How-to: Bridged-Mode Arris BGW210-700 Modem/Router with Netgear XR500 Router

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TL;DR: These steps will show you how to essentially put your Arris BGW210-700 modem/router into “bridge” aka IP Passthrough mode, allowing you to use your Netgear XR500 (or pretty much any other router) as your router/wifi/firewall/etc..

I’ve recently gotten AT&T Fiber (1Gbps Down x 1Gbps Up) at my house, and needless to say, it was a pain in my ass to get my router (Netgear XR500) to work with their Modem/Router combo (Arris BGW210-700.) I already had my router, and for the price that I paid for it, I wasn’t going to use their equipment to do my networking. You will notice that if you plug a router into the BGW210, it will not work, and if it does, your devices will be Double NAT (being routed through 2 routers, and hitting each of their respective ‘firewalls’.) Which means that you almost certainly will not be able to play any games, stream, voice chat, etc..

I will be calling the Arris BGW210-700 the “BGW” and the Netgear XR500 the “XR” from now on.

Alright, enough of my rambling, let’s get to the fix. The gist of what we’re going to do is this: Disable the wifi on the BGW, disable ALL firewall and packet filtering on the BGW, set the BGW to IP Passthrough, set the XR as the device that gets the public IP from the BGW passed to it, and finally, enable UPnP on the XR.

The following steps will assume that you have your network setup as follows: AT&T ONT > AT&T BGW > XR > PC

Step 1: Login to the BGW
Open a web browser and go to http://192.168.1.254
Note: this address is the default IP address for your BGW and may be different. If so, you will need to log into your router/xr and check the status page and find the 'gateway' address - this will be the IP that you need to go to.
Step 2: Disable Packet Filtering
Once you're in your BGW, you will need to disable Packet Filtering. Click the 'Firewall' tab at the top of the page, and then select 'Packet Filter' from the sub-menu.
Now click the button that says 'disable packet filtering.'
Step 3: Disable the firewall
Now click the 'Firewall Advanced' from the same sub-menu that you selected from before.
Go down the list and turn off every single option in there.
Click Save
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Step 4: Enable IP Passthrough (aka Bridged Mode)
Ok, so IP Passthrough is NOT 'bridged mode,' but it is similar and will give you the results that you're looking for.
Select 'IP Passthrough' from that same sub-menu that the last two steps were in.
Set Allocation Mode to Passthrough, set Passthrough Mode to DHCPS-fixed, and for the Passthrough Fixed MAC Address, either select your XR/router (if it's in there,) or manually input your XR/routers MAC address in the Manual Entry field (like I did in my picture.)
Set the Passthrough DHCP Lease time to 99:0:0:0
Click Save
Step 5: Disable WiFi
Click on the 'Home Network' tab, and then click on 'Wi-Fi' from the sub-menu.
Now you want to turn off the 'Home SSID Enable,' and also turn off the 'Guest SSID Enable' options.
Then click Save
Step 6: Reboot your devices
Reboot your ONT (the device attached to your wall that has the fiber ran into it,) the BGW and your XR/router.
Step 7: Check your XR/router to make sure that it's working
Log into your XR/router and go to your status page (the one that shows what your current IP address is.)
If all went well, you should have a public IP assigned to it. A public IP will look something like: 71.xxx.xxx.xxx, 24.xxx.xxx.xxx, etc..
If you have a private address - which means that your settings did not work - you will have a local address being shown to you, which will look like this: 192.168.0.xxx, 10.0.0.xxx, 192.168.1.xxx, etc..

Hopefully this helps someone out! 🙂