Setting up CenturyLink DSL with your own equipment

When I signed up for internet service for my apartment on Monday, I opted out of equipment rental.  I wasn't at all interested in paying $7 a month extra for some modem/router/wifi combo POS.  Instead I needed to find a DSL modem that could handle PPPOE, and a decent WiFi router.

I settled on a Netgear modem / router combo, which I disabled the routing features on, and an Apple Airport Express.  Surprisingly, the AE supports PPPOE, further simplifying my configuration.

1. Configure the modem. In this case, we want the modem to do only the most basic task, bridging the company to our router. To accomplish this, the modem will need to be configured to bridged mode. Connect your computer and the modem via an ethernet cable. Open a browser and navigate to www.routerlogin.net. This will bring you to the modem's setup page. The default username and password is admin / password. Go to the Device Mode page and change the device mode to modem only, then click apply and wait a minute. 

Next go to the ADSL setup page and change the VPI number to 8 instead of 0. Click apply there and you're done. Edit August 27, 2015: This guide should apply to other DSL carriers though.  Check this page  link to figure out your VCI and VPI settings for your provider.

2. It's time to setup the Airport Express. This step can be performed from a Mac or Windows machine using the Airport utility. Plug the ethernet cable from your modem into the “O” port on the back of the AE. Open Airport utility and choose the new AE to configure. Name your new AE and give it a password.

 If the modem was configured properly, your next screen should look like this.

Use the username and password provided by your ISP to log in here. Click next one more time and you're done. You now have a functional WiFi network and a connection to the internet.  Feel free to adjust the AE settings.  I would recommend changing the AE's network or admin password, as it uses the same password for configuring the device and giving access to the WiFi network.  You don't want your guests messing around with your settings.

Edit August 27, 2015

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I moved into a new house across town and got my internet hooked up today.  I hadn't messed with the modem for a while and I had forgotten how to configure it.   Naturally, I googled "centurylink apple airport" and found my own guide.  And the process still works almost two years later. Hooray for writing documentation!

DSL Modem settings
http://www.speedguide.net/articles/adsl-vpi-vci-and-encapsulation-settings-2786

In case the first link ever goes dead:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.speedguide.net/articles/adsl-vpi-vci-and-encapsulation-settings-2786

Out with the proprietary, in with the open-source

As you may or may not be aware, many Internet service providers are now imposing monthly bandwidth caps on their customers. Comcast is probably the company responsible for starting this practice on a large scale, and many other ISPs followed suit. You would be hard-pressed to find an ISP that does not do this now. Sadly, my ISP is doing this too. Even worse, my ISP is a small town local business and they have to pay someone else for the utilities, thus their cost of operation is higher, meaning my bandwidth is capped at 15 gigabytes a month. After being billed for approximately 17 gigabytes over the limit last month, I have decided that keeping an eye on my own bandwith would be a great idea.
I headed over to dd-wrt.com to grab myself some a copy of the latest open-source router firmware. Instead of going with the feature-limited proprietary Linksys firmware, which comes with the router, I flashed the dd-wrt firmware onto my Asus WGL-520GU wireless router. Trying to figure out which version I needed was no so easy, but no the less I was able to obtain the correct firmware. Flashing the firmware requires the Asus firmware restore utility, and under Windows 7 or Vista needs to be run as administrator with the firewall disabled.
After flashing the firmware, changing the settings was a simple matter of copy and past from my old router. The dd-wrt firmware has the bandwidth monitoring feature, which was really all that I was after. The feature gives you graphs to show you how much bandwidth you've used in the month and on what days.
If you are like me and you are tired of dealing with limited router firmware, download a version of dd-wrt and try it out because it is free. Before attempting this however, you should read the instructions and be aware that a screw-up can brick your router.