets. This works on Verizon as I said, as well as on Charter, and Cox. These "smart-modems" now can do subnetting and NAT automatically.

Hope this little discussion proves helpful and provides you with some good information. In the old days, I use to help build ISPs and sell them equipment to get started.

Best, :brew:
<<<BBJ>>>
 
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major ISPs do not require your 2 wireless networks to be bridged as in Trouble's case
There is no requirement to Bridge the Comcast device. I just chose to do so to make things easier and the fact that Comcast's wireless is "N" at best and my personal router is "AC" and supports beam forming. I figured it was best to let my personal router do all the work and just bridge the Comcast device and have it do nothing, except phones.
 
Thanks for all the help BigBear. It seems that I can attend to bridge then connect the gateway to my router wan and set it up.
B/c all is snappy there is no need rightnow.
If I do it I will let you know how it works out or not!
I'd still love to know if Comcast sent a signal to repopulate the gateway or another type file to speed it up but it worked.
 
You're entirely welcome!! that's what we do here.:teeth:

Yeah, most likely they sent a control signal to reset the Gateway, but more than likely they did a Flash update to update the firmware on that Gateway, and they did send a file to the Gateway to do this. Unless they were on the phone with you and remotely saved it to your desktop in a folder (with your permission to remote into your computer/router/gateway); if this is the case you would have seen them placing the file on your desktop or even help them to do that by doing a save to desktop. You didn't mention in your post if they did that or not. This sort of thing occurs more with Cable-modems and their companion gateway devices than in the DSL world. Some DSL modems have firmware flash remote capability, but, it's very rare that I've seen it used.

Glad all is in good working order.:shades_smile:
<<<BBJ>>>
 
There is no requirement to Bridge the Comcast device. I just chose to do so to make things easier and the fact that Comcast's wireless is "N" at best and my personal router is "AC" and supports beam forming. I figured it was best to let my personal router do all the work and just bridge the Comcast device and have it do nothing, except phones.
>>>Yep, I understand that and agree with it. This is actually a handy option, and for some strange reason I've seen a number of Verizon's new DSL modems fail in a fashion where the wired routing function works, but the wireless portion of the device fails. In fact, I have a customer right now with this problem. Verizon refused to replace it, even though their Tech remoted in and confirmed my diagnosis. They made my Customer go out and buy a Cisco wifi router to replace the wireless function that failed in the device!! After many phone calls, I finally got them to send out 2 new modem/router's, and neither one appeared to work. Verizon recently changed their provisioning procedure, and I got the 2nd one to work on my line. I now have the choice to Bridge or Not to Bridge (that is the Question!).:rolleyes: I read somewhere in one of my IT security books, that when you have this situation, it's a good idea to rename your secondary router or gateway, and use it for all your internal LAN traffic, and leave the primary wireless network (SSID) at the default, and not to Bridge them. You're home location then is broadcasting 2 SSIDs; one is a factory assigned default such as "49TKP", and the other a custom assigned SSID by the User such as "USERDOG1". The thinking is that when intruders park outside your home and try to hack in, they will see 2 SSIDs coming from your location (based on signal strength), and they will usually go after the factory assigned default SSID hoping it's easier to crack or that encryption is turned off. These days, most routers and gateways have encryption turned ON, just a few years ago they were all OFF, and you had to login to the router/gateway and intentionally turn them ON via router admin setup. Therefore, the hacker will try to connect to your default SSID (from modem or gateway) and get at it first. If encryption is on, and it has at least an
18-character passphrase, it's unlikely they'll get in. If your secondary router/gateway has a custom SSID such as "USERDOG1", the hackers will realize that someone knowledgeable went into the secondary wifi router setup on that device and changed the default SSID, and probably maxxed out the encryption to the hightest level available. The hacker will typically move on to the next house, knowing that he's got to work twice as hard to defeat a router/gateway that's been manually tweaked to the max security levels. In this case, the default SSID on the primary device **in this example, "49TKP"**, serves as a decoy for potential intruders. Further, if they had advanced skills and did crack the primary device, they couldn't get past the secondary firewall the secondary device creates by creating a more secure 2nd subnet wireless network. All the User devices would be on this secondary subnet, and the hacker couldn't get past that 2nd firewall to make connections to the devices such as computers/laptops/tablets which are connected on that network. When the hacker realizes that he's been "had" so to speak by the decoy, he moves on to another home network, and never attempts to crack the 2nd firewall/secondary subnet. Enabling Briding would defeat this extra level of protection however.


Good observation and my 2 cents.<<<
<<<BBJ>>> :coffee:
 
And you do realize that we are frequently trying to help people who do not know the difference between and RJ45 and an RJ11 connector??
 
>>>Yeah, I've seen this one before. You know the one about why Goldfish swim in circles, right? Cause after they swim around the bowl, by the time they get back to the front where they started, everything they see is brand new--they're short term memory only lasts 8 seconds! (sort of like Alzheimer's in the Fish World). After repairing computers now for 28 years, I see this a lot with my Customers. However, I must say that Forum folks are looking for world-class 5-star support for FREE! They might have to read more than 9 seconds into a reply to actually understand what we are telling them. Most of the Users here on Windows forum are willing to spend a few extra seconds (nee minutes even!) reading the information we provide to them. As the alternative are VERY expensive repairs or diagnostic fees from Computer shops & independent Techs, especially outside the U.S. as I'm sure you're aware. For instance, for me to take a look at a computer that's throwing up a Blue Screen, I charge about $35 or so if it takes me longer than 1-2 days to diagnose. If it's a 2 hour deal, let's say I discover the hard drive has crashed, I won't charge them at all for the diagnosis: I'll call them with an estimate of the repair, parts & labor. Some of the guys I've talked to on the forums outside the US say that this same service runs about $100-$135 outside the US, and in most cases, they don't deduct the cost of the diagnosis performed from the final repair bill. One of my forum guys in Australia tells me that he got charged $200 US just last lear for this service. So, folks here who either don't have the money, or just don't want to spend the money, do have to spend more than 9 seconds reading our answers if they want to save their dough they otherwise would have to pay to a repair shop. In multiple discussions with various forum users, they tell me they are glad we give them more information than they ask for. Some other forums they tell me, answer a question such as: "If it's broke, toss it and buy another one."; or "if you can't understand my instructions, get out your wallet and take it to a professional". This does fit the into the 9 second rule, but, I don't believe it's very helpful to a frustrated User whose computer just crashed. I've tried to make my responses shorter recently, and give them some information to start with, and then tell them to post back if they want additional steps, such as where to go for professional hard drive data recovery. Being an Engineer, I've always been probably too verbose, it comes with the territory.o_O<<<>>> <<<BBJ>>>
 
Trouble, I just got my new Arris TG1672 Gateway (w/Phone) from Time Warner. There does not seem to be a way to "Bridge" the router and no WAN output ports, just LAN outputs. I don't see one on Peterr's Gateway either.

So I am running it using Port 1 to my normal router. I saw you mention NATS, which can be disabled on this system. I will assume you would suggest disabling that? DNS relay -- good, bad, or not relevant?

I am hearing things that if you use the Wireless from the Gateway you will be charged extra, so like you, I prefer to use my new 802.11 ac router.

My new speeds are being promised, but not yet reality... Waiting for the rollout in my area I suppose.

Thanks

Edit: I found the bridge option as one of the NAT settings. I have set that to Bridged and will leave it there as long as things seem to work.
 
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Attached is the way I have mine set and no.....
There is no "WAN OutPut" you just use one of the switch ports to connect your personal router (WAN Port), if that's what you want to do.
ArrisBridge.JPG
 
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