Issues with Verizon's "Network Extender" device talking on my home network.
- by Logan
I recently switched my phone service to Verizon from ATT, and I get somewhat spotty service in my house. I called them and they sent me a "network extender" device for free. Its a femtocell that connects to my home network.
The directions that come with it are very dumbed down, basically just say to connect it to your router and put it near a window (so it can get a GPS signal, it has to make sure its within the correct area before operating).
The problem I'm having is the network light on it stays red. The troubleshooting information that came with it tells me this means there is a bad network connection.
Its connected through an ASUS router running DD-WRT. No other devices on my network have a problem with it, including a Western Digital WDLIVE device, mine and my wife's cell phones (via wifi), a Wii, and an Xbox.
If I connect the device directly to my cable modem, the light goes blue (which means good) and it starts working. So this tells me that its definately a configuration issue with my router.
Verizon basically washed their hands of me when I connected it to my cable modem, and told me that its a router issue and to try a different router. Because normal people just have extra routers laying around their houses...
When I connect it to the router, I can watch the DHCP Clients list on the status page, and the MAC of the network extender quickly fills up the clients list, grabbing every available DHCP address. Its like it grabs an address, can't connect to the internet, releases it, grabs another, then another, then another.
So in the DHCP server settings I assigned a static IP to its MAC. This made it quit doing what it was doing before, but its still not working. I found the ports I needed to open on verizon's website, and opened them in the port forwarding config on my router.
This still didn't help.
So, I tried setting the network extender device's IP as the DMZ IP on the router. This still did no good.
I called Verizon back and got the tech to write up a report which he passed on to a "senior network tech" who I got a call back from a few hours ago. This guy told me that while an ASUS router isn't listed as a supported device, he's not really sure why its not working. He suggested restoring the firmware to stock ASUS firmware and trying again.
I have a very hard time believing its DD-WRT doing this, since every other device is working just fine with it.
But its also not the Network Extender, since it works just fine when connected directly to the modem.
At this point I'm out of ideas, and the next step is to restore the stock firmware on my router, and then going to walmart and getting a linksys WRT-54G to try.
Is there anything else I could try before going that drastic?
Cliffs-
-Network extender won't work behind router, works when connected directly to cable modem.
-Extender goes nuts when allowed to pick its own DHCP address, I had to assign it a static IP.
-Won't work when correct ports are forwarded to it
-Won't work with a DMZ address.
