home router network question
 

So I subscribed to comcast (my cablem modem internet provider) from my home and put a cisco WRV210 in front of the comcast modem. They gave me 1 static ip address which i'm planning to use to access my camera system. I configure the dmz to translate the address to a local one and go straight to the video server. This allows me to access the static ip in the network. This was setup 2 days ago and I've noticed the connection keeps getting slower and slower until the point where I have to reboot the cisco firewall box. upon further investigation, when i plug my laptop into the comcast router, I receive an IP address of 10.1.10.1 which tells me the router also has dhcp enabled.
Is this supposed to enabled? I hope i don't have to return the cisco box and get something else.

thanks in advance

Sounds like you have Comcast Business class. That is normal. Even though you have a static IP, the device will still hand out IPs with the built in DHCP server. You probably got an IP of 10.1.10.10 since 10.1.10.1 is the IP of the cable modem. You can log into the modem and disable DHCP. You can also disable the firewall on the cable modem to have a true static IP subnet. To be honest, many of the Cisco Small Business products are pretty lousy IMHO. Consider getting a better device.

that cisco totally hoovers. it's old too, discontinued i believe.

if you're stuck with it - update the firmware and see if you can run dd-wrt,open-wrt or tomato on it. We never tried, just threw them all out.

Read this: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/201...-a-router.html

Cable modems don't typically act as a dhcp server for a private network. They do have a dhcp server but it's only used when not connected to the cable network. It's there so a pc can connect to the modem and diagnose connection issues. If you have a static IP from comcast, whatever you plug into the cable modem should get that static IP - either a router or a PC. If you plug a PC into the modem and get a 10.x.x.x address, that would be weird.

At least I've never seen that. I suppose someone might make a cable modem combined with a router but I haven't seen one (haven't looked either).

Typically, the router plugs into the cable modem and gets a public IP on it's "WAN" or "Internet" port from the cable modem. Make sure you've got the cable modem <-> router cable plugged into the proper port. You then configure the router to provide a private address range (via NAT - network address translation) via DHCP (typically 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x, sometimes 172.16.(<32).x). You should be able to choose the private range.

thank you for everyone's help.
I decided to toss the cisco router and get an asus one.
it works smoothly now.

Which Asus did you get? Install Tomato firmware on it if you can and, if not, DD-WRT. You'll be amazed at the functionality and stability you gain.

tomato, FTW! :-)

I ended up with the ASUS RT-N56U and installed it right out of the box and everything worked smoothly and more than twice as fast. The admin interface now just blinks right up and exponentially easier to configure than the old cisco. Although the only thing lacking is figuring out an easy way to create a vpn to lock down the network. I was able to configure the nat, static ip settings, ports and almost everything else in 10 mins.

I really didn't have time to experiment and test Tomato right away. Does it take a long time? is there a steep learning curb on getting it working correctly?

thanks again