VLAN Tagging for CenturyLink

I’ve dealt with CenturyLink provided WiFi access points in two locations I’ve lived recently, and not been happy with their performance. My 5 year old Netgear WNDR3800 seemed to provide better speed with both 5GHz and 2.4GHz than the Actiontec C1900A provided by CenturyLink, which only supported 2.4GHz.

Unfortunately it was not as simple as learning the PPoE credentials that the Actiontec was using and putting those details into the Netgear. Centurylink in their infinite wisdom decided that the network packets need to be tagged to run on VLAN 201.

One solution would be to go out and buy a new WiFi router that supports VLAN Tagging. The newer Netgear Nighthawk routers support tagging, following the details at this support page.

The Netgear AC1900 router (also referred to as R7000) would do what I want, but would also cost close to $150.

Instead I spent $33 on a Netgear GS105Ev2 switch and spent a little time configuring its VLANs and am mostly happy with the result. My only disappointment is that this switch doesn’t seem to support SNMP for traffic monitoring.

I have this configured so that Port1 connects to the Centurylink Fiber Termination Box, Port2 connects to my WNDR3800 WAN Port, and Port3 is connected to one of the LAN ports on the WNDR3800.

Port1 is configured to send Tagged Packets on VLAN 201.
Port2 is configured to send Untagged Packets on VLAN 201.
Ports 3-5 are configured to sent Untagged Packets on VLAN 1, the default for this switch.

The steps to get this working, starting with existing setup of Actiontec connected to Fiber Termination box.

1. Connect GS105Ev2 Port3 to available LAN port on Actiontec and make sure link connection LEDs appear.
2. Find what IP address the GS105Ev2 acquired on local network using a network scanning tool. I used  NirSoft Wireless Network Watcher and found that my switch was on 192.168.1.17. Going to http://192.168.1.17/ gave me a login to the new switch with the default password of “password”. 
3. You should get a switch information page similar to this.
4. Select the menu item VLAN, then 802.1Q and the radio button Enable. You should get a warning message that it’s about to erase all current VLAN settings. Hit OK.
5. Go under Advanced, VLAN Configuration, there’s a text box on the right that says VLAN ID. Enter 201 and push the Add button above it. Now we have a new VLAN with no Port Members assigned.
6. Go to Port PVID on the left menu. Select Port 1. Type 201 in the text box. Hit Apply.Select Port 2. Type 201. Hit Apply.
7. Now we go to the VLAN Membership setting. With the VLAN ID dropdown showing 1, click Port 1 and Port 2 through the available options until neither T nor U is showing, leaving Ports 3, 4, and 5 showing U. Then click Apply.
8. Now drop down to select VLAN 201. Click so that Port 1 is T, Port 2 is U, Ports 3, 4, and 5 are blank, and Apply.
9. If you look at the VLAN Configuration, you’ll now see that ports 1 and 2 are assigned to 201, while 3, 4, and 5 are assigned to 1.
10. At this point the GS105Ev2 has been configured as much as it needs to be. I had already configured my WNDR3800 to connect to the ISP using PPoE and given it the correct credentials.
11. Power off Actiontec and put it in a closet. Connect Fiber Termination device to port 1 on GS105Ev2. Connect WNDR3800 WAN to port 2 on GS105Ev2. Optionally connect port 3 on GS105Ev2 to a lan port on WNDR3800, as it will only gain you one extra gigabit port compared to the four built into the WNDR3800.

Thanks to this post for the same information that I’ve presented here. I’d attempted to do this before with an existing GS108Tv2 switch I had sitting around. What I’d forgotten to do was make the port going to the WNDR3800 send Untagged packets. I’d been properly sending tagged packets to the fiber, but the WNDR3800 didn’t know what to do with the tagged packets. After confirming it worked with the GS108Tv2 I ordered the cheaper 5 port switch just to have something else to play with. My only disappointment with the 5 port switch is that it doesn’t seem to support SNMP to monitor the traffic going over the network.

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