OBi200, ObiWiFi5g & Westell 7500 on Verizon DSL

[Marlin]

I have no problem using my OBi200 with OBiwifi5g dongle to connect my surfboard at home.  However where I went to set it up, there is a verizon dsl westell 7500 router.  I find the obiwifisetup network, I log into the DSL, and it never get's further, just blinking green.  No service no IP.

It looks like there was some firewall setting to change but there is no firewall set up.  I enabled DMZ, I added the mac address of these devices.  Please let me know what changes I need to made to the router to make this work

[Marlin]

This has to have been a problem before as when you set it up there is something about this specific modem and yet in the troubleshooting tutorial, there is a dead link about setting things up with the Westell 7500.

Surely someone out there has an answer.

[SteveInWA]

There is a 186 page user manual for the Westell 7500 that I am not about to read in detail.  I had one of these modems many years ago, and, as I recall, it had a very complex advanced menu system, with sections on its firewall and other security settings.

Configuring OBi devices with their WiFi dongles can be problematic. I'd suggest first trying to instead use a hardwired Ethernet cable connection between the OBi and the router, and see if that works.  If so, you're wasting your time on troubleshooting security.  It could just be a WiFi problem.

http://onlinehelp.verizon.net/consumer/bin/pdf/VersaLink7500UserGuide.pdf

[SteveInWA]

One thing I'll mention though:  this is a very old (in "computer years") product.  The user manual was published in 2007, and the product defaulted to using WEP encryption, which is seriously flawed and outdated.  It also supported only 802.11b or g, not n nor ac.  You needed to go into their advanced configuration section to instead select WPA2, not WPA nor WEP.

See pp. 58-62 in their manual.  You may also need a firmware update for that modem/router.  Better yet, re-configure it to run in bridge mode (making it just a modem, not a router), and use a modern WiFi router instead.