Confused about IP Range on my 2nd router in bridge mode

[raksrules]

Then no need to bother mate. Leave it be. I don't think your use case involves copying large chunks of data over wifi.

As of now, The only time I actually download / upload large files is when I want to download / upload TV show episodes (each episode is 1-2GB) to or from the 64GB MicroSD Card which is connected to ASUS router. That too rarely I do else I watch the stuff over FTP / Samba only.

 

[john1911]

Ok let me try out soon.

But then I have one question, what benefit will I derive? Because I am not living in a mansion. It is a 1000 sq feet home and the 2 routers are anyways connected using a wire connection so even if I keep connection the way it is, things will still work fine right?

AC68U has a ton of useful features but most of them can only be used if it is in Router mode. Most of them get disabled in access point mode. In AP mode is just acts like any other cheap passive wireless access point. But I don't think you'll be needing/using the extra features of AC68U. So you might not notice any difference.

Other than that, ASUS releases regular security updates for AC68U, the latest one was released in end May which patched a lot of security vulnerabilities. So IMO it is good to have that at the entry point of your network.

 

[Marcus Fenix]

AC68U has a ton of useful features but most of them can only be used if it is in Router mode. Most of them get disabled in access point mode. In AP mode is just acts like any other cheap passive wireless access point. But I don't think you'll be needing/using the extra features of AC68U. So you might not notice any difference.

Other than that, ASUS releases regular security updates for AC68U, the latest one was released in end May which patched a lot of security vulnerabilities. So IMO it is good to have that at the entry point of your network.

You use the official FW? I flashed Merlin on Day 1 itself and never looked back.

If only Asus made a mesh wifi solution competitive with my current Orbi I would avoid Netgear altogether since I had the 5 GHz radio on a Nighthawk R7000 die after just 1.5 years.

 

[john1911]

You use the official FW? I flashed Merlin on Day 1 itself and never looked back.

Sadly yes, as I configured two AC66U B1 (basically AC68U?) in mesh over Ethernet. Their wireless Mesh is a mess with frequent speed drops and whatnot.

 

[superczar]

@raksrules If I were you
1) I'd move the AC68 to the main router position (it will surely have better WAN-LAN throughut/ NATting performance than the other one)
2) clone MAC of current router WAN port to AC68 and copy the pppoe settings
3) Set LAN IP range on AC68 DHCP server to whatever you use currently (192.168.1.x perhaps?)
4) Disable DHCP server on 2nd device (which is the same as setting it to AP mode) and assign it a static IP - say 192.168.1.2 (if AC68 is 192.168.1.1)
5) Connect LAN port of AC68 to LAN port of Router 2

As for AP settings, with a non steering mesh setup (i.e. yours), there are pros and cons to using the same or different SSIDs on each device - you will have to experiment to see what works better
I'd set both the radios to different channels though

 

[vivek.krishnan]

I wanted to do that only. But for some reason, my local ISP could not configure that router as my primary and was giving me the iBall (for 2K rupees) as primary router so I bought the same myself from amazon for 999 rupees or so and he configured it as primary. I myself have used only AC68U while I was in US and it covered my 2 BHK apartment well but then it is US so we have cardboard walls so obviously it is expected to work better than in India where we have brick walls.

Its a tactic to sell you their box. I earlier used to refuse, but now suggest to pickup the same and keep as the standard router.

Ok let me try out soon.

But then I have one question, what benefit will I derive? Because I am not living in a mansion. It is a 1000 sq feet home and the 2 routers are anyways connected using a wire connection so even if I keep connection the way it is, things will still work fine right?

Yeah, but you might get better perf from the ASUS.

 

[raksrules]

Its a tactic to sell you their box. I earlier used to refuse, but now suggest to pickup the same and keep as the standard router.


Yeah, but you might get better perf from the ASUS.

You may be right about they wanting to sell their router but the guy didn't mind when I told I will buy on my own.

Better performance from asus I can even get now by connecting to that wifi I guess.

 

[john1911]

You may be right about they wanting to sell their router but the guy didn't mind when I told I will buy on my own.

Yes, something similar happened very recently to a friend of mine. Well, not exactly similar. A friend of mine has gotten his laptop stuck in boot - repairing windows - failed to repair - reboot. Windows 10 machine. My friend called a repair guy, he came, interested a pen drive, did something, then told him that his HDD is gone and tried to sell him an overpriced SSD. My friend called me, I asked him to run Dell Diagnostics and unsurprisingly no error came in it. I guided him to make a bootable Windows 10 install media and then was shocked to see that C drive wasn't there. It was being shown as unallocated. We concluded that the repair guy must have deleted the C drive as before the repair guy interested his pen drive, Windows was trying to boot but after the guy went, the laptop showed Please insert a bootable media and press a key_ _.

So yes, such practices are very common in all fields. Look at the gas refilling scam in air conditioners.

Better performance from asus I can even get now by connecting to that wifi I guess.

The LAN ports on your iBall are 10/100 ports. They'll be a bottleneck for the local traffic that's being routed through iBall.

You use the official FW? I flashed Merlin on Day 1 itself and never looked back.

I checked Merlin again and now they support AiMesh. Just flashed Merlin again (after a year or so) and reconfigured both. Running great. Thanks for reminding me of Merlin.

 

[raksrules]

Ok i will try that router swapping after cloning Mac on the ASUS one. Still need to call ISP guy to ask password that was put in PPPoE setup area as I don't remember what was it.
If I do the MAC cloning, the result will be both routers having same MAC. Will that be a problem?

Also my ASUS router is the tmobile cellspot and I have not flashed any firmware on it and won't be doing either. I am ok with stock tmobile firmware.

 

[john1911]

Still need to call ISP guy to ask password that was put in PPPoE setup area as I don't remember what was it.

Open the page in Chrome/Firefox.
Right click on the password box with password. Select inspect. The source code will open. Change type="password" to type="text". Your password will now be visible in plaintext.

If I do the MAC cloning, the result will be both routers having same MAC. Will that be a problem?

You'll be cloaning WAN MAN of iBall to WAN MAC of ASUS, at any one time, only one of them will be used in your network.

Also my ASUS router is the tmobile cellspot and I have not flashed any firmware on it and won't be doing either. I am ok with stock tmobile firmware.

Even I'm not sure if the T-mobile version supports firmware updates. You can atleast go to the firmware page, click on check for updates and if found, let it update. It's OTA update.

 

[raksrules]

[mention]john1911 [/mention] I am getting my Raspberry Pi 4 in a day or two and I was planning to connect it via LAN port to the iBall Router which I am assuming is 10/100 Mbps. Will this cause any performance bottle neck on my local network as I plan to use the Pi as Jellyfin server.
In that case, will connecting to the same iBall router through WiFi be a better bet?

All this is assuming I do not do the router swap.

 

[Marcus Fenix]

[mention]john1911 [/mention] I am getting my Raspberry Pi 4 in a day or two and I was planning to connect it via LAN port to the iBall Router which I am assuming is 10/100 Mbps. Will this cause any performance bottle neck on my local network as I plan to use the Pi as Jellyfin server.
In that case, will connecting to the same iBall router through WiFi be a better bet?

All this is assuming I do not do the router swap.

Yikes. I didn't know you were using 100 Mbps router as the primary.
Please use the Asus as your primary node in that case.

All clients that need heavy traffic will need to be connected to the Asus.

Try setting it up in a location which can serve most of your home devices and then set the iBall as the secondary AP in a zone where you don't need high bandwidth but just basic internet access will suffice.

 

[john1911]

@raksrules

100Mbps will be the limiting factor and as it it the Router, all your connections (except FTP on ASUS) will be routed through it and hence everything will be limited to 100Mbps including your Jellyfin. Marcus Fenix suggested the configuration which will provide the most optimum network performance.

@Marcus Fenix

Do you know if T-Mobile AC68U can be flashed to Merlin? I honestly had forgotten how good it is.

 

[Marcus Fenix]

@Marcus Fenix

Do you know if T-Mobile AC68U can be flashed to Merlin? I honestly had forgotten how good it is.

Don't have hands on experience as I had a stock Asus RT-AC68U.

This is what Google threw up.

How to config ASUS RT-AC68U to use AiMesh

T-Mobile router TM AC-1900 is a cheap alternative of Asus RT-AC68U. but it is not supported by Asus. To use latest Asus AiMesh, need to…

moreless.medium.com

How to Convert T-Mobile AC 1900 Into Asus RT AC68U on Mac OSX - DoTechBetter

How to Convert T-Mobile AC 1900 Into Asus RT AC68U on Mac OSX: Did you just get your hands on a T-Mobile AC-1900 personal cellspot and want to hack and convert.

www.desinerd.co.in

OP is not very familiar with *NIX at this point and I would not recommend a newbie to be messing around in jffs partition.

 

[raksrules]

Ok so I was able to achieve partial success and did following steps. Problem I am having now is explained later...

1. Disconnected both routers and before that noted their MAC addresses and my ISP credentials.
2. Connected ASUS to the Fiber box and connected to the router via its IP 192.168.29.1 and cloned the MAC, did the PPPoE settings and entered ISP Credentials.
3. After applying setting and reboot, the ASUS worked with my ISP and I was online. The iBall is still disconnected.
4. Now I connect iBall to ASUS via LAN Cable and automatically it obviously does not work as still it has that PPPoE settings so I go to "WAN Settings" in iBall and there are 2 other options, "Dynamic IP address" and saved setting and even iBall was online.
5. Now I wanted iBall to have static IP of same range as ASUS (currently it has 192.168.1.x) so in my ASUS router, I assigned static IP to the iBall as 192.168.29.2 and restarted both and it worked and iBall also showed on its main page WAN IP as 192.168.29.2. But remember I am still using WAN settings as "Dynamic IP address". Check Pics 1 and 2.
6. I think under "WAN Settings" I am supposed to select Static IP address and give it as 192.168.29.2 so I did that and first it didn't work for some reason but then it worked. The page forced me to put default gateway and primary DNS. Please check if they look correct (internet works). The default gateway I put as IP address of the primary ASUS router. Check Pic 3.
7. Problem on iBall side now is that all the devices connected to it show IP in range 192.168.1.x instead of 192.168.29.x. Check Pic 4. I want them to under 29.x
8. For doing this I went to system tools and LAN Settings and it shows what you see in Pic 5. What should I change here to make my all iBall connected devices get 192.168.29.x addresses? I did try to turn of DHCP server and set LAN IP as 192.168.29.2 (also tried 29.1) and I get error as "LAN IP Address and WAN IP Address (192.168.29.2) must not be in the same network segment."

I am puzzled at this point. Basically I have both routers working fine now but both in different IP ranges. How to fix this?

Yikes. I didn't know you were using 100 Mbps router as the primary.
Please use the Asus as your primary node in that case.

All clients that need heavy traffic will need to be connected to the Asus.

Try setting it up in a location which can serve most of your home devices and then set the iBall as the secondary AP in a zone where you don't need high bandwidth but just basic internet access will suffice.

100 Mbps is ethernet, the wifi speed is upto 1200 Mbps I guess. But I won't know better since my ISP subscribed speed is at the moment 50 Mbps.

 

[Marcus Fenix]

Think about it this way
1) Asus router is the primary node (192.168.29.1) and it will handle DHCP routing. iBall shouldn't do DHCP at all which is assigning LAN IPs to the clients.

2) iBall should be set up with a static IP of 192.168.29.2 and its DHCP handling should be turned off. If you configure it in AP mode that should suffice.I suspect that you didn't do this part.

3) Now the iBall is acting as a satellite and all devices that connect to either Asus/iBall will be assigned IPs by Asus and the range would be 192.168.29.2 to 254 in Asus.

 

[john1911]

@raksrules

You need to connect LAN port of ASUS to LAN port of iBall.

Disable DHCP on iBall, assign it 192.168.29.2 in LAN setting of iBall, disable DHCP and then connect LAN to LAN.

You can reset iBall, connect it to a machine and do the above mentioned settings and then connect LAN to LAN.

WAN settings on iBall is no longer required as WAN is now being handled by ASUS.

 

[raksrules]

@raksrules

You need to connect LAN port of ASUS to LAN port of iBall.

Disable DHCP on iBall, assign it 192.168.29.2 in LAN setting of iBall, disable DHCP and then connect LAN to LAN.

You can reset iBall, connect it to a machine and do the above mentioned settings and then connect LAN to LAN.

WAN settings on iBall is no longer required as WAN is now being handled by ASUS.

Are you sure as earlier when ASUS was secondary I had connected from iBall LAN to ASUS WAN.

 

[john1911]

Are you sure as earlier when ASUS was secondary I had connected from iBall LAN to ASUS WAN.

Yes raksrules, I'm.

 

[superczar]

Ok so I was able to achieve partial success and did following steps. Problem I am having now is explained later...

1. Disconnected both routers and before that noted their MAC addresses and my ISP credentials.
2. Connected ASUS to the Fiber box and connected to the router via its IP 192.168.29.1 and cloned the MAC, did the PPPoE settings and entered ISP Credentials.
3. After applying setting and reboot, the ASUS worked with my ISP and I was online. The iBall is still disconnected.
4. Now I connect iBall to ASUS via LAN Cable and automatically it obviously does not work as still it has that PPPoE settings so I go to "WAN Settings" in iBall and there are 2 other options, "Dynamic IP address" and saved setting and even iBall was online.
5. Now I wanted iBall to have static IP of same range as ASUS (currently it has 192.168.1.x) so in my ASUS router, I assigned static IP to the iBall as 192.168.29.2 and restarted both and it worked and iBall also showed on its main page WAN IP as 192.168.29.2. But remember I am still using WAN settings as "Dynamic IP address". Check Pics 1 and 2.
6. I think under "WAN Settings" I am supposed to select Static IP address and give it as 192.168.29.2 so I did that and first it didn't work for some reason but then it worked. The page forced me to put default gateway and primary DNS. Please check if they look correct (internet works). The default gateway I put as IP address of the primary ASUS router. Check Pic 3.
7. Problem on iBall side now is that all the devices connected to it show IP in range 192.168.1.x instead of 192.168.29.x. Check Pic 4. I want them to under 29.x
8. For doing this I went to system tools and LAN Settings and it shows what you see in Pic 5. What should I change here to make my all iBall connected devices get 192.168.29.x addresses? I did try to turn of DHCP server and set LAN IP as 192.168.29.2 (also tried 29.1) and I get error as "LAN IP Address and WAN IP Address (192.168.29.2) must not be in the same network segment."

I am puzzled at this point. Basically I have both routers working fine now but both in different IP ranges. How to fix this?

100 Mbps is ethernet, the wifi speed is upto 1200 Mbps I guess. But I won't know better since my ISP subscribed speed is at the moment 50 Mbps.

check my last post - you need to forget your 2nd router even has a wAN port.. just discard it because it is not a router any more

The incoming cable on iball goes on a LAN port - and the dhcp on iball needs to be disabled
That is all there is to it