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Airport Extreme and Verizon FIOS Router?

I have a Verizon FIOS router that I thought I could just replace with my Airport Extreme, but it turns out that my router also provides needed information to the TV and it can not be removed from the chain.

Is it best to hardwire from;
Outside Cable > Verizon Router > Airport Extreme
or
Outside Cable > Airport Extreme > Verizon Router

iMac 27", Mac OS X (10.6.7), 2.8Ghz Intel Quad Core i7 / 8GB / 1TB

Posted on Apr 7, 2011 10:21 AM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Sep 1, 2018 1:08 AM

Good evening,


I thought I might chime in with my own experience of the past few days. I too have a Verizon FIOS router - the Actiontec g-band modem/wireless router. Here's my experience...


When I set up the AirPort Extreme (APE) router I used a Cat6 cable out of a LAN port on the back of the Actiontec modem to the WAN port on the APE. I used an old MacBook and the AirPort Utility to access the device. I observed that it automatically set up the device in 'bridge' mode. I then had two wireless networks operating. I set up the WPA2 password and changed the SSID of the APE and then saved the settings. I then went into the Actiontec modem and turned off the wireless network.


It is as simple as that.


Now I had played with it at some point to test its DHCP capabilities and so I turned on DHCP & NAT and wound up with a double NAT (no settings changed on the Actiontec). As a result I received an error message from the APE indicating a double NAT. Speeds were not effected across any of my wireless devices. Nevertheless I reverted back to bridge mode as there was no reason to disallow the Actiontec modem from serving that purpose.


I did notice that if you attempt to make the Actiontec modem a 'bridge' and make the APE assign IP addresses you may inadvertantly kill the internet connection to your home. I did this and found that no IP address was being assigned to my home and so the internet was down and so was Verizon services on the FIOS TV - i.e., OnDemand - the coax system wouldn't connect. The fix was to call Verizon and the technician reassigned a new IP address to the modem. The process for making the Actiontec modem a bridge are a little on the complicated side, I suggest you leave the settings on that modem alone.


Use the APE as a bridge and be happy with the results. There are no ill effects on the speed or connection of devices when APE is in bridge mode.


I am very pleased with my experience thus far with the APE, all devices cable of N band doubled their speed when compared to the G band Actiontec modem. It almost as if all devices are wired into a gigabit lan.


Excellent product. Hope you find this helpful or at least interesting.

68 replies

Apr 27, 2012 8:24 AM in response to Tesserax

FIOS going in today, as I type. Imagine my dismay when the installer told me the VZ router was mandatory. I have had my Airport Extreme network with 3 Airport Express units (2 for music, one as extender) working nicely on the Cablevision system, which provides only a cable modem. Have AE guest network up too, which I guess will have to die under bridge mode. The advice in this thread is very helpful, so thanks for that!


Couple of questions remain: (1) Very basic Q: when wiring the VZ router to the AE, do I plug the cable into the WAN or a LAN port on the Apple side? (2) Will I then have 2 wireless networks, one created by the VZ router and 1 by the AE? If so, will it be necessary either to disable the VZ wireless or to reconfigure all the Apple wireless network devices to use the VZ wireless IP range and subnet? Or will it be OK to keep both wifi nets going? I saw the following advice on the Apple Store site:


"I use Fios and Airport everyday. My Airport Extreme is hard wired to my Fios router. I disabled the wireless on my Fios router to lessen the chance of interference and because I wanted the features of an Apple Airport network (music, ease of use). I then set my Airport Extreme to bridge mode so it isn't creating another subnet, my Fios router is still providing the wireless network IP addresses to all the wireless clients. I also have an Airport Express operating in WDS mode providing streamed music to a speaker and also extending my network. Lastly, I have a basic Canon inkjet printer connected via USB to my Airport Extreme acting as a network printer. My clients are a MacBook, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 3G, and an iPad."


I'm thinking of doing this, but I assume it will require that I reconfigure the VZ cable TV box to access the Apple network to acquire the cable guide and other stuff that makes the VZ router supposedly mandatory. Thanks!

Apr 27, 2012 1:08 PM in response to OzziesMAC

Just had FIOS installed today. Researched this a lot and think the following is the SIMPLE and EASY way to keep your AirPort Extreme Base Station network AND GUEST NETWORK while connecting to the Internet through the Verizon FIOS router. My AEBS is 802.11n 5th Gen.


Get the VZ router connected to the Internet. Run a network cable from a LAN port on the VZ router to the WAN port on the AEBS. Reboot the AEBS. It will NOT connect; yellow light will flash. Go into AiPort Utility. You will see an Issue box that says Double NAT and advises you to switch to Bridge Mode. Click the Ignore box and Apply the change. The AEBS will then boot and operate in NAT and DHCP modes, assigning IP addresses to devices connected to it through wifi and Ethernet. Green light will shine. And all your devices previously configured to run on either the AEBS secure or guest network will continue to connect without having to reconfigure.


IMPORTANT: Only use this config if you aren't running any devices off the VZ router, or if you don't need for any devices connected to the VZ network to see/use devices on the AEBS network(s). Also, I turned off the wireless on the VZ router because it's redundant could interfere with the AEBS wifi network(s). The FIOS cable TV box connnects to the VZ router through the coax cable, so there's no need to have the VZ wireless on. It's only 2.4 GHz anyway, whereas the AEBS is dual-band 2.4 and 5 GHz. So who needs the VZ wifi anyway? This way, the router is basically a cable modem, nothing more.


If you want the more technical information about Double NAT vs Bridge Modes, go here and read the post by minor7flat5. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=591068


YAY!

Apr 27, 2012 1:36 PM in response to jneale56

Why run a Double NAT configuration...which will tend to slow down the network and Internet connection due to the multiple NAT layers.....when you can Bridge the AirPort router to keep the speed up?


Apple products frequently have issues with software and firmware updates in my experience when a Double NAT condition exists on the network.


The only real "benefit" to this type of hookup is that you might pick up the Guest Network feature. This feature unfortunately halves the available network bandwidth on the "main" network when enabled.


Why not simply use the FIOS network for Guest purposes when/if this is needed? It takes maybe 60 seconds to enable/disable this. Set the channel manually to avoid any potential interference issue.


I've done this both ways. Putting the AirPort in Bridge simply works better based on my experience...but the slower Double NAT might work for you if you remember to at least disable the Guest network when you do not have "guests". No sense in throwing away bandwidth if you don't have to.

Apr 27, 2012 1:58 PM in response to Bob Timmons

Hey, thanks Bob. Great tip about guest network. I'm turning it off now.


I did double NAT because everything about the new FIOS network is different - ESSID, complicated WPA2 password, subnet (192.168.1.xx vs 192.168.10.xx). I have 3 Airport Express units, 1 iPhone, 1 iPad, 1 iTouch, 1 Macbook, 1 Windows laptop, 1 NAS (fixed IP), 1 network printer (fixed IP), plus multiple visitors' laptops, all of which are set up to run on the current AEBS settings. In turn, the AEBS is set up for MAC filtering and I have keypunched the MAC addresses of many devices once already into the AEBS.


So, maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me I would have to reprogram either the VZ router or various devices, or maybe a little of both, if I want to change the AEBS to bridge mode. And whenever I start changing settings, not being a real techie, I always get unexpected hassles. Am I overestimating those?


I can see bridge mode if my Apple devices start balking at updates. Or if i get other problems. But otherwise, I'm feeling like the FIOS hook up is already much faster than the Cablevision one it replaced, and that one worked pretty well for our limited needs. Everything on the AEBS network is as it was before, without having to change a thing. So why not just take the easy way?

Apr 27, 2012 10:58 PM in response to jneale56

Bob's right. I'm wrong. Don't bother with double NAT. Go with bridge mode. Some wireless devices don't see the Internet with double NAT. After changing the AEBS to bridge mode you'll have to reboot the computer that's hard-wired to the AEBS to reset its IP address to the new subnet acquired by the AEBS. I turned off wireless first in the VZ router so AEBS is the only wifi source. Does beautifully, no need to reset config on attached devices. You do lose the guest network.

Apr 30, 2012 9:18 PM in response to Bob Timmons

I've been a Fios user for about 3 years now but recently I moved my UltraLine Series 3 (Model 9100EM) Verizon router inside my office so that I can hardwire the Cisco Series 800 router that my company provided to connect Cisco VoIP phone and my company laptop to (I work frm home). Anyway that set up is good, BUT relocating the router created a lot of Wi Fi dead spot around my house (wife/kids are complaining of a very weak signal!). I went to Apple Store over the weekend and purchase Airport Extreme as someone has told me that I can use this to extender or as a bridge.


I've read bits and pieces on how to do it but is there any step by step instruction that i can find somewhere on how to do this?


Thanks!

Jul 7, 2012 9:05 PM in response to Community User

Use the APE as a bridge and be happy with the results. There are no ill effects on the speed or connection of devices when APE is in bridge mode.

Thanks for the feedback.


You configured everything using the simplest and most logical options....my opinion.... which track with my recommendations earlier in this thread.


The message here might be that it is not really a bad thing to keep things simple on a network, even when there might be more exotic options. 😉

Jul 8, 2012 7:16 AM in response to Bob Timmons

I'm headlocked in this stuff right now too, having just been set-up with FiOS Quantum 2 days ago.


To answer Bob's idea of putting the Verizon/Actiontec router into bridge mode, after an eternity of holding and then waiting while one tech chat-messaged the tier-3 techs, they ended up sending me to Actiontec support (you have to go through Verizon to get to them at all, apparently), Actontec said that this router does not support bridge mode, or that Verizon's firmware wouldn't allow it (the tech I spoke to was Indian, and I didn't always understand her)


I'm at an impasse because not only am I seeing the "double NAT" message, I have yet to conceive of a way to address my convoluted setup with these routers:


I have a Web and FTP server (Rumpus) running on one of my computers (a Mac Mini, connected via ethernet hard-wire) that I need outside users to be able to connect to. I have been using no-ip's service to static-ize the dynamic IP, using a manual IPv4 (i.e. 10.0.1.22), NAT port mapping and a default host set to match, all in the AEBS setup.


Making things more complicated, this Mini is one of three computers I use, and I control it exclusively via Teleport (kb/mouse sharing software) from either my Mac Pro or Macbook... This software relies on all machines sharing a LAN


The AEBS also serves wireless for the rest of my house, connecting to 3 Airport Express stations (for Airplay, etc) as well as iOS devices and MacBooks for the rest of my family.


I'm no networking specialist, and my brain hurts thinking about it, but all I can come up with is that I could put the Mini on one of the Verizon router's ethernet ports, set up the IP and port forwarding in the Verizon control panel (I assume it can be done) and find some other way of controlling it (a KVM, or some other software?) …


Would I then use the AEBS as a bridge to avoid the double-NAT? Would everything else on the AEBS side work? (AirPlay, etc)?


I also tried to connect the ethernet that feeds the Verizon modem straight into the WAN port on the AEBS, and palnned to follow it by hanging the Verizon router off one of the AEBS LAN connections so the cable boxes can still do their thing off the coax ... but I didn't get the AEBS to find the internet with the direct connection, and somehow suspect there would be issues with their coax networking thing ....


If you've read this far, thanks. I'm open to any suggestions.

Jul 8, 2012 7:49 AM in response to dg68

To answer Bob's idea of putting the Verizon/Actiontec router into bridge mode

To clarify....was not my idea......was Dr Honeydew who asked about disabling the router feature of the gateway device.


My ideas in this thread are all centered on using the AirPort Extreme in Bridge Mode.


Sorry, I don't run a web or FTP server, so cannot help on your particular setup.

Airport Extreme and Verizon FIOS Router?

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