A Wireless Networking Question

[jbolt]

My broadband comes into my shop which is 150' away from the house. My home office is in a separate outbuilding 20' from the house. Currently I have a RadioLabs wireless bridge setup to my office.

It is working okay but I think the connection could be stronger. The wifi router is inside the shop so I am thinking of adding an external access point to the shop router.

In the office I can connect to the internet through the bridge via wifi but not through the LAN ports. I spoke with RadioLabs tech and he said if I can connect by wifi then I should be able to connect through the LAN. He thinks it may be something with the wifi router in the shop, possibly because of a static IP? I have not been able to speak with my broadband provider yet because of the holiday weekend. I also still need to login to the shop router and look at the settings.

Currently from the house we are connecting to the office bridge over wifi which covers most of the house but not well in some areas. My original plane was to attach an access point to the bridge router through an ethernet cable from the office to the house. I have the underground conduits already in place, just need to run the cable.

My problem is not getting internet through the bridge LAN ports which I assume will affect an access point?

I'm not married to the current setup other than the broadband originates in the shop and trenching to the house is not an option due to extensive underground irrigation.

Any nuggets of wisdom would be appreciated.

 

[woodchucker]

got a question... are any of the building metal? I have an Aluminum sided house, and it's a shield. I can't get a signal in my back because of it. In the front, only in front of the window where the wireless is setup?

But that is totally related to signal, not to IP's or security.

 

[MrWhoopee]

This is just a guess. In similar situations I've had to disable DHCP on the second (bridge) router so that all IP addresses are assigned by the primary router.

 

[matthewsx]

I have not worked with RadioLabs equipment but I do setup wireless professionally and have for many years. Your problem is related to routing, most likely different IP ranges which are not compatible ie. 10.x.x.x and 192.168.x.x

I won't try to get into the specifics of how to configure your network but @MrWhoopee has a good first troubleshooting step, making sure you only have one DHCP server assigning addresses for the whole thing. This will work as long as everything can see the primary DHCP server, and it gives proper addressing info to each device.

If your run is only 150' I'd suggest running Cat 5 or 6 wire between the to buildings and skipping the wireless bridge.

Also, I switched both my houses to Ubiquity infrastructure https://www.ui.com/wi-fi/ years ago and also use their access points at work. It's good stuff that gives nearly the performance as our Cisco gear at a fraction of the price.

Here's a little light reading if you want to understand IP addressing better.

Cisco: Software, Network, and Cybersecurity Solutions

Cisco is a worldwide technology leader. Our purpose is to power an inclusive future for all through software, networking, security, computing, and more solutions.

www.cisco.com

John

 

[ttabbal]

On the bridge, make sure it's configured as a bridge not some weird routing setup. I suspect it's routing and running another NAT layer which is pointless and can cause other problems. Also make sure that there is only one active DHCP server. That can mess up a network quick.

Some of the bridges are able to configure the wired ports to act as lan, wan or even a standalone switch. Make sure that they are bridged with the wifi interface.

If you have conduit, use wired where possible. Wifi bridges and repeaters can cause all sorts of weird issues. Particularly multi purpose devices as there are a lot of ways to configure them.

 

[rabler]

On the second router
1) disable DHCP as mentioned above
2) plug the bridge link into one of the "internal" ports, not into the main/external port. The bypass the routing function on the second router so you don't have to worry about addressing, routing and subnetting issues. Those are complex jobs that keep network engineers well paid.

 

[jbolt]

HA HA you guys are awesome. I love this site.

I know enough to be dangerous so I need to digest some of this before I start tinkering with settings.

As to running cable. Between the number of trees and a complex irrigation system trenching from the shop to my office or the house would create a ton of headaches and suck too much time right now. Maybe in the future. I need to make the wireless work for now.

mattewsx said:
"I have not worked with RadioLabs equipment but I do setup wireless professionally and have for many years. Your problem is related to routing, most likely different IP ranges which are not compatible ie. 10.x.x.x and 192.168.x.x"

The bridge came preconfigured.

The primary router is 192.168.x.x and the bridge is 10.x.x.x.

I have a USB wifi adapter on this PC connecting to the bridge. The PC is also connected to the bridge by ethernet through a switch.

When I run ipconfig the ethernet adapter IPv4 Address is 192.168.1.4, default gateway 192.168.1.1

The wifi adapter IPv4 is 10.01.10.151, default gateway is 10.10.10.1

I will try disabling the DHCP later.

Aslo, no metal buildings, all wood.

The wife just informed me I had to take the afternoon off so heading to her cousins for burgers and beer!

 

[matthewsx]

Have a fun Labor Day, sounds like you earned it.

The 192.168.x.x network won't talk with the 10.x.x.x network without NAT (network address translation), something you don't want to get into. You either need to set one or the other to static addressing on the right network, or eliminate the dynamic addressing (DHCP) on one of your devices.

Cheers,

John

 

[jbolt]

So the only place I find the ability to disable DHCP is under Network Settings --> LAN --> DHCP Setup. I disabled that and it made no difference.

On the same page is "LAN Setup" and it shows the IP Address as 10.x.x.x.



Status Page



Primary Router Status Page



Primary Router DHCP Page



Unidentified Network on PC which I believe is the LAN connection to the Bridge



ipconfig

 

[Lo-Fi]

Yep, that ain't going to work.

Your radiolabs kit is in the wrong mode. It should simply be creating a "bridge" to the 192 network, not creating its own. What options do you have under "working mode"?