Reply to: Probably easy networking question, and pubs

[WTFH]

I would echo this, I have a quick play at the weekend linking up my old sky router to my HH5 and it would just not play ball, not sure if its the Sky that is refusing to work with anything other than a direct ADSL connection, or the HH5 not giving a "WAN" IP address to the Sky Router but nothing from the Sky router would access the internet through the HH5 as the HH5 doesn't have a "modem only" mode

Which Sky router have you, what way did you reconfigure the Sky router, and what port on each router were you plugging in to?

[SimonMac]

Don't think HH5 would work - isn't that the modem/router combo whereas HH3 is just the router?

I would echo this, I have a quick play at the weekend linking up my old sky router to my HH5 and it would just not play ball, not sure if its the Sky that is refusing to work with anything other than a direct ADSL connection, or the HH5 not giving a "WAN" IP address to the Sky Router but nothing from the Sky router would access the internet through the HH5 as the HH5 doesn't have a "modem only" mode

[stek]

Liunky pls? I looked on eBay for Aironets but got 0 results. I'm not sure what you're referring to.

Here's one, but there are loads. They're not latest tech. re: speed etc, but decent proper kit...

Cisco AIR-AP1131AG-E-K9 V04 Aironet Wireless Access Point | eBay

[vetran]

the wireless router is a multifunction consumer level device designed for max 5 - 10 connections. It has a small CPU to keep the price down but it has to route, do DHCP & wireless.

You are looking for probably 30 + connections so really need to let the Router do Routing and get a proper access point on a static IP address to handle wireless DHCP & logins.

Basically you are asking a fiat 500 to carry a two ton load. To do it properly you need a 4*4 and a trailer.

Should be plenty of decent Cisco or similar multi band access points (I saw Draytek mentioned which are a good compromise) on ebay.


If they are using the same ADSL for credit cards they may well need slightly more security set up. Not something I'm into but What is PCI DSS?

Also remember if they download child porn on his network the Police are going to hold him responsible until they can be bothered to prove otherwise.

[Platypus]

Might need to look at MESH like on Aironet, looking quite complex now this!

Older Aironets are quite cheap now on eBay, not the fastest speeds etc, but professional kit...

Liunky pls? I looked on eBay for Aironets but got 0 results. I'm not sure what you're referring to.

Hi Platypus ... No routing config to do no hassles.

Thanks, Yampy, but the issue at the pub is more complex due to the number of simultaneous connections. That's why I'm looking at additional routers rather than access points. I think.

[Yampy]

Hi Platypus, due to very thick stone walls in our cottage we needed better wireless coverage. I setup a Draytek vigor 2830n as my adsl wireless router and connected a Draytek Vigor ap810 access point placed at the other end of the cottage. The adsl router needed configured with my bt broadband details but the access point was totally plug and play. The setup was so simple and took all of 15 mins which was taken up by running the cable through the loft. The ssid's are set as draytek_A and draytek_B. easy for the kids and wife to connect to. they work great. No routing config to do no hassles.

[stek]

Don't think HH5 would work - isn't that the modem/router combo whereas HH3 is just the router?

Might need to look at MESH like on Aironet, looking quite complex now this!

Older Aironets are quite cheap now on eBay, not the fastest speeds etc, but professional kit...

[LondonManc]

Thanks, but Apple Airport Extreme is not a router.

The BT hub thingy is an interesting idea, and I have a spare HH5 lying around, so I tried it. Switch off DHCP (not sure why this step is necessary if a different DHCP range is being used) and switch off the firewall. Plugged the WAN port of the HH5 into my network, but nada. Plugged one of its LAN ports into my network and it worked, but that of course means that the HH5 was just acting as a wireless access point, not a router.

The idea of using a router rather than a wireless access point to do this is to minimise the number of connections to the BT hub.

Make sense?

Don't think HH5 would work - isn't that the modem/router combo whereas HH3 is just the router?

[Platypus]

P.S. Airport Extreme specs say that it supports 50 users.

Something like an Airport Extreme but with support for more users would be ideal, but not very many router specs seem to include a 'number of users' figure :-(

[Platypus]

No, doesn't make sense to me, but that could just be me - I'm not a network specialist. If you are using a different range, then you should be able to leave DHCP on.


How many wireless devices are we talking about? 10? 50? 100? 500?


Are you sure your current issue isn't caused by the broadband speed and an old router - which model of hub is it?

I thought that DHCP should be able to be left on, but I saw some guide on t'internet which talked about doing this, and it said to switch DHCP off. Maybe I could do another test.

Number of wireless devices? I should think that 150-200 would do it.

The issue at the pub could be slow BB and old router, but I tried to get this working as a test here at home using my Draytek Vigor 2820 router (reasonably new) as the primary router and a 2015 BT HH5 as the secondary "bar" router. I assumed that plugging the HH5's WAN port into one of the Vigor's LAN ports would get me the routing functionality I was looking for, but that just didn't work at all. The HH5 though there was no internet connection. Plugging one of the HH5's LAN ports in to the one of Vigor's LAN ports worked, but I assumed that was just giving me a wireless access point rather than the routing capability I'm seeking.

[Platypus]

What's the limit on "number of connections" exactly? You've got the number of WiFi connections that might be supported, the number of IP addresses, and the number of NAT connections the router(s) will allow.

As you describe it each of the satellite routers (they're routers and not access points) will allocate an IP range and will then NAT everything together down one wire to the main router which will then NAT it on to the internet. But that doesn't help you if the main router is limited in the number of simultaneous NAT sessions it can handle.

Good question. I don't think it's the number of IP addresses since the DHCP pool is large (190 addresses in the pool). I suspect that there is a limit to the number of simultaneous Wi Fi sessions that the Hub can support (but I don't know what the limit is, although on older business hubs I seems to remember it was 50).

As for "the number of NAT connections that the router will allow" well you got me there because that didn't even occur to me. Is there any way to know? Is it too much to hope that the second router would could as just one NAT session?

[WTFH]

Thanks, but Apple Airport Extreme is not a router.

The BT hub thingy is an interesting idea, and I have a spare HH5 lying around, so I tried it. Switch off DHCP (not sure why this step is necessary if a different DHCP range is being used) and switch off the firewall. Plugged the WAN port of the HH5 into my network, but nada. Plugged one of its LAN ports into my network and it worked, but that of course means that the HH5 was just acting as a wireless access point, not a router.

The idea of using a router rather than a wireless access point to do this is to minimise the number of connections to the BT hub.

Make sense?

No, doesn't make sense to me, but that could just be me - I'm not a network specialist. If you are using a different range, then you should be able to leave DHCP on.


How many wireless devices are we talking about? 10? 50? 100? 500?


Are you sure your current issue isn't caused by the broadband speed and an old router - which model of hub is it?

[stek]

Thanks, but Apple Airport Extreme is not a router.

It is!

The AirPort Extreme is a residential gateway product from Apple Inc. combining the functionality of a router, network switch, wireless access point and NAS as well as varied other functions

[Platypus]

Thanks, but Apple Airport Extreme is not a router.

The BT hub thingy is an interesting idea, and I have a spare HH5 lying around, so I tried it. Switch off DHCP (not sure why this step is necessary if a different DHCP range is being used) and switch off the firewall. Plugged the WAN port of the HH5 into my network, but nada. Plugged one of its LAN ports into my network and it worked, but that of course means that the HH5 was just acting as a wireless access point, not a router.

The idea of using a router rather than a wireless access point to do this is to minimise the number of connections to the BT hub.

Make sense?

[VectraMan]

What's the limit on "number of connections" exactly? You've got the number of WiFi connections that might be supported, the number of IP addresses, and the number of NAT connections the router(s) will allow.

As you describe it each of the satellite routers (they're routers and not access points) will allocate an IP range and will then NAT everything together down one wire to the main router which will then NAT it on to the internet. But that doesn't help you if the main router is limited in the number of simultaneous NAT sessions it can handle.