I received a call for help earlier this week from a family member. Their internet service was recently upgraded, and worked fine for a little bit, and then suddenly it was unstable. Oddly enough, while speaking to the user they were able to connect to a vpn and browse the internet just fine.

First thoughts went to DNS resolution, and I arranged to head out there and take a look. What I discovered was a double-nat issue as well as a minor configuration on the users home router (not their fault at all).

While a substantial and quality router, the way that Cogeco implemented their firmware onto this device is frustrating to say the least. Fortunately for most users….while NOT being able to actually bridge this router (despite fully disabling the wireless & disabilinn gateway mode), there is a workaround that works equally as well.

Connect your home wireless router to port 1 on the Hitron, and then enable internet pass-through on port 1. This works only because the Cogeco service provides 2-3 external ip addresses to each router.

The frustration here is that is SHOULD be as easy and just putting the Hitron into a pass-through configuration, but when this is done, the Cogeco firmware rears its head and double-reboots the Hitron…forcing the router to restore to it’s original configuration. Despite pulling out all the trick I know with these routers, the Cogeco firmware is a real “treat” (note the sarcasm) to work with. To be fair, it likely has more to do with a features that isn’t obvious to any of us…but having a router that can actually be put into a bridged mode would be an asset.

But passthrough works, and the user seems happy now that their home internet is back up and running.