Hello everyone---
I'm pretty much a newbie who bought an Obi 202 in late 2013 and made a series of posts about it then, but nothing since. It's worked well with Callcentric so I've left it alone and haven't expanded my knowledge—if it ain't broke........
But I have some hardware changes upcoming for which I need assistance.
I know very little about routers and home networks and have never owned a standalone router. As a learning experience, I did a hard reset on the Obi yesterday and was able to reconfigure it and my Callcentric service manually without Obitalk. It's working OK again.
And I fiddled with the Obi IVR via phone pushbuttons and was able to enable and disable the Obi's router/bridge setting. So I'm fairly comfortable with that.
My current configuration (the cabling chain):
Cable Internet coax to Motorola Surfboard modem. Ethernet cable from Surfboard to Obi 202 Internet port. Ethernet from Obi 202 LAN port to PC NIC port. Obi phone port 1 connected to 1980s style Panasonic desktop phone.
Obi 202 in standard router mode. No other router involved at all. No portable devices. No cell phones. No wireless.
The new hardware will arrive later this week. I'm getting rid of my cable TV service entirely.
The new equipment:
Roku 3 media streaming device
TP-Link TL-WDR3600 wireless router with 4 wired Ethernet LAN ports
I have no present intention of using the wireless capability of this router. I'd much prefer Ethernet all the way.
So, I will need to integrate this new router and the Roku into the chain.
I spent most of yesterday searching this forum and elsewhere for the best practices on this. I found quite a few comments, but there didn't seem to be a clearcut solution....lots of suggestions with nothing definitive. Some threads dead-ended with no solution.
I don't expect the Roku to be a big problem. I intend to connect it by HDMI to my TV and by Ethernet to the TP-Link router.
But high speed Internet and Callcentric VOIP phone, using 2 routers?
I could try:
Cable Internet coax to Motorola Surfboard modem. Ethernet cable from Surfboard to Obi 202 Internet port with the Obi in bridged mode. Ethernet from Obi 202 LAN port to new router WAN port. PC and Roku connected by Ethernet to LAN ports on the new router.
Or turn off the routing capability of the new router (if possible and how?) and leave the Obi in router mode, using the new router as a glorified switch. Connect the new router to the LAN port of the Obi 202. Connect the PC and the Roku to the Ethernet ports of the new router.
Or?
The lack of a well-documented solution suggests that there is more trial and error involved than I'd prefer.
My Internet is via Cox and I'm nearly certain they won't give me more than 1 IP address—which appears to be "dynamic", changing every few months.
Your best ideas would be appreciated. Stability and reliability are my foremost concerns. I'd prefer to configure manually and avoid Obitalk as much as possible.
Thanks in advance.