WAN MAC issues

[distemper]

I have a WRT54G v2.2 (which was using dd-wrt.v24_voip_generic.bin for firmware) and I flashed to gargoyle_1.0.2-brcm-2.4-squashfs.bin). I have a Verizon FiOS connection. I noticed a few things off the bat:

1. When my router rebooted and gave me a DHCP address, the router was unable to obtain a lease from my ISP. The whole WAN side appeared dead. Now Verizon does a little trick behind the scenes where they tie your service to the MAC address of your router and have a 24 hour timeout period if their records & your MAC don't match. I thought that perhaps I had cloned a MAC in dd-wrt and forgotten to enter it in Gargoyle. But when I reflashed dd-wrt back on, the stock firmware allowed the router to get a DHCP lease and I was able to load webpages immediately.

A little digging revealed that Gargoyle wasn't using the MAC addresses that dd-wrt was using.

dd-wrt LAN MAC: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:20
dd-wrt WAN MAC: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:21
dd-wrt WlesMAC: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:22

Ggoyle LAN MAC: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:20
Ggoyle WAN MAC: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:20 <- this
Ggoyle WlesMac (not tested)

When I reflashed Gargoyle back, I had the same lack of internet connectivity. Once I changed the WAN MAC using Connection->Internet/WAN-> "Use Custom MAC Address" to the :xx:21 it finally got a lease and I had connectivity.

2) On subsequent visits to the Connection page, the "Use Custom MAC Address" was unchecked and no MAC was present. It should have been checked and the previously supplied MAC should have been there.

3) This has to do with the Verizon FiOS MAC timeout. On your Connection page, "Release Lease" is not offered. This is the part that you have to do to avoid the timeout from Verizon. Otherwise you have to call them & complain. Now imagine a scenerio where your phone service is VOIP and has to go through the router - which has the 24 hour timeout.

Thanks for the interface & the nice easy downloadable flash firmware. I am glad to have moved off of dd-wrt.

[NL2009]

Hi,

Your second issue ("Use Custom MAC Address") looks like it could be related to an issue I reported here:
http://www.gargoyle-router.com/phpbb/vi ... ?f=6&t=205

I also find that various "check boxes" do not maintain their state if you save, browse to another page, and then go back and check the state of the check-box.

[Eric]

I'll see what I can do to address this.

(1), The difference in MACs is a difference in OpenWrt, and isn't necessarily a problem, just different.

(2) The disappearance of custom MAC sounds like a Bug, which I will try to replicate/fix soon. Thanks for reporting this!

(3) This is a feature request, and may take some time. I don't have a PPPoE connection so I can't test this easily. If I post an updated version here could you help test it? Also, doesn't rebooting the router release the lease? It might be a quick and dirty fix until I get around to implementing your feature request.

[distemper]

Issue #3: that's an workable workaround now that I see the "udhcpc -R" when you killall. This is expounded upon a little later in this post. And while Verizon does have a mix of legacy PPPoE & DHCP, "Release Lease" would only be applicable to DHCP.
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NL2009: I also find that various "check boxes" do not maintain their state if you save, browse to another page, and then go back and check the state of the check-box.

When I set Custom DNS, the checkbox stayed checked & the 2 entries I added survived a reboot.
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In regards to issue #1:

I rebooted the router which had a cloned xx:21 WAN MAC. I'm guessing that udhcp did release - because when Gargoyle came back up, the cloned MAC was gone - back to xx:20, but with a lease, an IP & full connectivity. I think this answers your "Also, doesn't rebooting the router release the lease?."- yes it does.

I also did a series of Restore Default Configs, Renew Leases, Gargoyle over Gargoyle flashes & a Gargoyle -> dd-wrt -> Gargoyle cycle. When in dd-wrt, the MAC was xx:21, and I was blocked. Cloning the MAC to xx:20 let the router pull a lease & IP. Reflashing to Gargoyle with the default xx:20 MAC had instant connectivity.

Seems the best answer to issue 1 is for the end-user to keep track of what the ISP expects & remember it years down the line.