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Router question
(lemmy.ca)
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this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2026
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The main gotcha is whether your ISP’s device can be put into “bridge mode”, which basically tells it to just act like a modem and pass the traffic along to your new router without doing anything to it. This makes everything just work, so if you self-host any services or do online gaming there won’t be issues. Otherwise, you’ll have to configure your ISP’s device to be as dumb and permissive as possible - disable DHCP so it’s not trying to give your devices IP addresses (this is your new router’s job now), and ideally put your new router into a DMZ (demilitarized zone, basically a part of your LAN that isn’t managed) so that again your new router can do all of the fancy routing and firewall stuff.
Ok, looks like my isp router doesn’t have bridge mode but using DMZ apparently works. Honestly it’s the basics that I’m not getting. The setup seems pretty general, I guess I have to keep my isp router as a modem and connect the new router to the WAN on the isp modem/router. That makes sens but there’s another wire from the isp modem/router that goes to an ethernet box. Wouldn’t that bypass my new router? Would I have to swap the ethernet wire to the new one?
Ring them and ask for the stup info, mine just emailed me the details for my new modem.
Lol this never even occurred to me. Seems like the simplest way to start, thanks!
Re modem type, there is one for every budget but start with what you need ie wifi 5,6,7 or VPN capability, IPV6 etc. and look up openwrt and see what works at your budget then.
@imminent_nebula@lemmy.ca wait, do you have 2 devices from your ISP? what kind(s) are they (make/model) - they're all a bit different - and what kind of service do you have (cable, fiber, 5g)? Normally in this config (for a cable setup, for example), you'd have:
If there's a WAN port that isn't actually used to connect that device to the ISP's network, it's possible it can be used to pass the traffic through (the alternative is that device might be used on more than one kind of network that does use the WAN port). But typically when you can't use the device like a bridge, you'd have the ethernet jack from that device going to... maybe the WAN port or maybe a LAN port on your new router (depends on what it supports out-of-the-box or whether you'd be flashing it with something like OpenWRT)
No just the one. It's a Bell Home Hub 3000. There's a blue cable that plugs into LAN4, a telephone cable that plugs into TEL1 (both of these come from the junction box where the router/modem is), and white cable that plugs into a plug that's closed off marked sfp, which then runs through the wall to a spot in the living room where I have an ethernet box that has a few devices connected by wired ethernet.
I get that connecting a new router o the WAN port will run all wireless connections through the new router, but the white ethernet cable would still come out of the isp modem/router. I don't understand how the wired ethernet would come from the new router.
ok, so you have fiber-to-the-home, that SFP connector (the white cable) is a fiber optic line. So in a perfect world you have white cable -> sfp, then bell WAN port -> new router WAN port, then your new router will do its own wifi (disable the bell's), and plug the blue ethernet into one of the new router's LAN ports so that the new router is managing the ethernet for your home devices. That's in an ideal world. In reality, depending on how that Bell device is set up and what kind of new router you get it might be WAN->WAN but it might also be WAN->LAN or even LAN->LAN
OK that makes sense, thank you. WAN from bell to new router would cover the WiFi, then the blue cable into the new router, which would pass the signal back through the WAN line to the bell router and out the fiber line? Or would I need another cable to go LAN to LAN from new router to bell to get the signal to the fiber line? Does WAN go in both directions?
Edit:
Wouldn't that just completely bypass the Bell modem/router though?
The only thing the Bell modem should be doing is providing your ISPs service to your new router, thus one cable from the ISP to the Bell modem, and one cable from the Bell modem to your new router. Everything else would be plugged into the new router's LAN ports or connected via wifi to the new router. Internal traffic (from, say, your laptop to your networked printer), would only ever go through your new router. Anything that needed to go to the internet would go wired/wifi -> your new router -> the bell modem -> the internet
That's where it broke down for me. It all makes sense except for the wired ethernet in the SFP port on the bell modem/router. The routers I've been looking at that were suggested like TP-Link with openWRT capabilities only have Wan and Lan, there's no SFP.
Yup, that's why you need to keep the Bell box in the mix as basically an SFP->Ethernet converter
Ok, so the SFP cable would stay on the isp box. The internet signal would go through WAN into the new router for wireless, and the signal for wired ethernet would go through WAN into the new router, then back through WAN into the isp modem and out the SFP.
I didn't know the signal would go through WAN both ways and thought if the SFP cable was connected to the isp modem the signal just wouldn't bother going through the new router. This stuffs confusing lol. I really appreciate you taking the time.
If you want to get really fancy, get a router with an SFP port and put an XGSPON module with 8311 firmware in it. It's a fiber gateway on an SFP module that lies to your ISP so it looks like the provided gateway/router combo. That way, you bypass their box entirely.