Feature Request - Home Internet Gateway DHCP Settings

Please, please, please…  Just give us a button to disable DHCP.  There are routers that cost thousands of dollars out there and you think this Nokia piece of garbage can actually compete with that???  Its a decent/pretty much awful gateway, but I'm sure as heck not allowing it access to my internal network.  I have so many Arduinos that require static IP addresses that this thing will certainly screw up, which will take me forever to fix if they get pushed a new IP address.  This all in one method only works for people that are tech novices.  Just give us a button to disable this DHCP control so my router can control my network without constantly fighting with this thing.  I've seriously had to use a cell phone to connect to wifi and USB tether it to a router just to make use of this garbage can.  What sucks is the settings are there somewhere.  I know Nokia has firmware capable of user interaction with these settings on other devices…  and the developers of this device also have to be able to set these settings!!  So why is this one firmware intentionally locked out to noob mode?  Its stupid and it alienates every user above the novice skillset.

Let’s all get on the same page. The options are:

A - get TMO to add comprehensive DHCP features to the gateway

B - get TMO to support bridge mode for using one’s own router with existing DHCP features

Personally, I think option A will take a long time to roll out because they would need a lot of firmware development and no matter how well they do, people will still demand more features. Option B sounds more logical to me because the "I need more DHCP features" moves out of TMO hands and back to the respective router makers and allows everyone to get the router that best fits their needs.

I agree with you 100%!!

As a workaround, many people (including me) have asked for a bridge-mode and perhaps the first device connected via LAN port (since there’s no WAN port) gets a WAN IP address, and other devices plugged in do not receive an IP address (from TMO WAN), in a similar mode as cable modems with either two or more Ethernet interfaces or connected to an Ethernet switch.

My issue is that TMO doesn't work with UPNP, which breaks my paid PLEX service. It is irritating too to have to continue to "guess" the IP addresses (as they change) for things like my desktop when using RDC technologies (i.e., VNC). I have been using ASUS AiMesh technology on an RT-AX3000 and that works really well. The only issue is how to access the TMO management interface (for signal quality, battery level, etc.) we need a special IP address. For cable modems on some services, you can access this (i.e., QAM allocation, channels, SNR, etc.) is accessed via http://192.168.100.1 (even though the LAN can be 192.168.1.1). In other words, the cablemodem filters ARP requests for 192.168.100.1 to itself (not sending it upstream because it's not on the LAN interface).

Not sure if telnet/ssh access would help, unless we knew how to modify the routes, how to save them (from power cycles / reboots when firmware updates are applied) in NVRAM/flash… lots of deep technical questions, all of which could be eliminated if we had a bridge mode and used our own router. In the interim, the bridge mode would allow those users to support themselves and their own particular flavor. Opening up the router to other firmwares may be potentially risky and brick-making. I'm just trying to justify TMO reasoning if they don't allow this. It's similar to mobile carriers invalidating warranties for phones with 3rd party firmwares. There is a non-zero chance of hardware damage occurring. For instance, let's say the power amplifier has software feedback to prevent thermal runaway, and that is somehow bypassed, now the device could be damaged or worse, it could be that its damage causes harmonics that are affecting others' mobile services. Similar reasoning could be for the LNA, in that it could be controlled to overload the radio receiver and irreparably damage it.

AT&T fiber requires using their router, and their justification is "to make sure our service is working normally" (whatever). However, they do provide a bridge-mode, and if you also turn off wifi, you can then use your own router and the WAN IP is presented to the first device connected on the LAN port. That undoes any restrictions and limitations imposed by using their router (i.e., no static DHCP, no DDNS support, etc. etc.).

Yes, Please enable DHCP settings

Thanks Rob. Yes, I’ve used DD-WRT, OpenWRT, and Tomato in the past.

These days I’d like a simpler set-up, that is, if I can just use the gateway/router for wifi access that would be preferred.

T-Mo please enable a DHCP web interface or allow telnet/ssh access.

I agree the nokia gateway has almost no configurable features and TMobile should release a firmware upgrade to remedy these problems. There is a tedious work around for some of the problems particularly if you have an old router or old pc with 2 NIC's at your disposal.

I was with another provider and to help filter traffic I setup and old PC and installed PFSENSE with 1 port connected to my LAN and the other to the provider. I had setup OpenVPN and also used port forwarding to remotely connect to my home network and really miss those features with the t-mobile internet gateway. My old connection is still active (1 year paid) and I connected my old linksys router to the pfsense box and switched the pfsense LAN to 192.168.12.0 network and then connected them to the ethernet ports on the t-mobile gatewayand set the LAN as the default gateway. I disabled DHCP on the pfsense and linksys routers. I can now VPN through my old connection and go out through the higher speed 5G tmobile gateway.

Now I know PFSENSE can block DHCP requests per interface and issue DHCP leases on other interfaces or alternatvely put the pfsense/router box on another network such as 192.168.1.1 and have it handle all your DHCP and DNS requests. In this case I could use the linksys router for wireless or setup and wireless access point connected to the pfsense box. Note that any direct wifi connections to the 5G gateway will bypass the pfsense box and get DHCP and DNS from the t-mobile 5G gateway/router. You still wouldn't be able to use port forwarding (useful if you want to check your home security cameras) without a second connection mentioned above but it would allow some control of DHCP and DNS. You should be able to do something similar with any old wifi router even without a pfsense box. Connect with the lan switch at the back to the t-mobile gateway or connect the WAN and use a different LAN network (I haven't tried this with the wan port yet but seems it would work if you used a different network for the LAN on the old router).

I can say the T-MOBILE is much faster than my fixed connection, so for now I use that for outgoing and the fixed to get around the t-mobile limitations, at least till my other subscription expires.

two questions:

have you seen the tracepath out of the device?  TM is doing some very interesting network security and your IP AP's IP address is abstracted from the address seen on the Internet.  I just got mine and still learning what this architecture is.

As a work around, maybe one can open a dedicated VPN to a Linux-based cloud point ($10/month) from maybe a Raspberry PI or I may look at a PFSense.  then one can access the home stuff through this route point.

I believe TM doesn’t allow accessing the AP from the internet; everything is outbound, so the VPN design above is an outbound connection that one can go ‘back down’ with.

It would be nice to at least document what DHCP settings are being used -
IP Address range, lease time, etc

I think this is called "static DHCP" meaning the IP address given by the DHCP server on the HIG is based on MAC address. DNS-based content filtering I believe means the HIG serves as first-layer DNS server based on local devices and based on their "friendly" name provided before contacting the external WAN DNS server (hosted by TMO).

All of these features have been available for probably more than 10 years in OpenWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato, and other variants, many of which are open-source.

I’m satisfied, I put a full service NetGear router, it connects to the T-Mobile device and I use all of its features while leaving the T-Mobile device to connect to the Internet.

Still working on how to do port forwarding