My Life, My World

I’ve received a couple of requests for help in configuring the Cisco ASA5505 with U-Verse DSL.  Here’s a summary of how I made it work.  Feel free to contact me for further assistance.  I’ll do what I can to help out:

Setting up the U-Verse residential gateway with my ASA5505 was the most difficult part of my installation.  The tech knew nothing beyond basic networking, nor did the guy on the phone.

Here is what you need to do:

1). Connect only the outside interface of your ASA to your RG (residential gateway), disconnect everything else for now.  You’ll see why in a minute.
2). Log on to the RG, http://192.168.1.254 (I think).  The password is on a sticker on the RG.
3). Go into the firewall options and look for an option called DMZ Plus.  You should see the MAC of your ASA in a selection box.  Once you set that up, the RG will pass its public IP right through to the outside interface of your ASA.
4). Configure the ASA’s outside interface for DHCP.  It should then pickup your public IP.

I’ve then uplinked another switch to the RG for my TV’s to plug into.

Its tricky, but it does work.  I’m not at home right now, so I might have a term or two confused as I’m pulling this out of my head, which is loaded with cold medicine right now.  But that was basically it.

If you don’t pass the public into the outside interface of the ASA, you end up with a double-NAT situation which will screw up most forms of VoIP.  I have a SIP trunk from Junction Networks and an Asterisk box for my home.

Let me know if you need further info.

Haven’t updated in a while.  Here’s some more differences that I’ve noticed:

VOD doesn’t display programs recently viewed in the selection list.  On Comcast, if you watched a few episodes of say The Sopranos, you would see a small check mark next to the ones you’d watched.  The check mark didn’t stay very long, 24-72 hours.  But if you were watching a series over a day or so, it was a nice book mark.

There is evidently an issue with HDMI on the U-Verse boxes that can causing goofy behavior when switching between inputs.  For instance if I switch, via my Harmony Remote, to my PS3, then back, the guide will not display, however the little preview screen in the lower left does.  This can be resolved by switching my TV to another HDMI then back.  Hopefully this is a software issue and not a hardware issue with the VIP-1216.

My Comcast service was disconnected on 1/24/08.  So far I’ve been very happy with U-Verse and continue the learning curve.