Connecting 360 TV over home LAN to router in modem mode

[bobradamus]

Hey everyone,

I’ve got a slightly more complicated home network than most - for several reasons including WFH network resiliance.

I’m using a Teltonika RUTX08 router as the gateway to two Internet connections, one with Virgin and one with Grain. The setup works nicely, with my ASUS XT9 mesh routers in Access Point mode providing the wireless connectivity, but leaving the routing to the more capable RUTX08.

Now, the problem I’ve encountered and I can’t find a definitive guide on is; how do I maintain connectivity over my LAN to the virgin media router, for the Virgin TV 360 box?

From a lot of research and trial/error, I’ve only found reference to the DNS servers being the key thing to ensure that the TV box is routing to the Virgin WAN interface and only using the Virgin DNS servers of 194.168.4.100 and 194.168.8.100.

So I wanted to ask the question with the hopes of us putting together a list of things you have to do to do this, i.e. does the IP address of the TV 360 box need to be a certain value or range? Does it need to see a certain MAC address either way? Are there any other settings?

Thanks in advance, Rob

[nodrogd]

Virgin 360 works on a platform called Horizon. This runs from Horizon servers installed at each of VMs 51 cable headends across the country. The server connections via VM Hubs are completely internal to VMs LOCAL network, so not only do you need to use VMs DNS, your boxes must connect to the VM hub to get access to the relevant headend server for your own cabled area.

[bobradamus]

Yes, so if the traffic to/from the box is routed over the LAN to the VM Hub interface, then the traffic is on VM’s network, or am I missing the point?

I find a lot of articles on here that answer specific but related questions, but this one exactly does not have a comprehensive answer to.

How do I ensure connectivity for the TV360 box, when the VM router is in modem mode and the LAN is being handled by a 3rd party router?

[nodrogd]

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@bobradamus wrote:

Yes, so if the traffic to/from the box is routed over the LAN to the VM Hub interface, then the traffic is on VM’s network, or am I missing the point?

I find a lot of articles on here that answer specific but related questions, but this one exactly does not have a comprehensive answer to.

How do I ensure connectivity for the TV360 box, when the VM router is in modem mode and the LAN is being handled by a 3rd party router?

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Just making sure you aware of what has to happen, as the server is the heart of the system, not the 360 box. Hopefully there are other posters on here running similar setups who can go into more detail.

[bobradamus]

Yes absolutely, and thanks for clarifying the downstream complexity that makes it hard to achieve. I’m determined to get there though! I’m sure someone else must’ve done this before!

[Tudor · Accepted solution]

I have a similar setup, VM and also a FTP 1G/1G, with the VM hub in modem mode. I use a UniFi UDM Pro router and have 50% of traffic going across each link. In my routers setup there is something called policy based routing and I use this for two things. To direct all traffic from my V6 to the VM hub and all traffic for 192.168.100.1, where ever it comes from, to the VM hub. Maybe there is something in your router that will do the same. I think it probably uses iptables to send data the correct way.

[legacy1]

So you need a routing rule destination subnet for the Horizon servers to use VM connection only if your router can do that.

You would need to look at what DNS queries are being made to work out the IP addresses  

Or if you can make another LAN subnet you can have the 360 TV use that and route the whole LAN to use VM

[jpeg1]

For a few months I had both Virginmedia and Openreach feeds into my Draytek router. As expected the V6 TV box only worked from the Virginmedia feed, but it was a simple matter to route it accordingly with the Draytek. 

[bobradamus]

Love it, thank you so much everyone. I honestly (1) wanted to make sure it’s possible and (2) write up what you have to do for anyone wanting to do it. I’ll do (2) once I get it working later.

[Roger_Gooner]

In a typical set up the 360 just gets its IP address from the DHCP server of the hub or the router (when the hub is in modem mode). It's as simple as that, just plug and play. So long as the RUTX08 has received its WAN IP address from the hub and has assigned the 360's IP address, then all should be fine. (I'm not sure about the DNS, the V6 doesn't need to use VM's but I defer to what nodrogd said about the 360.) If it's necessary in your set up to give the 360 a fixed IP address, then do so within the DHCP reservation range of the RUTX08.

Bottom line is that VM uses a closed network for its TV boxes, so you cannot use another ISPs connection.