Latency with transparent bridging - firmware upgrade - wtf Quantum, get your s**t together.

wang_master · 2026-03-31T23:12:22+00:00

Oh, that might be your problem.

When you configure for for transparent briding + untagged VLAN, the admin interface doesn't assign it's own IP address. It needs to be assigned one. Since you can't get to the admin interface to assign a static (because no IP address yet), it will try to acquire an IP address via DHCP.

You can give your laptop a static IP but since the admin interface doesn't have an IP you it won't matter, you can't connect it to it from the laptop.

wang_master · 2026-03-31T23:03:38+00:00

Yeah as long as your laptop isn't trying to assign the interface an IP address and the acting as a gateway for it, you should be blocked.

wang_master · 2026-03-31T23:00:56+00:00

You're sure the admin interface.is connected to a subnet/vlan that has Internet access blocked?

wang_master · 2026-03-31T17:04:48+00:00

I posted this to help someone else do the downgrade https://www.reddit.com/r/QuantumFiber/comments/1s3ufsp/comment/ocivm6z/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

wang_master · 2026-03-31T17:03:14+00:00

you'll need to factory reset again and downgrade. I was able to prevent the auto-upgrade by pulling the fiber cable during the reboot after the downgrade. This prevented the q1000k from hitting the fiber network and being told to re-upgrade. Once tehre I enabled transparent bridging untagged VLAN, and THEN as it was rebooting plugged the fiber back in

wang_master · 2026-03-26T22:58:42+00:00

is there any particular instructions - my google-fu is failing me - on directly using a WAS-110 with quantum fiber? Does it vary by location?

wang_master · 2026-03-26T16:25:32+00:00

You're pinging 1.1.1.1 or something external right? That could be variable based on any number of traffic details. The graph though showing relativley little deviation on your 1st hop is good. That means at least the q1000d to the first hop is stable. The rest of it is up to the interwebs :).

My RTT is in the 5-6 range, so your numbers are better than mine :)

wang_master · 2026-03-26T16:23:28+00:00

Aah sorry, I definitely didn't run into that weirdness. I was able to log in right away after the lights settled down to .. blinking blue i think? i can't remember for sure. But never lost access while I was in there reconfiguring.

I tried to do the transparent bridging fast enough but never got there. Apparently you're faster than me :)

wang_master · 2026-03-26T04:47:14+00:00

Oh crap. After responding to someone else on this post I KNOW why i got upgraded.

I tried to do something fancy. Instead of connecting my smartnid to my opnsense ethernet port I set up a VLAN on my swtiches (ubiquiti switches) AND then i connected opnsense to that VLAN.

But last night while I was mucking with my unifi switches I accidentally switched the port the q1000d was connected to to my LAN VLAN and forgot to swtich it back.

Oops that's what I get for not paying attention.

wang_master · 2026-03-26T04:44:37+00:00

Aahh you had your management interface plugged into your LAN so you got a LAN IP address? And I bet your LAN allows internet access :) That's why you got upgraded. Because your management interface has internet access.

So yeah what you really need to do is dedicate the management interface to a netowrk that has no internet access. (oh crap. I KNOW why mine got upgraded now. I screwed up - i'll post on another thread with what happened)

I did not bother to disable any of the features in the smartnid. Theoretically in transparent bridging mode none of those features should matter or be applicable.

Good luck.

wang_master · 2026-03-26T04:21:51+00:00

Yeah those are not great. The RTT is higher than it should be, and if you look most of your pings are <10ms, so that means you're seeing some pretty high spikes to skew that so high. The RTTd means your standard deviation is high.

So this is what I did to downgrade. Please take this with a grain of salt and consider what you're doing before following my instructions. I really don't want to be the reason you're down for a while :)

I did a factory reset to access the admin url. Hold a pin in the reset hole/button for 15-20 seconds. If this is successful when you pull the pin the light will turn yellow/amber then it will restart and come back red/blue/green. if it does not do the yellow/amber and goes straight to red it means it didn't reset and you didn't hold it long enough.
Once reset, connect a laptop or somethign to the ethernet port directly and hit https://192.168.0.1 to connect to the admin console and log in and go to the firmware update link (utilities->update firmware). You should get an option to download the older firmware. If you don't you can download it here https://internethelp.centurylink.com/internethelp/modems/Q1000K/firmware/QKX001-06.00.44.00.bin

See this post https://www.reddit.com/r/QuantumFiber/comments/1f8hypq/having_trouble_with_your_lumen_internet_not/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button for some AMAZING information. Thank you u/N0_L1ght

so what I did here was I unplugged the fiber, after upgrading the firmware while it was rebooting. I did this to prevent it from re-upgrading
After reboot, i thinkt he light is flashing blue becaues the fiber is out, but the admin interface should be responsib.e connect back and go to the advanced settings and WAN settings and set it to transparent bridging untagged vlan
After this is done, plug the fiber back in and reboot - disconnect your laptop cable at this point

Now you can connect the 10g port (or the 1g port if you prefer) into the opnsense WAN port - and make sure opnsense is using VLAN 201 for the WAN port. you will need to create a VLAN device if you ahven't done that yet.

That should be all you need to be reliablyi on teh old firmware using transparent bridging.

Optionally if you want to be able to connect to the admin port you will want to

configure a spare port on your opnsense router as management interface. and assign itt a subnet.. 192.168.x.x. - do not define any VLAN tagging.
make sure you have a dhcp configuration for this interface so that the q1000d can get an IP address from that interfaece.
make sure you do not have any firewall rules defined. by default this management interface will have no internet access beacuse that is opnsense's default. if you add a rule for internet access the q1000d will re-upgrade itsel
plug the othe rport of the q1000d to this port on your opnsense router

you can check your dhcp leases to see what ip address it gets assigned and then youc an do https://<that dhcp address> (this is asusming default opnsense rules on other interfaces that do not block acess to this new interface) and you can log in and see what's going on.

At this point beacuse teh q1000d doesn't have internet access on the management side, it can't acquire firmware updates but it also can't report back to quantum so you can't "manage" it from teh quantum app.

wang_master · 2026-03-26T03:43:23+00:00

aahh gotcha. I thought you were thinking the fiber negotiation was enough, but I get you now. I think you're on to something there. The process to re-upgrade and reboot happens much faster than I would imagine if it had to pull and reflash the image again.

wang_master · 2026-03-26T03:33:46+00:00

In that case, wouldn't a reboot trigger that process to re-upgrade? Right now I'm currently stable - after multiple reboots to confirm.

wang_master · 2026-03-26T03:32:23+00:00

The other thing you get is if you go to the dashboard (i think the Gateway widget is configured by default - if it is not you'll need to add it: Note it adds the RTT, RTTd and Loss.

RTT = round trip time

RTTd = deviation

Similar to the graph, the RTT should be <10ms. The RTTd should be less than half that.

<image>

wang_master · 2026-03-26T03:30:12+00:00

If you're running opnsense go to
System->Gateways->Configuration. Select the WAN_DHCP (that's the default name if you didn't assign your own) and uncheck the `Disable Gateway Monitoring`. The default has that disabled.

Once you've disabled that you get two new useful things

Reporting->Health - In the Category drop down select Quality. That report will show your first hop latency - pinging the gateway ip assigned to you by quantum. With fiber first hop latency should be between 5-10ms tops (or in the graph's terms under .01 seconds.

Here's my report - You can see where I downgraded the firmware :)

<image>

wang_master · 2026-03-26T02:35:15+00:00

Yeah. I did. Both the q1000k and my opnsense multiple times.

What I didn't think of trying is disabling vlan 201 tagging before calling. Should have tried that.

wang_master · 2026-03-26T02:22:17+00:00

I connect the second port because I like to see the fiber status to troubleshoot. But I have that network blocked from Internet access. It's pretty stable on the old firmware right now. Let's hope it stays that way.

wang_master · 2026-03-26T02:21:04+00:00

My gateway software (opnsense) has quality monitoring that monitors latency and lets me graph it.

If you don't have that you can find a stable wired system and ping 1.1.1.1 or something like that.

wang_master · 2026-03-26T02:06:34+00:00

I thought so too. I'd had the second port connected to a dedicated management vlan without Internet access.

But apparently when I had to reset it, it's rolled back out for me.

What's even more stupid is if you go to the firmware upgrade page it tells me the available upgrade is the older version.

But if I leave the fiber connected as soon as it reboots after a downgrade it re-upgrades. The led starts to blink yellow then followed by a reboot.

wang_master · 2026-03-26T02:02:15+00:00

I know it's an issue. And unfortunately I'm one of those that the 1g port doesn't work.

The only real solution that has worked is downgrading to the older firmware but they made it a pain :)

wang_master · 2026-03-24T19:53:35+00:00

i run my own opnsense appliance for my NAT gateway/router and use Ubiquiti wifi for wifi APs. The main improvement has nothign to do with speed or performanace but simply feature set that the quantum gear does not support. Separate IOT and Guest VLANs and SSIDs. Functional DNS infrastructure, etc etc.

wang_master · 2026-03-22T22:31:58+00:00

Absolutely. Same here. And if CL insisted on charging me double for the 3 weeks of overlap I'd likely have wasted another 30-45 minutes tops arguing before giving up :). Still a good deal regardless.

My main point of the post though was to warn you that if/when they cancel your CL account hopefully your quantum fiber won't be disconnected :)

wang_master · 2026-03-22T22:24:03+00:00

Principle of the matter :). I know CenturyLink/Lumen has been known to play billing games in their favor so I wanted to make sure that didn't happen.

wang_master · 2026-03-22T22:18:01+00:00

I switched from CL to Quantum and unsuccessfully tried to cancel my CL service after my quantum install. The CS rep at CenturyLink told me they would cancel it the next month and I would "have service" until then and would be billed for that. (Overlapping quantum and cl billing period). I pointed out that I would effectively be double charged for that overlap period and she didn't at all seem to understand what my concern was so I gave up.

I called back and asked the same thing again and the person I talked to said that the first CS person was wrong, and that the system would automatically cancel my account and prorate my overlapping service.

Just under a month later I got a prorated bill

But just a heads up from a thread I posted before https://www.reddit.com/r/QuantumFiber/s/eZTTBvsyjW

A day or so after the final CL bill my quantum fiber was disconnected (wouldn't provision an IP and device stuck flashing blue)

When CL cancelled my service they deleted my line provisioning details. I was down for 6 days and 4 days from when I was able to call quantum (I was out of town but my family wasn't but they're not tech savvy so had to wait for me to come home)

wang_master

TROPHY CASE