Your Actiontec Needs Bridging.

The long and short of this article: It’s about buggy internet connections caused by poor communication between DSL modems and (wireless) routers; specifically, the Actiontec GT701 and Apple’s AirPort.  If you are having internet problems and you have a DSL modem and a router, then you should read this article. I go into a lot of unnecessary explanation; if you’d rather skip the boring details, this link will take you right to the heart of the instructions.  Finally, even if you don’t have an Actiontec or an AirPort, you can probably extract and interpolate what you need from these instructions.

I have an Actiontec DSL modem and an AirPort Express.  They do not communicate well.  You see, by default, Actiontecs go into what I like to call “Granny Mode.”  That is, they expect to be set up with minimal effort and be plugged right into the back of grandma’s old beige clunker.  They “protect” that old PC by letting in few incoming communications.  They both filter out the internet portion of the phone line and communicate with the ISP to retrieve internet, so that it can easily be passed on to grandma’s compy.

So what happens when you connect not a PC but an AirPort to the modem?  Well, the AirPort obediently sees an already-purified, DHCP-ready, fuzzy-warm IP/packet connection. So that’s what it transmits.  You see, the AirPort is translating every local packet that comes to it from its own IP to the Actiontec’s IP.  And the Actiontec is translating each of those packets to the final destination IP.  And in all those conversions, the connection slows down, packets get lost, and the modem gets confused and resets the connection with the ISP, which kills all active communications.

Only recently have I discovered a solution, but no one has spelled it out adequately.  If you have an Actiontec, and you have an AirPort, you should do this. What it comes right down to is that your AirPort can do a fine job speaking directly with your ISP; the modem is not needed for that task at all.  And that means there are fewer translations, fewer slowdowns, and therefore greater reliability.  ”So,” you ask yourself, “I can just toss my old modem?”  Not so fast.  Your AirPort is not quite that great; you can’t just plug a phone line into the ethernet port.  There are two functions that must happen before you have internet (three, if you’re doing wireless):  Demodulate the DSL connection coming in (the -dem part of modem), communicate with the ISP (the internet part), and distribute that internet to computers.

Your modem wants to do all three, but your AirPort is better at doing the last two.  So, we simply transfer that power.  By putting the Actiontec in what’s called “Modem Transparent Bridging,” you get the demodulating function of the modem, and simply pass on all communications, no-questions-asked, to the AirPort.  Let’s get started.

Open up Safari/Firefox/Chrome/YourFavouriteBrowser, and go to 192.168.0.1 .  This brings you to the Actiontec setup page.  (If that didn’t work, you might need to plug in your computer directly to the modem with an ethernet cable.)  Go to advanced setup and, if necessary, select WAN IP Address.  Click continue.  Select the radio button for RFC 1483 Transparent Bridging; all other settings will grey out, because they will all be set in the AirPort.  Click apply.  Congratulations, you have just passed the torch on to the AirPort.  Now we need to get it ready to accept that torch.

Open up AirPort Utility (inside /Applications/Utilities).  Find your AirPort and click Manual Setup, providing your password if necessary.  Select the Internet tab at the top of the window.  Under Internet Connection, select Connect using PPPoE.  Enter your DSL account name and password.  Under the PPPoE tab, make sure the connection is Always On.  At the bottom of the window, click Update.

Now try your internet connection.  It should work a little faster.  Don’t see anything, you say?  I ran into this problem: my AirPort could not find my ISP’s domain name server (when I typed in gmail.com, for instance, the AirPort could not figure out where on the internet that was).  My solution was to use OpenDNS, which works at least as well as anything else I’ve used.  Go back into AirPort Utility and select the Internet and PPPoE tabs again.  Under DNS Servers, enter 208.67.222.222 in the first box and 208.67.220.220 in the second.  Click Update again, and restart your modem for good measure.  Your internet connections should now be in tip-top shape.

Beneficial Side Effects (BSEs):  It is easier to host and share from your computer.  Using Network Address Translation (NAT) in your AirPort, you can direct AFP filesharing connections to your computer, allowing you to access your files from abroad.  I won’t go into those gritty details here; just know that Google is your friend and that you need to forward to port 548 on your computer.