This is a companion post to the OOMA DNS configuration post. If you don't want to know how the Verizon DSL modem was configured for OOMA traffic then you can just skip reading now.

[caption id="attachment_242" align="aligncenter" width="553" caption="Figure 1: Westell 6100 Main Screen after login"][/caption]

Figure 1 is the screen displayed after you first login to the Verizon (Westell) modem. Assuming that you were the person to initially setup the modem then you chose an ID and password and that is what you use to login to your Verizon account (and email) and to the modem. The default address of the modem (while you are on your network) is 192.168.1.1.

Disclaimer: I can't guarantee that this will work for everyone just that it worked in my configuration on a Westell 6100 modem. Proceed further at your own risk.

[caption id="attachment_243" align="aligncenter" width="592" caption="Figure 2: Westell 6100 Firewall Configuration"][/caption]

Figure 2. Shows the Firewall configuration screen. The default setting on the modem was Minimum Security (LOW) this means that the modem is performing minimal firewall services.  If you do not have your own internal firewall then you should probably leave this at the Minimum Security (LOW) setting. I am running a firewall and in keeping with my "common sense technology" approach I want my modems to (just) communicate, my routers to route and my firewalll to manage my connectivity and security. This way when I have a connectivity issues or security issues I have a pretty good idea where to look for the problem and make changes.

[caption id="attachment_244" align="aligncenter" width="611" caption="Figure 3: Westell 6100 DNS Configuration"][/caption]

Figure 3 shows the default DNS server screen. You could change this to point to the OpenDNS server if you are not running your own internal firewall but that is not the way I did my configuration. If you do change it the write down the name of the default DNS server in case you need to go back. I did not make the DNS change here because I am not certain that this DNS server does not have internal ISP services that are not propagated to external DNS servers and that changing the DNS server here may mean that those services would not be found and DSL communication failures due to those problems would not be solvable by me.

The recommended approach (as detailed in the OOMA DNS configuration post) was to make the changes on my firewwall.