The new installs of Belgacom’s DSL internet connection are actually fairly descend. They provide a “b-box 2” which provides 2 wired 10/100base-T ports and an 802.11g access point. It consumes 10.1W of power once booted (21VA with a cosφ of .47, measured with 241Vac), which costs around €22/year at the current prices. The box has a built-in router which performs the PPPoE connection and does the NAT. While this setup is perfectly fine for a regular setup, obviously I wanted something more…
So I wanted my own router to establish the PPPoE connection and obtain a public IPv4 address. It seems that even here the default setup of the b-box2 is good: PPPoE passthrough is enabled by default. This technique allows you to establish a PPPoE connection from the “LAN”-side of the router, effectively bypassing it. There are numerous posts how to reconfigure the b-box into RFC 1483 bridge-mode, but this is not required! So just plugging in my router and configuring PPPoE on it was enough!
There are some finishing touches however that can be learned from the bridge-posts:
- I disabled my PPPoE connection on the b-box itself. I will not be using it, so there is no need to waste a public IPv4 address here.
In the webinterface (http://192.168.1.1/ by default) go to Advanced Settings – Network Interfaces. Open the Wan PPPoE and Disable it, confirm by clicking OK. - I also disabled the built-in WiFi access point, since I have my own 802.11n access point right next to it. This is even officially documented.
Advanced Settings – Wireless and click Deactivate.
