Multiple Static IPs with Linksys Router & SBS2000

[Roger Faucher]

Hi all:

I have a customer running Small Business Server 2000 (fully patched). They had been running just fine using a dynamic IP address from their ISP. I suggested that they switch to a static IP address to make their Exchange Server play better on the internet and make it easier to allow VPN connections to the server, etc. Once the static IP addresses (a block of 8 addresses, of which 5 are usable) were assigned, I went onsite to re-configure their Linksys BEFSR41 router from PPPoE to Static IP ooperation. After 8 hours (several on the phone with Linksys and the ISP), I still have no joy. The ISP only 'blesses' one router (made by Cayman) for this 'multiple static IP' setup. That router costs around $300. I (and my customer) would much prefer to get the Linksys working. When I switch the Linksys to Static mode, it wants an IP address, Subnet mask, Default Gateway, and several DNS addresses. I think I've got all that info right except for the default gateway, which I've tried setting to x.x.x.129, x.x.x.128, and x.x.x.1, where x.x.x.129 is also the new static IP address.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong? If I have the ISP switch the service to just a single static IP address, might I have better luck?

I appreciate any help you can offer!

Roger

[Ron Kinner]

Roger,

If you have a block of 8 addresses and one of them is x.x.x.129 then the range is 128-135 with the first one being the network address and the last one being the broadcast address for the subnet so you can only use 129-134 which is six addresses. In order to communicate with the default gateway it must be in the same range. You said they only gave you 5 addresses for your use so the missing one in the 129-134 range is probably being used for the default gateway. The ISP should have told you what the default gateway was when they gave you the addresses. I trust you are using a 255.255.255.248 mask.

Ron

[Jim Mallett]

I'm not going to say it's not possible, but my experience w/ that model router is that it will only handle 1 external static IP with any success. It was only designed for 1 static or dynamic IP. That being said, maybe a more recent version of the firmware would allow some playroom. LinkSys should've been able to answer to that though.
As far as the default gateway goes, your ISP should have provided that to you along with the static IPs. That x.x.x.1 is usually a good guess, if your IP is 10.10.10.25 and subnet 255.255.255.0 then 10.10.10.1 is a good guess. If your subnet is different you would need to take that into account. Save yourself the time though and have your ISP tell you the number.
As far as other options go. One static IP would allow you Mail and VPN capability and cost you less than the multiple so that might be the route to go. If the customer really wants to be cost conscious you could stay with the dynamic address and use something like www.dyndns.org for dynamic dns capability. The new firmware on the LinkSys routers interface wonderfully with DynDNS and best of all it's free. Rather than going static at home that's the route I took. I can host web/mail/terminal services, pretty much everything.

Sorry, not much insight if you want to stick w/ the multiple IPs.

Jim

[Ron Kinner]

One other thing. You would probably be better off with a single static IP with NAT to the clients on the inside since otherwise your router needs to be able to do what Cisco calls IP unnumbered where it shares the IP address of its inside Ethernet port with the connection to the Internet. Or you have to break up the range using a 252 mask to only have 4 addresses on each side of the router and only two of them can be used in each section. That would only let you hook up one PC with a valid internet IP.

Low end routers are set up by default to do DHCP and NAT for its clients. You can usually ignore the DHCP and assign a static IP address to a client as long as it is in the same range that the router is assigning via DHCP and has not been assigned already. The range is usually either 192.168.0.0-192.168.0.255 or 192.168.1.0-192.168.1.255. Mask is 255.255.255.0. The router usually grabs the .1 for itself and that will be the default gateway for its clients regardless of whether they use DHCP or not. Normally they start at the bottom of the range and assign the number in increasing order so if you are assigning statics you start at the other end and there will be no conflict as long as you don't have 254 hosts. Easiest way to find out what the range your router uses and to verify that it starts at the bottom is to hook up a PC and let it get its address automatically from the router. Then run ipconfig /all to see what you got.

Depending upon how smart the router is you may be able to do static NAT where you tell it that x.x.x.129 should go to 192.168.0.250 and x.x.x.130 should go to 192.168.0.251.

If you want to email me at rkinner"at"att"dot"net I'll send you my telephone number and we can talk directly.

Ron

[Roger Faucher]

To anyone who may be interested:

This is an unfortunate situation. It turns out that my customer's connection to the internet using Bellsouth DSL was working as designed by Bellsouth. However, Bellsouth's implementation of Static IP involves the assignment of IP addresses which are never seen at the customer router. Bellsouth's routers intercept the "Static IP" and sends a different IP address (which hopefully will not ever change) to the end user's router. This process is set off by appending %static to the PPPoE login name. Once Bellsouth makes the changes on their end, that's the only requirement on the customer premises. Unfortunately, all this information is withheld from anyone calling Bellsouth's DSL technical support. I assume this is done intentionally and I can only assume it is done to induce their customers to purchase the ~$300 routers which Bellsouth is plying:("If you plan to use your Static IP addresses to connect multiple computers to your BellSouth FastAccess DSL connection, you must use a router. At this time, BellSouth only supports multiple static IPs with the Cayman 3220H router."). One of their technical support people told me that the Netopia 3346 router is also acceptable.

I consider Bellsouth's behavior unethical and I may lose my customer over this unless I negotiate the billable hours. The sad part is that it was completely avoidable if only one of the four 'technicians' and one manager I spoke with had informed me of how their static IP implementation really works.

[Ron Kinner · Accepted solution]

Glad you got it working and that I was able to help you via email. What started me searching for info on your setup was your remark that you had turned off PPPoE to set up static. I remembered spending a day trying to get an ISDN working only to find that the provider had neglected to mention that we had to run PPP to connect. I searched for BellSouth PPOE private IP and up popped the links I sent to you.

Ron

[Roger Faucher]

Ron:

I think I made it pretty clear how much I appreciate your assistance on this one when I e-mailed you. Here are your 10 points (your help was worth thousands of points!).

Thanks!

Roger

[Antoniov.]

Hi Roger,
this sounds like a my customer installation.
I don't know if is same but consider this:
my customer has a ISP router with 8 static IP setting x.x.x.120 ... x.x.x.127 where x.x.x.127 is broadcast and x.x.x.120 is network address and also router IP; mask is 255.255.255.248 (same your one);
it seems default gateway, router and network IP are same and my custome can use 6 static IP.
Perhaps may be a different but you could try this setup.
Bye
Antoniov

[Roger Faucher]

Antoniov:

That's exactly the situation except if I go into my router and look at its WAN IP address, it is not an address in the range. If yours is, then you have traditional standard Static IP, I imagine. That was the point I was trying to make, that Bellsouth (and others) dummy up Static IP and refuse to let anyone know they've done it. But, let's not get me started again.

Thanks.

Roger

[Antoniov.]

Hi Roger,
I asked to my colleagues and here(in Italy) it's the same. Without ISP's router it's very very hard build a LAN/WAN VPN etc. The major ISP bless only their own router.
I'm sorry can't help you.

[webdude]

next time u want to make a configuration like that, you can save time(dollars) buy a cheap router like the "draytek vigor 2200e" witch is capable of vpn, ppp, pptp, dhcp, nat, static routing, etc

hook it up to the isp's router (use DMZ on the isp's router) so the isp's router is downgraded to MODEM and configure the cheap draytek and save time, anger & money.

[john peoples]

hey roger, i just got the same end of that perverbial stick that you did (the Bad one)...but i did have access to a cayman 3346, and it does work...however the port filtering and the forwarding capabiliies are extremely limited (without the upgraded firmware from cayman at a cost of some $40...I think, haven't actually ordered it yet)...you gotta use their equipment though...because what they're really selling you is a redirect service,that's right because the dynamic ip that your router sees (on the wan side),changes fairly often...sum of a gun!!!!! anyway i was able to get the vpn,exchange server and a web server up and running...although i didn't try all of them at the same time...if you come up with another solution besides the cayman...let me know...good luck....John

[john peoples]

I found the complete solution...
here's the link http://bellsouth.netfirms.com/Linksys/bellsouth_5_static_ip_configurat.htm

and I've also attached the directions as a word doc


woohoo!!!!!

[Roger Faucher]

Hey John:

Thanks for the great info. I'll post something when/if I get to play around with this at all. It sure looks great.

Roger

[ROb_17]

Has anyone ever found a solution to this problem?

Thanks.

-Rob

[Roger Faucher]

Rob:

I had it working all along. As I recall, the link/attachment that John Peoples attached to his last post were pretty right on. Again, it was simply a matter of appending %static to the username field in the router.

Roger

[ROb_17]

Roger,

Thanks for your response. However, I'm new to this and am a little confused. Let me describe my problem to see if I understand the proposed solution correctly.

I actually have a BEFSR81 router which I got because I need to set up a Cisco 7960 VOIP Internet phone which needs to be reached via a public static IP address. Since I'm on a 1.5/256 line, I wanted to take advantage of the 81's QoS feature (otherwise I would have gotten a wireless router, since I'm setting up a wireless network). To achieve my results, Linksys has recommended I give my phone an internal ip address and then assign that address as a DMZ host, therefore making it reachable from the internet via my router's public IP which will then route directly to my phone as the DMZ host. The WAP 11 (my wireless access point) would just go on another port.

The problem I have encountered is similar to what Roger first described. I need the WAN IP address (router's address) to be a static IP which I imagine should be the 2nd of my assigned range of IP addresses. However, when I log in using PPPoe, I'm assigned a random dynamic IP address. Since the router has no way of specifying a static IP for itself when using PPPoe, I'm unable to make this work for me.

When I try to use the Static IP method for connectivity, I don't have the option for PPPoe authentication, and entering the 2nd IP in my range of assigned static IPs for the gateway address (the same as the adddress that my router should have)as recommended by Bellsouth, does not allow me to connect either.

So, is the proposed solution as follows? :

1) Use PPPoe as the WAN connection method
2) Change the LAN(device) address to the 2nd IP address in my range of 8
3) Append %static to my username making it johndoe%static@bellsouth.net (by the way,since I had seen this is in some of the docs, I asked the support reps about it and was just told "This is no longer required. DOn't use it"

If so, I should expect after this, that I will be authenticated and that my router's WAN address will also be the 2nd static IP address in my range of 8 as entered into the LAN address field on the PPPoe authentication field?

Since I don't really require more than that 1 static IP address for the router which will be passed through to the phone via DMZ, do I need to do steps 5-9?

I apologize for my lack of knowledge and hope I am not asking silly questions that should be obvious from the previous posts.

Thanks in advance for your help!

-Rob

[Roger Faucher]

Rob:

I don't have the luxury of confirming all of this with you, since I did lose the customer over this (thank you, Bellsouth!).

i would suggest that you believe nothing told you by Bellsouth tech support personnel, for starters. The username is normally just 'username', not 'username'@bellsouth.net. I would change it to 'username'%static. As to IP addresses, the way I read it (I didn't use any DMZ addresses), if the range of addresses is x.x.x.1 through x.x.x.8, then x.x.x.1 and x.x.x.8 are unusable, x.x.x.2 is the router address and x.x.x.3 through x.x.x.7 are the 5 user-assignable (DMZ) addresses. The devices on the LAN side of the router will get DHCP-assigned private IP addresses.

That's about it. I would follow the procedures in the document that John posted and you should be fine. To test, either go to another site or dial out to the internet from where you are and PING the new addresses (router and VOIP phone).

I hope this helps you!

Roger