[JonEhh]

I have two xfinity accounts (two separate houses). Both houses come with this 1TB/month data cap and anything after and you get charged. I work in a data center and I know what bandwidth costs are these days but lets not get into that.


My primary house I use all the data every month and my secondary house (rental) only uses 50-100GB/month. So I want to use that other 800-900Gb for streaming and other things at my primary house.

Comcast xfinity allows you to connect to any "xfinitywifi" public network and browse the internet anywhere a xfinity modem is. Once you log in with your device (mac address based) your data is logged to your xfinity account.


So I bought a linksys WRT-1200AC and flashed it with dd-wrt. I want to set it up as "client" mode with wifi and connect to ssid "xfinitywifi". I wanted to take an existing mac address of one of the devices that's already authenticated and clone the mac to ath0 (5g) or ath1 (2.4g)


However its not working for some reason. I have followed many client mode wireless guides out there and tired about every trick in the book. A lot of googles shows that you need to use the 75.75.75.75 and 75.75.75.76 dns servers in order to authenticate with xfinitiy but even that doesn't work.

I tried doing the mac clone but when you look under wireless status it still shows my router mac address (even after reboots).


Has anyone connected to xfinitywifi public hotspot from their dd-wrt router? Do they have a guide? Everything I searched for I have tried and most of these posts are from 2015 and 2016 and years old.


Thanks!

[Rusty Shakleford]

One of the routers I run is wrt1900ac v1, so i know it will work for you. I've been running build r37305 and it's been running rock solid. Get that build.

Reset and the first thing I do is change MAC. DON'T worry about changing the wireless MAC , only change the WAN MAC. As client mode bridges the wan to lan. Change it , save then apply.

Now basic setup. Automatic dhcp. You can leave IP and subnet as default. Dhcp server on. Dnsmasq for dhcp yes, dns, and authoritive yes. Leave recursive and forced unchecked. Set your timezone save and apply. I leave the server blank.

Click on advanced routing. Scroll down and click save and apply.
Go to services scroll to bottom and save and apply.

Security check disable . Go to filter multicast and leave it checked. Save and apply.

Now go to status. Wireless. I get better connection by using 2.4 as client so I stay on the ath0 page. Scroll down click on site survey. Find the hot-spot you want and click join. This will take you to the wireless page. It should fill in your hot-spot name already. Just switch it to client mode. Below that click add Virtual and configure your own 2.4 network . Then create your 5.0 network with whatever SSID you want. Leave the client mode with no security. Go back to setup and check make wan ports switch. You should be showing the hot-spot IP in the top right and you will have xfinitywifi rebroadcast in your house under your new ssid. I get 30mbps download and 8 upload all day long.
I usually just read the forums, seen your post and decided I would return the favor.

[JonEhh]

So I was able to get this working using ath1 (2.4ghz) and not the 5.0ghz (ath0) linksys wrt 1200 v1. Is this a bug?


However the speeds are horrible 5mbps down / 5mbps up. I have ath1 (2.4ghz) connected to xfinifitywifi and 5ghz disabled. Then connected on one of the gbps ports directly to router. I assume this is a limit on xfinitiy part? Both routers are less than 1 feet from each other.



Here is exactly what I did.

[GretelNick]

I don't know this router and the antenna configuration, but your speed may be compromised by using the same 2.4 connection to send and receive to the hotspot wifi AND sending and receiving a local wireless network for your devices. That can halve the speed or more.

You said you left the 5GHz connection disabled. Could you enable that connection/antennas for your local wifi only?

What I did was use my router to connect wirelessly ONLY to the hotspot. It has only 2.4. And then to it I wired a second router that I use for my devices. That sped up the Mbps dramatically. I also set the hotspot-connecting router to connect only at the highest possible band (N for my router).

[SurprisedItWorks]

FWIW, I do what GretelNick suggested: I run ath1/2.4G in Client mode with cloned MAC and use ath0/5G (plus an ath0.1 running through the VPN client) for my own devices' connections to the system. Speeds can be awesome, such as the 450 Mbps wifi speed I'm getting at this moment on the client connection to my own primary modem (NG-Mixed, 40 MHz, channel 1+ or 11-, TurboQAM/QAM256 support), but of course, as you say, for you it all depends on xfinity, which I've never dealt with.

I use my client-mode router mostly for connecting to hotel wifi systems (I'm only on it at home now to test a new build), and I find I can connect successfully only on about half of them. I definitely do better with older setups at smaller hotels. Modern systems of large hotel chains seldom work for me. I cannot get the 2.4G connection to their systems. The orange light never goes out. I've never been able to figure out why, and I've tried a bunch of things like setting packet TTLs to spoof a directly connected linux box, setting my router name to a space, different wifi settings, etc. Nothing has made any difference. It either works great no matter what I do, or it fails completely no matter what I do.

BTW, re what build, keep your eye on the new-build threads in the Marvell forum, and esp note contributions by user Monza, who generally posts on how things go on his WRT1200v1.