How To Upgrade Your SpeedTouch Home to a Pro (original link - http://www.sateh.com/alcatel.html) - Telstra ADSL working version.

This document describes how you can enable the 'Pro' software features on an Alcatel Speed Touch Home ADSL modem. The most interesting feature that will be enabled is PPP. This means that you will not have to use PPTP anymore. This is great because PPTP is garbage and causes serious problems on all non-MS platforms.

The modem will also act as a router with NAT/PAT so that you can connect it to a hub/switch with as many devices as you want.

All modifications are done in software. No hardware changes are needed.

For more information about the configuration, see the manual! You also probably got the manual with your modem. All the 'Pro' features are described in it.

Text in red is what I have added to clarify and to make it suitable for Telstra users.  Be warned, once you starts to muck around the settings, you may not be able to use PPPoE clients ever again without reconfiguring the 'router'.  And this information is NOT on this website.  This page only covers the basics, and does NOT have information on the more advanced NAT configurations.  If you need to use Port forwarding, you need to get the STPro manual off Alcatel's website. http://www.alcatel.com/consumer/dsl/supuser.htm  Get BOTH the CLI manual and the users guide and have fun reading them.

If you are going to mod your STHome, MAKE SURE you save this page on to your hard drive, just in case you screwed something up in mid way and unable to get online, you have at least a guide to read to check the settings.  I recommend you save the original link as well.  Please challenge your key AT THE START before you do anything. 

Disclaimer & Warning

You have the risk of changing your modem settings and not getting them back in the correct original state. The Alcatel Speed Touch Pro is a wonderful piece of engineering, but has many problems. For example, I just thought I had lost my modem because it did not respond to a ping. Turned out that the modem had a f*cked up ARP table and simply couldn't find the attached machine. Weird stuff, it needs some experimenting.

Do not ask me for help! It's your modem!

You are warned! Have fun :-)

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Step One - Get the EXPERT password

You need to make a change to a setting that is only available in the modem's EXPERT mode. This mode is protected by a password that you can retrieve using this script. http://security.sdsc.edu/self-help/alcatel/challenge.cgi

The script takes a challenge string which can be found by telnetting to your modem. Log in as any user and the modem will show a string like 'SpeedTouch (00-00-00-00-00-00)' before asking the password. You can also find out this string by going to http://10.0.0.138 and going into the System Setup page.  However, this only works if you have configured the following in the TCP/IP Properties of your NIC.

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Write this down! (I wrote it on the modem just to be sure)

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Step Two - Enable the Pro features

Login to the modem using telnet. I hope you know what telnet is.  If you don't, I seriously don't recommend you to do it :)  But if you must, go to your DOS prompt and type Telnet 10.0.0.138, if you are using Windows.  You can login as any user with any password (if you haven't changed it of course). Now do the following

=>EXPERT

'SpeedTouch (00-00-00-00-00-00)' <- Replace the 00 with what you have written down before hand.

Password :

Switch to expert mode.

Return to Normal mode by typing

You are now in Expert mode. There are some other interesting commands available here. Ok, next step is to upgrade the modem:

> rip

rip> drv_read 2 1 b

the data in hex is : 8604

Now change the last digit to 6 and write it back. It's possible that you get another number back, but changing the last digit to 6 always seems to do the trick. (I'm not sure why my modem gave back 8604, others have reported to get 8600 for PSTN or 9600 for ISDN)

rip> drv_write 2 1 b 8606

And then reboot the box.

rip>exit

>system

system> reboot

That's it! Your modem now has the Pro features! That was easy, and it saved you a lot of cash :-)

¡@

Step Three - Reset your modem to Default

Warning, after this step there is no easy way back!

Turn the modem off. Stick a pencil in the little hole located at the rear of the modem. It's a little switch. Turn the modem back on while still pressing the little switch. Wait for 45 seconds.

Your modem should now have it's default settings. IP address of 10.0.0.138 and a netmask of 255.255.255.0.

The expert mode is still active :-)

Step Four - Configure your PC

use the following settings on your PC/Mac/UNIX boxes:

IP Address 10.0.0.x where x not equal to 138, 0 or 255

Netmask 255.0.0.0

Default Gateway 10.0.0.138

Primary DNS Use your provider's DNS

Exactly the same settings as I have told you before.

You can also connect a router, Airport Base Station or Wavelan access point. PPTP is gone so you can connect any IP device.

Step Five - Configure your modem for PPP

This has only been tested with Telstra ADSL service.

The above Telstra ADSL network modification was given by Daemon over at OCAU.

Now click the CONFIG button next to your BR1(or whatever name you made up) entry under the PPP configuration page.  And fill out the settings as follows.

Obviously fill in your own username and your password.  Remember Username must end in (@bigpond). Apply and save these changes. On the PPP screen you can now turn the Status to On and Save the changes. it can take a while before the modem connects and changes to the 'on' status. If it does not change, check the settings :-) Your PPP configuration page should now be similar to below.  The word 'Trying...' doesn't actually turn into UP by itself.  You need to actually click the PPP icon on the LEFT of the page and THEN it refreshes.  Usually it takes less than 2 seconds before it connects.

Tada! ADSL Connection without PPTP!

These are some of the screenshots you might wanna check just to make sure.