Alternative router for Home Internet Service (need bridgemode)

It does not. Just tried everything I can think of. Any router behind Nokia modem shows a private ip 192.168.12.***. I even tried setting the public ip as static in new router guessing the settings of public IP:255.255.255.248:192.168.12.1 and DNS 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4. No internet connection doing that. GOing to have to return as need to have port forwarding/dhcp reservations in business envirmonment.

I also noticed placing a router behind the nokia with dhcp server on then windows only shows it as public network and not private. Couldnt figure out how to change that.

I’ve had the Nokia 5G WIFI gateway for several weeks now.  I use Alexa, Google Home products, Roku, Ring, and several other smart items.  I have several Synology NAS’s and a Synology mesh setup (RT2600ac and MT2200ac) for my residence.  I backup my NAS’s to Amazon Glacier.  I was worried that a double NAT (don’t want to disable security features provided by the RT2600ac) would disable something.  To my surprise, everything still worked without a single hiccup.  I turned on the RT2600ac’s VPN service (which I used in the past, but not lately) and it didn’t work, so turned it back off.  Was still able to remote access the router and NAS’s via QuickConnect.  Amazon Glacier backup worked as before.

Since I already have a WIFI network running, I didn’t want the gateways WIFI, so turned off all the Enable SSID and Enable Broadcast for all SSIDs.  Also changed Transmission Power to 12%, just for good measure.  This seemed to turn off the gateways WIFI since I couldn’t detect them any longer on my phone, when near the gateway.

After 4 or 5 days the 5G connection dropped and my data dropped to under 20Mbps.  I gave it a few hours and it didn’t reconnect until I turned off the gateway, waited 10 sec, and turned it back on.  I was surprised the firmware didn’t try to reconnect. 

I reboot my router nightly to keep it running at it’s best.  I looked into doing this with the gateway, but it has a battery.  I found it’s easy to remove the battery, so removed the battery and connected the gateway to a digital outlet (smart plugs won’t work when internet is not present) and set it to turn off gateway for one minute each night.

It’s been over a week and gateway operation has been great (no more dropping 5G connection).  I’m getting 80Mbps to 260Mbps, averaging about 120Mbps, and that’s with 2 bars (-100 to -104 dBm).

Would like bridge mode so can use the router’s VPN, if I wanted, and to reduce load on router with double NAT resolving.

I’d love to use our Netgear LB1121. I already have two directionals outside pointed at the local tower.

Unfortunately, the new T-Mobile Internet Router doesn’t have ports for the directionals, so I can’t actually direct the signal to improve speeds. Also, this router is severely locked down. We run a pfSense (soon to be tnsr) router for our network. We have to double-NAT this, and getting pfSense to cooperate is.. interesting.

Anyway, I would love to be able to have a BRIDGE mode so it acts accordingly (LTE<->Ethernet) instead of a router. That, or allow us to utilize our own equipment and either unlock the SIM card within the unit, or allow us to get a SIM card for our equipment for this purpose.

Currently, we have a CenturyLink 20/2 (bonded ADSL2+) connection as our primary and this as our secondary.

IM having a horrible time with TMobile Home Internet. 

First the good,

1. I dumped Spectrum
2. Internet connection has been dead on reliable 
   
   Now the bad!
   I have had speeds up to 115 Mbps but it NEVER lasts for more then 24 hours, then the Nokia cell unit drops one of the two cell signals and I end up getting 15 to 30 mbps.
   I can do a complete reset of the device which means wiping out everything, after a few attempts I get the speed back until yesterday, now I am stuck with 20Mbps service and I have good signal.
   I called Tmobile a number of times, one person very helpful but problem never solved and now its worse, cant get the speed back, called last night and this person was not very knowledgable or reassuring. 
   Anyway, I now have another ticket number and hopefully one day this is resolved.
   
   Issue is, my Primary cell is Band 12 and I keep losing secondary cell N71 even though it has a stronger signal. Normally I have been able to get N71 back but no longer.
   I have no idea who to contact at TMobile that will have any idea what I am talking about and address this.
    

There are MANY reasons to have a bridging capability on a modem that go so far beyond wireless networks.  Many people run actual firewalls.  Many people have servers of various types in their homes.  Double-NAT situations cause needless headaches to those who aren’t IT engineers.  Double-NAT situations in which one of the NATing members has quite literally 0 controls make these situations an impossibility for the aforementioned people.  Alongside this, some people have far more devices in their homes than what the puny little processors can handle.  Routing takes horsepower when the network it’s routing for is complex.  Just because someone has a ton of devices in their home doesn’t mean that they necessarily have the IT where-with-all to program a fleshed out L2 network to prevent all that traffic from being processed by the L3 router.

I’m not trying to be aggressive when I make this statement, but if any of what I just said went over your head, then you’re not qualified to answer the question that was asked.

There is no bridge mode in the Nokia Modem/Router.

Its actually why I am here, looking for solutions. I signed up and received the Nokia unit a few days ago. Its a no go, you can NOT run a separate router off of the Nokia Home Internet Modem/Router.

I have never seen such a basic router menu/screen in my life, very, very little that you can change.

WIth that said, the Nokia works great, it does have bugs, Im surprised how many, more so if you want to change settings and stuff, app is buggy, GUI is buggy if you like to go into and set things up the way that you want. Even the PDF manual is not accurate.

For the average plug and play person maybe its just fine. I guess time for reality, cant trash TMobile for doing what they are doing, there is a reason, its a router/modem for the masses not for the tech person who wants to run and do all kinds of things with it. I suspect its to discourage businesses as their network would slow down greatly and limit customer service support for people who mess up their settings. 

Im getting really sweet speeds and just canceled Spectrum home internet service. So thank you T-Mobile, I suspect as the years go on you may (or may not) have more options but as of right now you will have to use their VERY capable built in router. Very impressive for a combo unit, the first of which I have ever used in 25 years of computing, but it is what it is.

My wifi speeds run from 40 to 80 Mbps. Average around 60

I'm excited to be receiving the new Nokia modem tomorrow. I had tried the original white modem for a couple days. The original white modem would get 60-70mbps one minute, then less than 1mbps a minute later. I'm suspecting that it was switching between a few different towers (I'm in a little bit of a difficult cell reception area) I'm in the outskirts of a major metro area, so I do have xfinity and centurylink available to me

I currently pay for 140mbps with centurylink, but get just shy of 60mbps consistently. 

I'm wanting bridge mode as well, as I've set up an asus mesh network with wired backhaul.

I'll be testing the new gateway and reporting back, I truly hope that this Nokia gateway has better cell reception, or at least a better way of Locking in on the fastest signal instead of roaming to useless cell signals from time to time. 

Check these...https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/jmxgoj/home_internet_pfsense/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking/comments/b77e2l/ive_discovered_that_my_isp_is_using_cgnat_on/. 

I signed up today and looks like I'll be getting the new gateway that was released. I specifically asked about bridge mode and was told it was supported on the Nokia gateway...we shall see. 

There is some discussion about passing the public IP from the gateway to another device on Reddit so not sure there is a solution yet. The only other solution for now to use your own router is what splinter mentioned using the DMZ route. In theory setting the T-Mobile router to static and disabling DHCP should be fine. So on the T-Mobile gateway disable DHCP, firewall, and Wi-Fi. Use static address for management say 192.168.1.1 and  enter your routers LAN address in the T-Mobile DMZ section (for example 192.168.10.1). Connect your router to the T-Mobile Gateway LAN port and use your routers functions as normal. With this setup you should be able to still manage both devices but use the firewall functions. Some people seem to be having success with this for other use cases and I plan on giving it a try myself once I sign up.  

Run a trace, and you will see it go through two private ranges (3 if you are using NAT on your router) and then you get no responses on the other side until it dumps back into v4 at the other end... it all gets stripped/flipped to v6 on their end, which is k ackering things up on the inbound path.

I noticed that, but I don’t think it’s double nat. It’s common practice to using non-routable IP space for internal uses from router to router. At least I’m pretty sure that’s the case or they need to hire new network engineers if they are doing double-nat out of the box.

At night, 4 solid green bars. And solid performance. But during the day, 1 green bar that occasionally falls back to yellow/orange, resetting connections.

I tested my box in several locations. I found a spot on an East side window that is 4 bars all the time. So my speed issues isn’t signal related. Their tower is either already greatly oversubscribed, something they said they wouldn’t do in the sales pitch, or there’s something seriously wrong with it. I still have not heard back from my escalated ticket supposedly to the cell group. Sigh.. almost a week and a half now of spotty Internet when my first week was great. I had hopes for this. Waiting for starlink I guess. 

Use DMZ on the router you want to attach to the Tmobile router LAN port. I limited the DHCP to 3 in TMobile router, DMZ the TP-Link C2300 IP in the TMobile router, used the default IP setup on the Tmobile 192.168.1.1 and TP-Link 192.168.0.1, disable WIFI 2G and 5G on the TMobile router, and that's a simple overview how you get around double NAT and utilize the features on the TP-Link router instead. If you put the other manufacture's router in AP mode you lose the advanced features, if you want to use them. I can still access both admin pages from a browser. If I need to use the TMobile app I can go to the Tmobile router web interface and turn on 2.4 or 5 wifi.

I bit the bullet and tested with another modem, the EC25-AF specifically since I only receive Band 71 in my location. Turns out the SIM card is really tied to the RTL0102 box it ships with and T-Mobile has no plans to change that. So, you’re stuck with that brick ;)