ActionTEC 701wg

[Karl Pearson]

On Thu, 4 Nov 2004, Rick Stevens wrote:

> karlp at ourldsfamily.com wrote:
> > I just upgraded the speed of our DSL link so our users can access our
> > servers much faster now (it's faster than the T1 at work!)
> > 
> > However, one of the 'features' of this 701wg is that outbound to inbound
> > http connections ALL go to the admin pages of the stupid beast. I've
> > contacted Actiontec and they haven't responded. I see the actiontec runs
> > linux and there's a line:
> > 
> > thttpd -d /usr/www -u root -p 80 -c /cgi-b... (line length cuts off more)
> > 
> > SO, we can't access any of the webpages on our server from inside the
> > network, only from the outside.
> > 
> > Have any of you seen this and know if there's a way around it? I've
> > thought of using port 88, but then outside folks would have to know that,
> > too, which is something I don't want to deal with or have to implement.
> > 
> > Now for a peek inside my personality: I think it's d--- arrogant (or
> > stupid and short-sighted) of a company to do something like this to their
> > users.
> 
> I'm assuming (probably a bad idea) that the Actiontec is the 701wg and
> that it's your DSL modem or router.  If that's the case, and people on
> the LAN side can't see web pages hosted on a server that's also on the
> LAN side, then you've got a routing issue.  Either the default route
> being given to your DHCP clients is wrong or you've got the wrong
> netmask that makes your webserver look like it's on a different subnet
> than the DHCP clients.  That would force the traffic out to your modem
> or router.

Okay, I've been on the phone with Actiontec and Qwest and have found that
Actiontec has known about the routing issue and have done nothing about
it. Since I'm an IT director and have installed 3 of these in client sites
for connectivity to our site (so I don't have to mess with their internal
firewall politics) AND since Qwest is Actiontec's largest customer, I
called Qwest to see if they would go to bat for me. They are pressing
Actiontec to fix this issue post-haste. I will be getting a call from a 
Qwest manager tomorrow to verify this issue has been escalated.

I spoke to 3 support folks at Actiontec, including a front-liner, his
manager and then a back-line advanced technical support engineer. The
manager assured me this would be available in the next flash upgrade.
Right. The 3rd guy finally admitted they've known for 2 years and nothing
has been done. That's when I called Qwest.

I'm on a wait-and-see and don't-hold-your-breath mode...

Just thought you might like a follow-up. I'll send more if and when I 
hear. I let them know that if I don't hear in a week, I'll be dropping 
them as a vendor for our DSL needs.

Karl Pearson
http://consulting.ourldsfamily.com
Day-job: http://www.atsindustrial.com (I need to re-do this over-developed 
web site sometime... process started by taking it off an eSoft Instagate 
appliance and putting it on a RH9.0 server!!)