BGW320-500 set up without passthrough....problems?
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So i just went through a harrowing troubleshoot with the very helpful ppl on this forum that ended up being fixed by simply replacing the BGW210-700 modem with a BGW320-500 (a little bit of me died tbh, you can see here if you're interested: https://forum.netgate.com/topic/196609/network-becomes-totally-unusable-when-my-parents-connect/14?_=1745595910749). During this troubleshooting and while I was waiting for my new modem to arrive i did a lot of research on how best to set the modem up. Pretty much everything seems to suggest putting the modem into IP Passthrough (and mine was NOT) and some even involved processes to bypass the actual modem with an extra NIC and getting the ONT directly to the pfsense.
The most pertinant threads i'm looking at:
https://forum.netgate.com/topic/186588/is-it-possible-to-bypass-the-at-t-bgw320-ont-router-combo?utm_source=pocket_shared
https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/recipes/authbridge.html?_gl=1skx1j7_gcl_auNDIxOTY5ODc4LjE3NDIzMzM3NzE._gaMzY4NDYwMDk1LjE3NDIzMzM3NzE._ga_TM99KBGXCB*MTc0NTI2NDQzOC44LjAuMTc0NTI2NDQzOC42MC4wLjcwMDcyMDg0Ng..&utm_source=pocket_sharedI'll be honest the second one scares me a bit but def seems like a good idea with the table limitations (though that's a bit beyond my full understanding). This latest issue and an earlier one (https://forum.netgate.com/topic/187510/dns_probe_finished_nxdomain-sporadically-for-anywhere-from-30secs-to-10min-works-flawlessly-at-all-other-times/174?_=1745595910753) where i wouldn't be able to open webpages for 30sec to a min that was solved by enacting do-ip6:no in the advanced settings of the DNSResolver (might try to re-enable these things now) def felt like some kind of rogue cache like thing filling up, at least for lack of a more obvious issue present.
Like I said earlier, when I went to screenshot all the settings of my old modem i noticed IP Passthrough was NOT enabled and obviously i had never gotten the bypass of the modem in that wiki article linked above working. So my question is, since i seem to have a working installation (for now, the old one worked at one point as well), what kind of problems should I expect if I run this configuration and don't at the very least figure out how to enable IP Passthrough as pretty much everything I've found recommends?
Here's some modem settings, please let me know if you also want to see anything from the pfsense (gateways, interfaces, rules et al) or any other ones from the modem that are useful:
Full disclosure, i couldn't put the mac address into the IP Passthrough until i enabled Public Subnets under the Home Networks->Subnets & DHCP and it just simply didn't work when i had public subnet disabled and IP Passthrough enabled. obviously i did something wrong but I dunno what....
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It would be nice to remove the modem/router entirely using one of those other modes. But I would start out using the passthrough mode and see if you still see any issues.
