[NoShow]

I just moved to Wpg from Surrey, BC and need to choose between Shaw and MTS. I had Shaw home phone, high def and high speed internet. I had a nice shaw internet system in BC going. I am a Mac user and use the Airport Extreme Wireless N router with a gigabit unmanaged switch and an Infrant ReadyNAS along with a couple Airport Express units in the home.

I had decided to try MTS Ultimate TV, internet and phone bundle. The guy came yesterday to set things up but could not complete because the movers were unloading and my TV was way in the back of the truck. We decided to reschedule. Thankfully.

I was a little nervous with what he was telling me. I could not use my Apple router and had to use the MTS router. This is all new territory to me. The other thing is that the house I bought is all wired CAT5 throughout the house through a panel in the basement storage room. I wanted him to set up the router in that room, plug it into the panel and then I'd have high speed hard cat5 wired in everyroom as well as wireless. He was unsure about how this whole system worked and it made me very nervous. Also, now I am unsure about the use of my Apple Airport Express router. Is the MTS wireless router wireless N and is it good?

I am thinking about calling the whole thing off but I have family that works for MTS and also have 12 month special pricing.

Please forgive me if this has been gone over before. I did a quick search but couldn't find anything specific to my situation.

I am looking forward to understanding how MTS internet and their hardware works a little more and making sure it will work for my situation.

NoShow

 

[Dr.Dave]

Welcome to Winnipeg (PS you should change the location in your profile).

MTS uses a 2Wire 3800HGV wireless modem/router (802.11b/g). Here is the spec sheet:

http://www.2wire.com/pages/pdfs/491.pdf

Here are the MTS instructions for configuring your third-party router:

http://www.mts.ca/file_source/mts.ca/Static_Files/Raw_PDF/3rd_Party_Router_CustomerConfiguration.pdf

You can use your own equipment for your home network and use the MTS router for TV and the internet connection. There are several people on the forum that have done it that way.

 

[timmaywpg]

Welcome to Winnipeg!

The MTS ultimate service comes with a gateway, which also contains your DSL modem. The gateway contains 4 10/100 ports and a Wireless 'G' router.

The gateway can be configured just like a router via a web interface.

It should be noted that your PVR/Digital boxes are usually hooked into this gateway via ethernet.

There shouldn't be any problem hooking up your apple router to one of the ports and using it to serve the rest of your needs. You may want to turn off DHCP on the apple router, and let the MTS gateway take care of that part.

What I would suggest is hooking all of your house cabling into a gigabit switch, with one run to your gateway, and hooking your Apple router to a port on the gigabit switch with the main purpose of serving up wireless "n".

 

[Vader]

You can also check out my diagram of how my house is setup at:
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=125727

 

[CoryB]

There is lots of good advice here already.

It sounds like you have a fit bit of knowledge on setting up your own network. My advice would be to keep that seperate from the MTS and TV side of things which only one link between them to light up your custom network with Internet acess. Matter of fact it is even possible to turn off the wireless network on the MTS supplied equipment if you so wish.

The other piece of advice, is if you have a reason to continue to run your own DHCP on your network that is possible.

 

[NoShow]

thanks

Thanks everyone for your replies. It's been a while since I've been on these forums but I remember what a knowledgeable resource it is. Thanks.

Some rookie questions if someone would indulge me:

1. What is 2wire?

2. Help me with DCHP? I never did pay attention to what this, what it means, or how to use it.

I guess the bottom line question from me is: AM I COMPROMISING ANYTHING FROM AN INTERNET PERSPECTIVE/HOME NETWORKING PERSPECTIVE BY GOING WITH THE MTS BUNDLE VS THE SHAW BUNDLE?

The way MTS is configured and works vs Shaw is pretty different from my past experience.

Again appreciate your expertise...

 

[timmaywpg]

1. What is 2wire?

2wire is the brand of gateways that MTS is now providing to Ultimate TV service, it's essentially a DSL modem with built in router.

2. Help me with DCHP? I never did pay attention to what this, what it means, or how to use it.

DHCP automatically assigns IP addresses to the devices connected to your home network, this allows all devices to communicate with each other. You don't want 2 routers (ie your apple device, and the MTS 2 wire) giving out IP addresses.

No big differences between Shaw & MTS anymore, they both provide you with an ethernet port for you to connect to your network... the 2 wire's actually have ethernet ports built in, the Shaw Motorola modems are a dedicated modem (with no routing capabilities) and one ethernet port.

With the MTS ultimate service there is no more requirement for you to put in your PPOE username/password.

 

[CoryB]

You don't want 2 routers (ie your apple device, and the MTS 2 wire) giving out IP addresses.

There is nothing wrong with having two routers giving out IP addresses. If you only connect your tv boxes and one non-MTS router to the 2wire you will have isolated your network from the devices directly connected to the 2wire. Under most typical setups this is a non-issue.

 

[Vader]

Have to say that I think having 2 devices giving out IP adresses greatly increases the complexity and management of your network..... much easier to disable DHCP on one if you have limited experience with networks.

 

[CoryB]

If you have network seperation going in, ie only tv devices connecting directly to the 2wire, having two devices, the 2wire and something else, handing out IP adresses via DHCP does not increase your network comlpexity and management. The reality is under this setup your non TV devices will only see one DHCP server anyway and there is currently no support for interaction between the TV boxes and other devices on the network so you are not losing out on anything.

 

[Vader]

OK, why don't you give us an actual example of how this would work (including IP addresses) so we can see the level of complexity that you are talking about.

My impression of the setup is as follows:
1) Secondary router is plugged into the 2Wire, but needs to be manually assigned an IP address that is in the 2Wire's range - otherwise it will not have an internet connection.
2) All other devices on the "computer" network hanging off this secondary router - do you need to do any subnetting or limiting of the DHCP range to get this to work with the new router's IP address?

If it requires DHCP range limiting or subnetting, then I think it is easier to do by turning off DHCP and letting the 2Wire do it....

Not trying to argue, just trying to get real examples so if someone wants to do it, they can.

 

[CoryB]

The simple explaination is that there are several IP ranges meant exclusively for use on private networks, such as those run within your home. A router takes those multiple addresses it had assigned and makes them appear as a single address to an external connection such as an Internet provider. If you have your own exiting network running DHCP it is normally using one of these IP ranges. The typical setup of a home router, regardless of the ISP, is that it normally has two IP addresses, the one it talks to devices connecting to it with, and the one it talks to the external network.

For example, my 2wire runs a DHCP service for addresses in the 192.168.100.x range. Normally it gives my router an address for 192.168.100.101. The non-2wire router hands out 10.0.67.x addresses.

If you wanted to the non-2wire router could even hand out IP addresses in the same range as the 2wire, you just might run into issues if you connect anything other than your own router and tv boxes directly to the 2wire gateway. The reality though is most people seem to have two tv boxes and their own router which would only leave a single open port on the 2wire so its use is fairly limited to begin with.

So to summarize, by default most consumer grade routers are setup by default to handle running their own DHCP behind the 2wire without issue.

 

[NoShow]

THANKS everyone once again. MTS is coming Friday morning so I'm in for at least one month.

One question that has emerged in my mind is about the 2wire not being gigabit and only 10/100. Does this compromise the gigabit speed in my network if the access point (the 2wire) is not gigabit?

I plan to run the internet from the outside --> 2wire --> Apple Airport Extreme gigabit router --> unmanaged gigabit switch ---> panel with multiple cat5 going to rooms in the house. I will also have an Infrant / Netgear ReadyNAS connected to the gigabit switch. I plan to use the Airport Extreme for wifi and not the 2wire.

The internet speed will not be compromised by the 10/100 of the 2wire?
I'm pretty sure the NAS data transfer speeds will not be compromised by the 2wire and will indeed be gigabit (or as close to that as possible).

NoShow

(not exactly sure how the MTS TV gets connected... coaxial to the TV from the 2wire?)

 

[Dr.Dave]

Your plan looks good. The traffic on your local network will be gigabit and your internet speed will not be compromised by the 10/100 of the 2wire. The 2wire modem/router is capable of going as fast as the internet connection. The fastest plan MTS sells is 32 Mbps.

 

[mtsguy]

plug the WAN port of your airport (the jack where you plugged your shaw modem before) into any of the 4 ports on the 2wire, plug your airport into power and voila, that is all you need to do.

the 2wire will assign your airport an IP address just like a cable modem would and your airport will assign your computers IP addresses.

 

[CoryB]

One thing I strongly recommend is to have the televisions (stb) connected directly to the 2wire with Cat5 where ever possible, especially with the upcoming upgrade that allows you to "pause live tv from any box" as that likely means all the boxes are now streaming off the PVR unit.

 

[khulit]

I would like to setup a similar system in my house wherein the 2wire is relegated to a DSL modem and all my router functions are handled by my Linksys E2000 Gigabit router (running DD-WRT)...

I just recently switched to MTS Ultimate and the installer setup my Linksys router as a switch and told me that it would still allow wifi to connect to the Linksys and still have internet and although it works ok at times, whenever my laptop goes to sleep and on wake up it has a hard time connecting to the internet. I always have to reset the wifi or try to connect to a different wifi and then connect to my Linksys WIFI before it can get the Internet (never had a problem like this before)

A week later my son is complaining that there is no internet... I went to the 2Wire's GUI setup and it was running SLOW, and takes minutes just to show the initial webpage screen... I pulled the power and had it restart (which killed our TV too), after a few minutes the internet was back... but five minutes later it seems that it is dying again... I have a Dockstar (Pogoplug) connected and figured it eating up resources so I turned it off and voila, the internet was working OK...

So I figured the 2Wire is just too slow for a 5 desktop computer network with 2 VOIP boxes, lots of WIFI activity (3 iPhones, 1 wifi print server, 2 laptops, WinMo devices, etc) and since I didn't have a problem with my Linksys e2000, I figured I should just relegate the 2wire as a portal and have my own router handle the DHCP and local network... How would I setup the 2Wire so that it will not be assigning DHCP? As for wifi it is easy to turn it off...

 

[Vader]

I believe that you have to let the 2wire assign IP addresses at least for the STB's, so I would not turn off DHCP entirely.

You could probably review the following threads for some additional guidance.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=139298
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=125727

Didn't the earlier posts in this thread from Cory B help out as well??

 

[mtsguy]

hey, im an installer. what you need to do is set up your Linksys for DHCP, it will pull a IP from the 2wire. exactly as if it was plugged into a shaw modem. after that, the linksys router will do all the DHCP for your computers,printers,wireless. and the 2wire will do the do dhcp for the STBs. if there is a reset button on your linksys, press it and start from scratch. you will need to reset up your SSID and WPA key tho. this is the best way and this is how i always set up a sub's router when they want to continue using them as opposed to the 2wire.

btw, you plug a straight threw cable into a LAN port on the 2wire, into the WAN port on your linksys for this set up. you are basically using the 2wire as a modem. you can even go into the GUI on the 2wire and shut the wireless on it off if you want.

 

[khulit]

Thanks.... I did that (plugged the network cable from 2wire to the WAN port of the Linksys)... the person who installed my MTS system, turned my Linksys into a switch by just turning off the DHCP server (with a different IP domain)... I turned it on and my network is running more smoothly now... I'll be switching all my computers to the Linksys network and just have the internet traffic funnel thru it to the 2wire... I was able to see the difference as the GUI screens for the 2wire were slower (some PCs were still connected to the 2wire) than the ones in my Linksys...

I also turned on the DMZ for the Linksys (thereby making giving it full access to the internet).. as I have port forwarding on it...