More than weird DSL WIFI screwup

[Alleged Accomplice]

I bought a netgear n300 WIFI router. Hooked it up by the directions, finally get it to work but my internet is slow, its double natting with my DSL modem, I find out from a search. I attempt to bridge the DSL modem, nothing works then so I unbridge and do a restart, no internet at all, hell I can't even get to my router settings which is as you know RIGHT THERE in the modem, it is trying to connect to it but nothing. I take the n300 out of the hookup.

I say screw it and go to bed and when I awaken I decide to replace the ethernet cable, mind you this cable has worked for years and had nothing wrong with it before I hooked up the n300. I get some internet back but it is slow and jittery. I go a few hours trying to figure that out while watching football when I decided to replace the line coming in from the DSL filter to the modem, again this line was working perfectly before. WALA my internet is now as fast as it was before I started but n300 is laying inside a bag of potatoes cause I'm afraid of messing with it. That is just where I happened to drop it when I got mad, instead of throwing it.

Question: can ethernet cables and phone lines become screwed up where although nothing is wrong with them physically they just won't work? Data can't flow through them?

[EzyStvy]

Have you ever seen how tiny the cooper wires are inside those cables? One little pinch could break enough to cause issues.

[glc]

If you want to use the Netgear, you need to bridge the modem *AND* set the router to PPPoE. Note that when you bridge a modem, you can no longer log into it.

[Alleged Accomplice]

EzyStvy That's what I thought about those little wires as well until it was both of them and they hadn't been subject to any more abuse than they ever had. They'd been there for years, hooked and unhooked for various reasons.

I knew that it had to be set that way glc and I plan on doing it that way again when I get over this flu. I hope it works this time but I get the feeling it is the DSL modem that the company gave me. I've been reading they had their own version built and it doesn't take to being bridged. The Westell 6100 but it has some extra numbers signifying the phone companies own version of it and I'll be damned if I can find any guides to bridging it or just forum talk anywhere on it, plenty for all the other versions but not on it. Then when I talked to technical support he tried to talk me into getting the companies new modem which comes with WIFI and costs more per month. That kinda sealed it for me that the damn thing was fixed to be hard to work with routers though I don't know why they'd do that. I will try the exact way it is set out in the N300 manual again then if that doesn't work I will use the modems USB to run to this pc and run the ethernet to the WIFI router since it doesn't have a USB connection. My wife got an IPAD for Christmas and she'd like to be able to use it sometime LOL.

[glc]

No, you can't use both modem outputs.

If you can't bridge the modem, see if you can set it to PPPoE on modem with IP passthrough. If you can, then the router can be set to defaults.

Last option is converting the router to be just an access point. To do that, you set its internal IP to one in the modem's subnet but out of its DHCP scope and turning off the router's internal DHCP server. Then, you would connect the modem to one of the router's LAN ports.