Configuring The PK5000 DSL Modem

July 9, 2013

These are my notes on how I configured my "spare" PK5000 that I got from Ebay.

Full reset

You find the recessed red reset button on the back of the modem and use some thin rod to depress the switch, and hold it for a long time. I have been told 30 seconds, which seems a bit much, but that is what they say. After you do this, any passwords have been cleared and factory default settings are in place.

This is also how you recover from a lost admin password, but at the price of loosing all other settings.

WAN user and password

You use a browser to go to 192.168.0.1 and then a web GUI lets you configure the modem. The first thing to do is to use the basic setup page to set the user and password for PPP that Qwest mailed you once upon a time. You click an apply button and then wait about 15 seconds for the modem to save the settings (to flash memory presumably).

I never did need to enter my billing phone number or any such thing.

Wireless stuff

I used to have a SSID "hoot_owl", but the web interface rejects this now, insisting on letters and numbers only (apparently the underscore is what it doesn't like). There seems to be no alternative but to change to HootOwl (or something else) and inform everyone in my family. They call this both the "network name" and the SSID. I also set a WPA-WPA2 Personal pass phrase (a long sentence).

I note that when I set any wireless setting, the interface never comes back saying the settings are stored, so I wait something over 15 seconds and then navigate somewhere with my browser.

Passwords

I set a local telnet password under remote management. This lets me telnet to the modem from my LAN and snoop around. Apparently the PK5000 does not run an ssh server.

DHCP

I change the range of DHCP addresses this thing doles out to 192.168.0.100 thru 199 so this won't clash with static addresses I use on my local net.

Port forwarding

Under "Advanced - Port FW" I set this up to forward port 22 (ssh) to the linux machine on my LAN. Since there is no ssh server running on the PK5000 this can be done 22 direct to 22 rather than using an alternate port. I found a way to get around the issue of not having a static IP number, so this allows me to use scp from my office to transfer files that I was working on at home and forgot to transfer to work.
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