“Router - Hooking to a DSL Modem”

By Ron Stultz

31 January 2006

Edited 1 June 2006

Recently a friend requested I set up a router on her newly installed DSL. As I currently have a router running in my home with all computers sharing cable modem Internet access, I thought, no problem. Well, as it turned out, DSL is different from cable and so below I document what I had to do to get her Dlink router set up on a DSL modem.

 -         Her Verizon supplied DSL device was a DSL modem and not a DSL bridge. Don't know anything about bridges. Under Windows “Programs,” “Startup” was the Verizon DSL link dialer software, which actually dials Verizon and establishes a new link at each system boot or restart.

 -         Being dumb about DSL, I did not know that unlike cable where I have the same cable host IP address all the time, every time her system boots up, the Verizon dialer software makes a new connection and gets a new IP address. Verizon is thus using the PPPoE specification, which establishes a new IP address at ever system startup.

 -         To insert the Dlink Di-650+ wireless router I had, I unconnected the Ethernet cable from the Verizon DSL modem, which was going to the computer and ran it into the Dlink router as the wide area network (WAN) input. I then ran an Ethernet cable from the computer and attached it to one of the 4 Ethernet ports on the Dlink DI-650+. Looking good.

 -         I then moved the Verizon DSL dialer application out of the “Programs,” “Startup” group and placed it in a new desktop folder called “Communications.”

 -         Now I logged onto the Dlink router by bringing up Internet Explorer and typing in the address of the router or 192.168.0.1. Once in the software of the router, I went to the WAN portion of the software, set it to PPPoE, and entered the Verizon logon user name and password of my friend. Now I am good? No. I could not get onto the Internet and after checking for hours all sorts of things, finally occurred to my friend that she had given me the wrong password. After we entered the correct password into the router, the router established a dynamic IP address no problem. Interesting to note here that never received any sort of notification that incorrect password being used or attempted!

 -         Now with the main computer having access to the Internet via the Dlink router, I moved to her laptop, inserted a Dlink WIFI card and tried to establish a wireless connection. Here, I had good signal strength but had to do a Windows link “Repair” operation to refresh the Internet IP address.