Airport Utility - Orange Internet light but green router light....what?

Bob Timmons wrote:

If that does not work, it might be good idea to set up a temporary or test PPPoE connection on the Mac and see if the modem will work correctly when it is connected directly to the Mac. Post back if you are not sure how to do this.

I'm more not sure as to what you mean by this. I know for sure that the connection works if the modem's using a PPPoE connection and directly connected to the Mac....not sure if the test that you are saying I should try is something else, though?

As for your last note - That won't be a problem since I can't have a PPPoE connection on the modem and be in bridge mode.

Either way, I shall return tomorrow morning with results. It's 1:30am when I am viewing this and WAY too tired to do it now, but thank you for your quick reply!

OK! Back with some more details. I'm going to lay this out really simple so that you get the full picture. I have people relying on me to get this problem fixed so I'm very determined to get it fixed! haha

So when the modem is directly connected to the mac....if it's in PPPoE, there's connection; if it's in bridge mode, there's no connection. So that leads me to believe there is not a special connection.

I power cycled the modem and router twice (shut computer off, unplugged modem and router, waited, plugged in modem, waited for it to initialize, plugged in router, waited for it to initialize and turn green, then turned comptuer back on).

I also did your method two times as well. I first unplugged the modem, waited a minute, and then plugged it back in (while it was unplugged, airport utility gave me the "ethernet unplugged" error which went away once the modem was back up and plugged in).

Then I unplugged the router, waited a minute, and then plugged it back in (after I pluged it back in, it gave me the "PPPoE server" and "Internet Connection" errors. This went away by itself after about a minute).

As for other details - It is in fact AT&T service. I also double checked to make sure all the cords are in the right place and also tried full resets of both devices.

In the end, the problem remains the same. The link below is a picture of my (problematic) setup when the modem's in bridge mode and the router's set up for PPPoE: http://i50.tinypic.com/mv1dsi.jpg

(On the modem, the "Power" "ethernet" and "dsl" lights are on)

Absolutely, I want to know! Haha. Thanks in advance!

Well thank you again for that tutorial! There's a lot that I wrote as I was writing as I went. However, there's a summary at the very bottom if you don't feel like reading through all of this haha.

Small bit of back story before I mention the results - I can have a successfull connection with the modem using a PPPoE connection and the router in bridge mode. Of course, my intended goal is to have that flip floped. So when I started your tutorial, I actually had the modem/router settings set up in the connected-but-unwanted way (modem using PPPoE/router in bridge). I took everything step by step and transitioned step by step so as to be able to provide you with all the details, so sorry in advance about the length of this post.

Now as for the results - I followed your tutorial in the order that you had mentioned it. When I did it that way (with the modem being directly connected to the Mac) the PPPoE connection that was setup in the Network settings worked. I then put the modem into bridge mode. After I did that, it still worked.

So then I decided to add the router into the mix. That's when things went off the cliff. When I plugged the router in, a pop up said, "You were disconnected because the PPP server is not responding. Try reconnecting." I clicked OK then continued into Airport Utility to change the router to "NAT and DHCP mode." After I did that, I applied it, restarted the router and then got the "Double NAT" error. Despite the error, and just to cover all my tracks, I still tried connecting to the PPPoE connection that was made through your tutorial and it failed (not to my surprise).

I then went back into the router settings and changed the "Connect using" from DHCP to PPPoE. After this, the router had no more errors and gave me the green light. However, the same problem was still there where despite this, I still couldn't connect to the internet.

Finally, I went back into the Network settings and tried reconnecting to the PPPoE network that I created through your tutorial. This resulted in it giving me the message "Could not find the PPPoE server."

Something did perplex me, though, and it lead to me solving this problem (I think!). If I had the modem was in bridge mode, but the router connected using DHCP and in bridge mode, I could connect to the internet this way if and only if I used the PPPoE connection made by your tutorial. So then I was thinking - if I put the router as connected using PPPoE, it will automatically put it in DHCP and NAT mode. However, what if I kept it connecting as DHCP but had it in DHCP and NAT mode? So I tried this and the PPPoE connection made through your tutorial went down, I had no internet and got the "Double NAT" error. Then I just dialed it back to just DHCP only. I clicked update but it gave me "invalid value - Sharing a range of IP addresses using DHCP only requires manually configuring your WAN IP address." So I raised the starting DHCP range from 192.168.1.2 to 192.168.1.100. This let me successfully updated and it connected! I am just not certain what I should do for the DHCP reservations as I do need to open up a few ports....

Summary: Here's how the end result looked - The router was configured to connect using PPPoE, was in DHCP and NAT mode, and the device itself had the green light. The modem was configured in bridge mode and on the device itself, the power, ethernet and dsl lights were all green. In the network settings, the ethernet was stated as connected, the PPPoE status was statd as not connected and I have no internet.

However, I CAN connect to the internet using the PPPoE connection I made through your tutorial if I can have modem in bridge mode and the router in DHCP only.

Bob Timmons wrote:

if your goal remains to have the modem in Bridge Mode and the AirPort provide the DHCP and NAT service, you will need to try another AirPort.

This connection method has worked correctly for me for years with an AirPort Extreme and a modem configured in Bridge Mode.

Yes, that is my goal but before I go on, I just want to make sure all the ground has been covered:

With the modem in bridge mode, the PPPoE connection that I set up through your tutorial works when the router's in DHCP only mode and NOT in DHCP and NAT mode. When I set it in DHCP and NAT mode, the router gives me the Double NAT error and the PPPoE connection drops.

Are you saying that there's nothing I can do to get around these problems? If so, how would trying another AirPort help?

And if not, then this thread is finished and I'll have to go back to trying to forward ports off of my modem. If you're asking why I just didn't do that in the first place - I tried to. But my modem is discontinued and support for it is through AT&T, not Westell (the brand of it). So help for doing that has been very unsuccessful haha :/

Posting more info than you probably need, but thought it might help. Went through step-by-step how I changed to bridge mode.

This first picture is the Home Summary when I first go into the modem settings:

The picture below is the screen I get when I click on "Broadband DSL line" :

On the right side of the picture above, there is the button "Configure Connection". I click on that and then the picture below is what the next screen looks like:

In the picture above, I click on the drop down box and change the protocol to Bridge Ethernet. There are two types of bridging I can do, the first option is "Bridge" and the second is "Routed Bridge." I was told to choose "Bridge" so that it what I did. The picture below is what the screen looks like when I change it to Bridge Ethernet:

After I clicked "Save and restart connection" in the picture above, it then restarted and took me to the Home Summary page that you see below (The router at this time is in DHCP only mode and reconnected to the PPPoE connection I made through your tutorial so that I would get internet again) :

The picture below is what the Broadband DSL Line page looks like after I configure it to bridge mode:

And if you're curious what is under the "Home Network" tab :