Anyone Have Experience with Dumb Switch?

[CrossFitKila717]

Hey all,

anyone have experience with using a dumb switch in conjunction with Duma R1? I have AT&T Fiber & forced to use the BGW210-700 gateway. I’m trying to bypass it “completely” & take the fiber straight from the ONT (modem) to the R1 for full control without the gateway in the mix. I’ve tried IP Passthrough and like every other setup, it seems to not change much.....gameplay seems more a matter of luck than the right settings. And no it doesn’t make a difference what settings the Duma is on since garbage in equals garbage out (in the case of the gateway feeding the Duma).

Hopefully someone has some good experience with this since it’s real hard to find “exactly” what I’m looking for in general forums online, as far as gamers go. 

Thanks!

[Bert]

What do you plan to achieve with the switch?

 

bypassing your gateway completely means that everything is done in your R1.

 

So you probably need to run your R1 in PPPoE mode and that will slow down the throughout a lot. (Mine does max 50mbps, 300+ in DHCP mode)

 

feeding your signal through a switch into the R1 is effectively the same as plugging your ONT straight into the R1. If you can make that work, it will also function with the switch. Most of the times.

 

You can run into various troubles. If your ISP uses VLAN tags, your gateway is probably set up for that. A dumb switch might leave them intact, or strip them which can give you trouble. If they do you would have to configure your R1 for that. It’s possible in old firmware but the option is absent in DumaOS for R1.

 

I would use a managed switch if you’re attempting it. But one thing is that the switch will be outside the firewall. So you can’t acces it from your local network. So you need a spare old wifi router or something to acces and manage it. Or if you want to go fancy, feed it through the switch with VLAN tagging and then feed it back and give LAN their own VLAN tags but then you start making stuff awfully complicated. I would only do this if you operate a network with multiple switches and want to locate the router away from your ONT and devices.

 

As a general rule you only use a switch between router and ONT if you have acces to multiple IPs. Or for specific issues like the XR500 VLAN bug.

[CrossFitKila717]

My plan is to stop getting hosed when I should be winning gun fights! Lol 😂. Simple plan, right?

So whatever that takes I’m down. So what would it look like if it went ONT - Dumb Switch - Netgear S8000 Switch - Duma R1 - then connect my PS4, Xbox & personal WiFi router to the Duma as normal?

I just keep hearing & seeing that there’s inconsistency with the AT&T supplied gateways & even with IP Passthrough, it can’t be trusted as far as in game experience. Even though on PingPlotter, my Fiber 300 looks flawless during gameplay, yet my opponents still eat my bullets for lunch. 

I’m no pro at this and with the limited knowledge I have, everything “should be” perfect gaming experience......hardwired, Fiber Internet, 1ms gaming monitor.......so frustrating!

Also, what are your thoughts on setting a static IP instead of the dynamic (auto)? I’ve heard this may lessen lag as well. 

I also have all the firewall features still enabled on the gateway right now since I’m utilizing its WiFi still.......maybe this is contributing?

[Bert]

Well for one thing if you utilize it’s wifi that will be outside of your QoS.

 

if you utilize IP pass through or bridge mode or whatever it’s called on your gateway and still use its wifi then you won’t get all the benefits of your R1. The wifi on R1 is outdated so if you want better you should be using a wifi AP.

 

I have heard about setups where you use a switch between the AT&T gateway and ONT and connect your own router, and then somehow use the AT&T gateway to authenticate and after use your own router but no expirience with that.

[CrossFitKila717]

I’ve just been experimenting with different options. I figured since I have the fiber 300/300 with literally nothing else going on in the house, with a perfectly stable line while gaming, that the use of the Gateway’s WiFi wouldn’t affect my QOS.......I could be wrong but I don’t feel I need QOS at all. Unless there’s something I’m completely missing, I thought as long as I’m running PingPlotter and monitoring during gameplay and I have a perfect line, QOS should be good, right?

This is what my line looks like when I’m playing “without” the Duma hooked up......just straight hardwired into the gateway with port forwarding & even while my wife is steaming Netflix off the gateway WiFi. Now if I run a speed test or something, then yes, I get pretty big spikes since there’s no QOS.......but I’m not loading my line like that during gameplay. 

This is why it’s got to be something that’s not seen that’s causing bulletproof enemies & that’s what I’m trying to eliminate by trying anything I can. 

First I’ll try hooking the Duma back up and use my own WiFi router hardwired into the Duma along with my two consoles.........and turn off all firewalls/WiFi from the gateway and see if it improves. 

Then maybe try assigning static IPs for both consoles on the Duma? After this, then maybe try the dumb switch method.......but I wonder if I can hook the Netgear s8000 Switch straight into the ONT or not. Or would I be better off buying the XR500? Would that be able to be directly connected to the ONT without having to do the PPOE route, etc? Trying to keep this simple but I want consistency in my gameplay more. 

[TrayDay]

19 minutes ago, CrossFitKila717 said:

I’ve just been experimenting with different options. I figured since I have the fiber 300/300 with literally nothing else going on in the house, with a perfectly stable line while gaming, that the use of the Gateway’s WiFi wouldn’t affect my QOS.......I could be wrong but I don’t feel I need QOS at all. Unless there’s something I’m completely missing, I thought as long as I’m running PingPlotter and monitoring during gameplay and I have a perfect line, QOS should be good, right?

This is what my line looks like when I’m playing “without” the Duma hooked up......just straight hardwired into the gateway with port forwarding & even while my wife is steaming Netflix off the gateway WiFi. Now if I run a speed test or something, then yes, I get pretty big spikes since there’s no QOS.......but I’m not loading my line like that during gameplay. 

This is why it’s got to be something that’s not seen that’s causing bulletproof enemies & that’s what I’m trying to eliminate by trying anything I can. 

First I’ll try hooking the Duma back up and use my own WiFi router hardwired into the Duma along with my two consoles.........and turn off all firewalls/WiFi from the gateway and see if it improves. 

Then maybe try assigning static IPs for both consoles on the Duma? After this, then maybe try the dumb switch method.......but I wonder if I can hook the Netgear s8000 Switch straight into the ONT or not. Or would I be better off buying the XR500? Would that be able to be directly connected to the ONT without having to do the PPOE route, etc? Trying to keep this simple but I want consistency in my gameplay more. 

I recently changed to the same ISP as you with the 1k package. I tried the dumb switch (s8000 switch) and you can swap out the BGW-210 and only use your own router, while only swapping back in the BGW for authorization purposes only. I did try VLAN tagging with the switch as Bert pointed out, I did get the authorization and placed BGW on appropriate VLAN to receive a signal from ONT. But, couldn't get signal to the router after switching to that VLAN for the router, and using only the R1 (don't have xr500), I couldn't get full package speeds. Disabling QOS provided me with about 500+/-. Lastly, when ISP installed the service, that same day. I played Black Ops, Apex Legends, NBA 2k19... All games performed amazingly well, W's after W's After W's no losses playing roughly an hour and a half each.  But that same installed night, RG/BGW went out and services haven't been the same since even with freshly new cat 7s. While this is a problem I'm trying to resolve, I wanted to chime in and inform you that you can use the s8000 to have the R1 be the main router and swap in/out the BGW for authorization purposes only. Also, if you want you can use the MAC ID of the BGW along with the IP ADDRESS that's given to the BGW or through the IP passthrough to the router and use that static into the WAN settings of the R1. It's still best to keep everything under the R1 network for mitigating local network congestion and utilizing anti bufferbloat and benefit using the prioritization for the client/console.