Setup guide for Eclipse wires-only 5 IP service on an Alcatel Speedtouch Pro

This document describes a setup I've found to work with the above service / router combination.
Feel free to follow it at your own risk - I offer no guarantee that it will work in every situation or that it is an optimal solution.

The problem

The 5 IP wires only service provided by Eclipse is described as having a "255.255.255.248" subnet which means your network has 6 valid addresses, one of which is assigned to your router. The implementation provided by eclipse allocates the router IP address in your subnet to your end of the PPPoA link. This then means that you cannot have this address allocated to the ethernet interface as you might have otherwise expected.

One way round the problem would be to use DHCP spoofing to pass this address to another PC (e.g.  a Linux box) or another router which could then act as the router for the rest of your network.

Alternatively, the following setup appears to work for me:

My solution

This solution allows the Speedtouch Pro to be used as the default gateway on your 5 IP network. It works by leaving the ethernet interface on the router allocated a private IP address and setting default routes on your client PCs to this address. The following procedure describes setting the router up in this manner from scratch. I am using it successfully at the moment with 2 machines currently attached to the router via a hub (I have the single port version) and have tested it with Windows 2000 Windows XP Pro and SuSE Linux 7.3

One point to note is that you will not be able to ping the "real world" IP address of your router from either your LAN or from an external machine on the internet.

Prerequisites

Router set to factory defaults.
PC set to get address / DNS info by DHCP
Router firmware version KHDSBA3.264 (it may work with other versions - I've only tested on this one)

You will need to know the 5 IP addresses that are available for use on your connection. These are usually the next 5 addresses in sequence above the one advised by Eclipse as your router's address (IP address in the connection details section of your account details on the order tracker)

Basic Router Configuration
 

  1. On your PC, open your web browser and go to http://speedtouch - this is the web configuration interface for the Speedtouch Pro router.
  2. Click on "System Setup" on the left-hand side, set a password that  you'll remember and press "Apply" Don't use a password you use elsewhere in case this one is compromised.
  3. You'll now be prompted to log in to the router. Leave the username blank and enter the password you just used
  4. Click on the "Routing" button on the left-hand side.
  5. In the IP route table add an entry for each of your 5 IP addresses as follows:
    Destination: <ipaddress>/32   Source: 0.0.0.0/0    Gateway: 10.0.0.138
    e.g. Destination: 192.168.99.2/32  Source: 0.0.0.0/0  Gateway: 10.0.0.138
  6. Click on "Save All" on the left-hand side.
  7. Click on "Bridge" on the left-hand side. Delete all entries.
  8. Click on "PPTP" on the left-hand side. Delete all entries.
  9. Click on "CIP" on the left-hand side. Delete all entries.
  10. Click on "PPP" on the left-hand side. Delete all entries.
  11. Click on "Phonebook" on the left-hand side. Delete all entries.
  12. Click on "Save All" on the left-hand side.
  13. Click on "Phonebook" on the left-hand side.
  14. Add an entry as follows: Name: eclipse  VPI: 0   VCI: 38   Type: ppp
  15. Click on "PPP" on the left-hand side.
  16. Under PPP Configuration, add  an entry as follows: Name: eclipse  Encap: vc-mux
  17. Once you've added this, click on "Config" next to the eclipse entry that has appeared in the table
  18. Put your username and password as supplied by Eclipse in the authentication box
  19. In the Routing box, details should be set as follows:
    Connection Sharing: Everybody
    Destination Networks: All Networks
    Specific Network: <leave blank>
    Address Translation: unticked
    Primary and Secondary DNS: none
  20. In the Options box:
    Local and Remote IP: none
    Mode: always-on
    Idle time limit:<leave blank>
    LCP echo: ticked
    PAP: unticked
    ACCOMP: ticked
  21. Click Apply
  22. On the PPP Configuration page, change the status of the eclipse link to "on" and click apply.
  23. After a few seconds, the link state should change to "up". If not, click on the "PPP" button on the left-hand side again to refresh the page. If the link still doesn't show as "up", check your username and password are correct in the config page and try again
  24. Click "Save All"
  25. The configuration of the router is now complete.
From here on, you can use your connection by configuring your PC to have one your 5 IP addresses, set the netmask to 255.255.255.248 and set the default gateway to 10.0.0.138. You will also need to set the DNS server addresses. If the connection fails (as appears to happen on a Linux machine), you may need to add an entry to the routing table on that machine stating that host 10.0.0.138 can be reached on the ethernet interface.

e.g. in Linux route add -host 10.0.0.138 eth0

DHCP and DNS serving from the Speedtouch Pro

In addition to the basic routing functionality configured above, you can also still use the DHCP and DNS servers in the Speedtouch Pro to serve your public 5 addresses if required and also to act as a local / caching nameserver. If you want further details of how to configure this, please email me.
 

20020207 SRB