Arris XB6 - Any work arounds for customizations other then buy another router?

[JakeSteele]

Hey,

I use the Arris XB6 on the INTERNET 600 plan from shaw. Although my upload speed is always under 20 mb (lame) I otherwise have enjoyed the experience.

The router/modem Arris XB6 runs pretty good in my townhome and I have some complaints (DMZ not working, port forwarding breaking DMZ, etc) but my biggest issue is I can't use my own DHCP Server and my own DNS Caching service. 

Are there any work arounds people have found to get the router to allow you to configure these settings? I noticed they are locked on the web portal. 

Kind of sucks a comparable router is around $300, seems like a lot of money to replace something that isn't broken. I know shaw is locking it down via firmware as this router supports it if bought off Amazon. Has anyone had shaw unlock the ability for them before?

[shaw-tony]

@JakeSteele you should be able to bring these settings back in the UI with a factory pinhole reset on the modem. Otherwise, the app will have some basic settings access.

[JakeSteele]

When I say locked I mean they aren't able to change at all by the looks of it. I don't understand why not, its a basic feature and would provide me a lot of security. 

[mdk]

@JakeSteele -- I use the Arris XB6 on the INTERNET 600 plan ... my upload speed is always under 20 mb (lame)

All Shaw Residential customers on the 300 Mbps plan get 15 Mbps upload speeds. On the 600 Mbps plan, they get 20 Mbps. Shaw Business customers do get faster upload speeds.

> my biggest issue is I can't use my own DHCP Server and my own DNS Caching service. 

Why would you want to not use the DHCP-server inside your cable-modem?

(Or, if you reconfigured the cable-modem to "bridged" mode, then you could connect your own router, with its own DHCP-server.)

What benefit do you expect from not using the caching within Shaw's DNS-servers:

   ->  shaw.ca
       nameserver = ns7nocg.shawcable.net; ttl = 11064 (3 hours 4 mins 24 secs)

   ->  shaw.ca
       nameserver = ns9htok.shawcable.net; ttl = 11064 (3 hours 4 mins 24 secs); 

  ->  shaw.ca
       nameserver = ns8socg.shawcable.net; ttl = 11064 (3 hours 4 mins 24 secs)

Your DNS-server will be "non-authoritative" for over 99% of the DNS-requests to it, meaning that it would have to use the Internet to connect to some other DNS-server, e.g., Google's 8.8.8.8 & 8.8.4.4 DNS-servers. Added complexity, for no benefit ?!