I’ve been trying to fix a problem for about a month, I switched from Comcast to Verizon Fios about a month ago. Anytime I connect my SOHO directly to the ONT I get connection issues. Initially it kept failing the health check, I tried shutting off the health check, extending the time…etc. It didn’t matter, I would lose connection randomly. Anytime I would change a WAN setting and apply or reboot, I would get the connection back but it would die within an hour. If I place the issued Verizon Fios router between the ONT and the SOHO, it works great with no problems, which I’ve learned now causes a double NAT? I would like to get rid of the Fios router if possible. Whenever I try it without the Fios router, I release the lease before I connect the SOHO direct to the ONT. Does this problem standout to anyone? I feel like I’m missing something obvious.
None of our customers use FIOS so far as I know but let me take a quick shot at this based on experience with other providers. (And, I’ll invite others to jump in and add/correct.) You may find that the FIOS router does important things such as authentication (possibly 802.1x) and provides a means for Verizon to handle admin tasks e.g., update the firmware and perform diagnostics. If you remove their “box” how will you authenticate to the network?
When dealing with AT&T fiber installations we advise leaving the carrier-provided gateway in place but turning off many of its functions and setting it into IP-passthrough mode. Once this is done there are no issues making inbound connections to the Peplink router behind it, e.g., SpeedFusion tunnels.
“Side note:” One of the things we’ve found with the AT&T gateways is that they do periodic speed tests not commanded by their users (learned by looking at the log.) I asked one of their engineers about a specific case once and was told in that case they commanded hundreds of gateways to do this simultaneously for load testing purposes.
I can confirm having this same issue over a year ago, using a Balance 20x connected directly to FiOS gigabit ONT. The Balance would maintain a connection for up to several hours before going down. I wrote a post about it.
Were you ever able to figure it out? I’m at the point where I think I need to use Verizon router, and I’m trying to set it up to act a a bridge because there in no “bridge mode”
I haven’t tested on latest firmware; however, none of the firmware release notes since my testing mentioned a resolution to this problem. So, I held onto the Verizon router (G1100) and placed the 20x behind it.
Give the Balance a static IP within the Verizon config and set the IP as a DMZ host in Firewall settings. The Peplink has its own (better) firewall, so this should be no less secure than connecting directly to the ONT.
But if you don’t want to use DMZ, you can address double NAT / port forwarding issues by forwarding the ports you need to the static IP of Balance, and then forwarding them from the Peplink to your local host, which also would need a static ip.