[cory_jackson]

I have experience setting up small networks and gateways but never any with multiple static IP addresses and this Motorola device seems a bit odd. I think I have the functionality figured out but now I’m wondering what the best practice it.

I have a home office with a SBS 2008 box running Exchange. I had ATT DSL with a single static address but received an announcement that it was being discontinued and that I needed to make arrangements to switch to U-Verse. Of course I had to go with the business which gives me a pool of 8 public IP addresses, 5 useable. The on-site tech was nice and helpful but had received no training on static IP setup of the Motorola NVG510. Tier 2 was no help either and apparently there is no published manual. By accident I eventually found an on-site tech who knew more about networking than any of the inside techs and after a week I was finally able to get it up and functioning properly last night with a couple of spare laptops. IE I have not switched over my network or SBS.

I’ll spare you the blow by blow and pose the potential issues I have in the hopes that you can offer some advice on how to set up the network or deal with them.

Oddity 1: As incredible as it seems one cannot disable DHCP on the NVG510. I have verified this many places. The last tech said they’re laying the groundwork for future IP devices and don’t want subscribers disabling it. I have read one can set a pool of 1 with a starting address of the router’s address to effectively disable it but SBS’s rouge DHCP detection will still see it. Also I don’t want this DHCP service. It is devoid of any customization beyond assigning IP addresses. In fact one can’t even create reservations. I see a reg hack for SBS 2003 online to disable this but it doesn’t seem to exist in 2008 as far as I have been able to find.

Oddity 2: I saw the setup for the public IPs on the preceding 2-Wire product and that made sense to me. One simply defined the range, subnet and what have you and then mapped each public address to an internal address. In this scenario my server would only have a private IP address. But in the NVG510 one defines a public pool and that’s it. In order for a machine on the inside to receive traffic to this public IP one must give that machine the public IP address. IE it’s just passing all traffic thru to the internal network and letting it find its way. Maybe this isn’t so odd but it makes me wonder hwo I use this.

Oddity 3: There’s no bridge mode. There is a provision for a Cascade Router but no one seems to know what this is or how it works.

Oddity 4: The “modem” has a public IP address outside of my static IP address range and the one tech said he thought it was dynamic.

So how do I set this up and keep SBS happy? FYI at this point I only really need one static IP for my SBS box.

Solution 1: I was thinking I could assign a second IP address on the SBS box and attach it directly to the NVG510. But I’ve heard warnings online that SBS doesn’t like multiple NICs or multiple IPs. And I have qualms as to whether outbound traffic would go out thru the static IP or thru the modem’s dynamic IP.

Solution 2: I could use my existing RV042 router and cascade to it and put everything behind it. Sucks to not benefit from the wireless on the NVG510 and it would be cool to replace 3 boxes with one but… Also I’m not sure if I can put a public IP on it.

Solution 3: I could attach the RV042 to the switch and set it’s static IP address to one from my pool and have everything behind it. Then I would continue to use port forwarding as I am now for the SBS box. This would limit me to one static IP I think but I’m not sure.

Any and all ideas and edification are welcome. I’m sure I won’t be the first SBS user to deal with the NVG510.

[wullieb1]

Do you have to stick with the NVG510 appliance as to me that is the root cause of all your issues.

I've never used one so can't help with the config unfortunately.

[cory_jackson]

I asked Friday and there was no alternative.

To follow up I eventually took the easy way out. I simply made my old router a static IP and left everything else behind it exactly the same and it all worked straight away. Later I'll consider setting up some one-to-one NAT or other trickery. Now my only problem is that my Internet bandwidth behind the RV042 is half what it is directly attached to the NVG510. Also it seems flaky. But I don't have time to mess with that at the moment.

[wullieb1]

That was my next suggestion. Put something behind it and assign it one of your static IP's and leave the NVG510 as your perimiter router.