It took me a while but I eventually got fed up with Sky’s rubbish modem/router. I got this Sagem F@ST black box when I signed up for Sky broadband. They wireless part of it was dropping connections left, right and centre and I had to disable it and get a Linksys Access Point instead. But since using Google Chrome, I started getting user authentications from the router for no reason as well as corrupt files when downloading big ones. I suspect this has something to do with the way Chrome uses lots of simultaneous connections.
Anyway, I was so fed up that I bought a Linksys AM200 “modem”, and flashed my old Linksys WRT54G firmware with DD-WRT to replace the Sagem box. I had used the Linksys router with a DLink ADSL modem before with no problems but since Sky is ADSL2+ I had to change it to an AM200.
The problem is AM200 is not really a simple modem. It has “some” router functionality. Enough to make connecting it to other routers very difficult but not enough to make it a decent router, even for home use.
So I embarked the task of connecting AM200 to WRT54G (which should be easy since it is advertised on modem’s box). Here is how I did it (after 5 attempts):
- Sky is ADSL2+. Use this service to get your Sky DSL username and password.
- Configure AM200 to use PPPoA with the username and password.
- Get other ADSL settings from the old Sky modem (like VCL settings) and use them in AM200
- Set the IP address of AM200 to 192.168.2.1 and subnet mask to 255.255.255.0
- Enable the DHCP server on AM200.
- Make sure AM200 is connected to the internet.
- Disconnect your PC from AM200 LAN port, and connect AM200 LAN port to router’s WAN port.
- Connect your PC to one of the LAN ports of the router.
- Configure the router to get its IP address from DHCP
- Set the IP address on the router to 192.168.0.1 and subnet mask to 255.255.255.0
- Set the gateway of the router to 192.168.2.1 (modem’s)
Make sure DNS servers are entered in router (you can get this from your ISP or old Sky modem)
This should allow you to connect AM200 to WRT54G. Other configurations like Half bridged mode, Bridged Mode only and others will not work with PPPoA connections that have dynamic IP addresses (exactly like Sky ADSL).