ActionTEC 701wg

[Rick Stevens]

Karl Pearson wrote:
> 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.

Thanks for the update, Karl.  So it is a routing issue in the firmware,
eh?  And they've known for 2 years?  Sheesh!  That'd put them at the
arse-end of my vendor list!
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-    I don't suffer from insanity...I enjoy every minute of it!      -
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