Upgrading my internet setup

I was getting very low speeds on my internet connection in my room due to a significant drop in signal strength. My initial plan was to connect a secondary router to the primary Airtel one. However, after some online research, I discovered that this can cause “double NAT” issues, which complicates things like online gaming and port forwarding.

The suggested solution was to contact my ISP and ask them to enable bridge mode on one of the router’s LAN ports. I emailed net@airtel.com and they replied within a couple of days, saying they were looking into it and would respond within 24 hours.

The next day, I received a call from Airtel support. They claimed that to enable bridge mode, I needed to get a static IP from them, which would add to my monthly bill. This is not actually required for bridge mode, so you may need to push back a bit to get it enabled without the static IP. After that, it still took several calls and interactions with their engineers to finally get it done.

Once they enabled bridge mode, I connected my router to verify it was working. This required a few changes:

1. Connect to your Airtel router’s network and navigate to the admin console (http://192.168.1.1/). The default credentials are admin for both username and password.
2. In the LAN settings, enable bridge mode for the port the Airtel team configured (in my case, Port 4).
3. Connect your personal router’s WAN port to Port 4 of the Airtel router.
4. On your personal router, update the internet connection settings to use PPPoE as the connection type. You will need to enter your username and password. The username is typically in the format <dsl-number>_dsl@airtelbroadband.in and the password is your <account-number>. Both can be found in the Airtel app.
5. After saving these settings, you should be able to connect to the internet through your new router.

Note: You don’t need to enable IPTV and few routers might need you to add VLAN ID explicitly, which is 100 generally.

I initially thought this would be enough, but the old router I had (a TP-Link Archer C50) wasn’t providing a significant boost in signal strength. I decided to get a new one and, after some research, bought the TP-Link Archer AX73 AX5400.

This new router gave me amazing signal strength and speed; I was finally getting easily 200+ Mbps(mostly around 300) in my room. As a final cleanup step, I logged back into the Airtel router’s admin console and disabled its Wi-Fi networks to avoid any interference.