Bridging Huawei HG256s & D-Link DIR-855

Went to StarHub Shop at VivoCity on the 24th June 2011 to apply for MaxOnline Infinity which is Starhub fibre Internet service. I chose the MaxInfinity Elite plan which has a download speed of 150Mbps, upload speed of 75Mbps and international speed of 15Mbps. It cost S$82.18 per month for a 2 year contract.

They did not tell me when they are coming to set up the fiber Internet service. I waited a month and they called me on the 3rd week of July 2011 saying they will come on 26th July 2011 to install the service.

StarHub is forcing us to use the crappy Huawei HG256s Residential Gateway (RG) and there is no way to bypass it yet. I heard the wireless on it is just pure shitty. So the typical setup would be:

Terminal Point (TP) -> Optical Network Terminal (ONT) -> Residential Gateway (RG) -> Router

If order to get your router to do the routing you need to bridge the connection between the RG and Router.

Step 1: You need to disable WLAN and DHCP on the RG

Step 2: Enable DMZ on the RG

My RG’s IP address is 192.168.2.1 and my router WAN Port is connected to my RG’s LAN Port 1 with WAN Static IP address set to 192.168.2.2 on the router.

My router IP address is 192.168.3.1.

RG (192.168.2.1) -> DMZ (192.168.2.2) WAN -> Router (192.168.3.1)

Step 3: Setting WAN Static IP on the Router

That is basically it. I have disabled all the firewall features on the RG side and let the router handle it. DDNS on the other hand is handled by the RG instead of the router.

Since the router is behind RG’s DMZ, port forwarding is handled by the router.

BEFORE (Cable): Speedtest - MaxOnline Ultimate (100Mbps) — BEFORE (Cable): Speedtest – MaxOnline Ultimate (100Mbps)

AFTER (Fibre): Speedtest - MaxOnline Infinity Elite (150Mbps) — AFTER (Fibre): Speedtest – MaxOnline Infinity Elite (150Mbps)

I am unable to obtain 150Mbps speed though. I am wondering if Speedtest can output more than 100Mbps. However I am able to obtain about 80Mbps on 2 computers while doing Speedtest simultaneously. I did my speedtest on StarHub’s Speedtest before doing it on Speedtest.net.

Upon further investigation, I am actually on 150Mbps, I downloaded an iPad 2 firmware update (iOS 4.3.5) from Apple and I am getting about 16MB/s to 18MB/s which is about 128Mbps to 144Mbps. Woot!