XB10 in Bridge Mode with an Asus RT-BE96U Router

Notes on Setting Up Xfinity XB10 in Bridge Mode with an Asus RT-BE96U Router

This post is to help anyone who runs into similar issues. I spent some time over the last day troubleshooting a few initial provisioning problems with my Xfinity XB10 router.

Goal: Set up the XB10 router in bridge mode so my Asus RT-BE96U (WiFi 7, 10 GbE support) can handle all routing and network management.

Service: 2 Gbps residential connection.

Below are the issues I encountered and how I resolved them.

1) Bridge Mode Failure

Problem:
After enabling bridge mode on the XB10 (via 10.0.0.1), my Asus router couldn’t complete DHCP negotiation. The Asus logs showed repeated DHCP discovery attempts, with no successful lease. Strangely, my Windows 11 PC could obtain an IP when directly connected to the XB10 in bridge mode. I initially suspected a problem on the Asus side.

Solution:
Use the bottom 10 GbE port on the XB10. The top 10 GbE port did not work correctly for bridging (though it did work when connected directly to Windows 11).
The documentation claims that any port can be used (as long as only one is active), but that was not the case for me. Only the bottom 10 GbE port successfully bridged to my Asus router. I verified this several times.

2) Admin Interface Login Loop

Problem:
When trying to access the XB10 admin interface, I kept getting redirected back to the login screen even with the correct credentials. A message would appear prompting me to change the default password, but after submitting, it would just return to the login page.

Solution:
Use a different browser.
Chrome on Windows 11 consistently failed, but both Edge and Opera worked fine, taking me to the “Set your password” page as expected.

Likely Cause:
This appears to be related to my Chrome configuration, possibly due to Bitdefender Antivirus. The Bitdefender logs showed blocked “malicious attempts” to 10.0.0.1 at the exact times the login loops occurred.

3) Changing Default Admin Credentials

Observation:
The default admin credentials for 10.0.0.1 seemed to change during troubleshooting and after multiple factory resets.

I encountered both of these working at different times:

• Username: admin Password: password

• Username: admin Password: (the unique password printed on the bottom sticker of the XB10)

Conclusion:
After a factory reset, the default credentials appear to revert to admin / password.
Once the unit reconnects to Xfinity’s network and completes initial provisioning, it switches back to using the XB10's sticker password.

Hope this helps save someone else a half day and an Xfinity technician visit.