[SOLVED] Can't quite get the correct settings... 2 routers connected

[Gambituk]

Hello, i've read through the nice pinned thread about "ultimate router setup thread" and i can't quite decide which option is the way to go.

I have:-

Icotera i4600 supplied by isp, as modem. I also have 1 or 2 devices connected by ethernet directly (192.168.1.1)

xiaomi mi AX3600 as wifi router. I would like to have one ip range configured by this router, and still able to communicate with the devices connected to icotera modem.

I've tried to connect via wan or a lan port, i've tried juggling different ip ranges, but most often i'm blocked by an error from the router, the internet connect is functional, but the wifi connection forces users connecting to the router to go to homepage captive portal. Some devices are ok.

I can't seem to post an image, but

https://imgur.com/a/KwK74Uf

View: https://imgur.com/a/KwK74Uf
it looks like this.

I am connecting from a variety of non apple devices

Please let me know what other info is needed.

 

[kanewolf]

Hello, i've read through the nice pinned thread about "ultimate router setup thread" and i can't quite decide which option is the way to go.

I have:-

Icotera i4600 supplied by isp, as modem. I also have 1 or 2 devices connected by ethernet directly (192.168.1.1)

xiaomi mi AX3600 as wifi router. I would like to have one ip range configured by this router, and still able to communicate with the devices connected to icotera modem.

I've tried to connect via wan or a lan port, i've tried juggling different ip ranges, but most often i'm blocked by an error from the router, the internet connect is functional, but the wifi connection forces users connecting to the router to go to homepage captive portal. Some devices are ok.

I can't seem to post an image, but

https://imgur.com/a/KwK74Uf

View: https://imgur.com/a/KwK74Uf
it looks like this.

I am connecting from a variety of non apple devices

Please let me know what other info is needed.

If you have "1 or 2 devices" connected to the I4600 then it is not a modem. It is a router.
If you want to have devices that connect to the AX3600 see the devices connected to the I4600, then you have to use the AX3600 as an access point and not a router.
I don't see a good manual, but there are YouTube videos that show how to configure the AX3600 as an access point.

 

[Gambituk]

Ok, so if that's a hard no for the ethernet devices connected to the i4600, i still can't find a method to have the i4600 working as just a modem with the AX3600 doing all the dhcp etc. any suggestions? The i4600 is partially configured by the isp and forces me to use their poor dns servers, but when using the ax3600 i can use google or cloudflare with massively improved browsing....

 

[bill001g]

DHCP servers on consumer routers have very limited options...likely because many people would do them wrong.

The key restriction is that the router always gives its IP as the default gateway. A real DHCP server you could say put on 192.168.1.100 but have it give the end device the actual router IP of say 192.168.1.1. The way most consumer routers work they will always give out 192.168.1.100. So in effect the DHCP server has to be the
gateway for the subnet.

So you are saying on the i4600 you can not configure the DHCP part of the router to give out say 1.1.1.1. This is different than setting the DNS the router itself uses to that. The default way consumer routers work is to get the DNS server from the ISP and then have the router act as a proxy caching some of the data.
The router will give out its IP as the DNS server via DHCP. Both these "features" lead to poor performance on DNS

I will assume you can turn the DHCP function off in the ISP router ? If you can't do that you have no option but to put another router in between the ISP router and your network.

It would be nice if you could set a router to run as AP and still function as real dhcp server. In your case I would buy a very inexpensive raspberry pi that has ethernet and configure it to be a simple DHCP server. It has the ability to run real DHCP server options....including all kinds of fancy optional ones used for booting images over the network.

 

[Gambituk]

Hi, Thanks for the answer, i can turn off the dhcp on the isp router i4600, but whether i have it on or off, i am always getting errors from the ax3600.. it wants to force me to use a different subnet, or to only function as a wired repeater.

 

[bill001g]

You have to change the LAN ip on the ax3600. It likely is detecting a duplicate

 

[Gambituk]

https://imgur.com/FbDPtPe

Yes, when i try that i get this error,
Putting it inside or outside the dhcp range doesn't make a difference

 

[kanewolf]

https://imgur.com/FbDPtPe

Yes, when i try that i get this error,
Putting it inside or outside the dhcp range doesn't make a difference

You have to set the LAN to have a different value for the third set of numbers. That is the subnet portion. So if the 192.168.1.x is on the WAN then the LAN has to be 192.168.2.x (or some other value for the third set of digits) .

 

[bill001g]

But why do you even have a WAN ip.

You want this running as a AP. You either set it to AP mode which makes the wan port into another lan port or you use a actual lan port and manually disable the DHCP server

 

[Gambituk]

Ok, so the two things i wanted to achieve, was to be able to

1. have this second router (ax3600) share the same subnet as the first router)
2. Use the ax 3600 to control the wifi and dns etc..

The reason for 1. is that i have a sbc server (Ethernet to i4600 on the original ip range 192.168.1.88 (example only) that serves about 30 different wifi IoT devices around my home (homemade, not simple to reprogram, and using static ip assignment).
The reason for 2. is to have better dns than what is provided by isp.

If you are saying that 1 and 2 are not possible, (AP mode gives me almost no control and turns nice new router into a simple AP), then what are my options if any?

I see the possibility of moving isp router to use range 192.168.2.... and then moving and connecting the sbc server to ethernet port of ax3600 and all wifi devices will still see it on the .1.88 address...
I suppose there is also something that can be done with subnet to allow devices on .2.x and .1.x to communicate, but i don't remember how that is supposed to work and on which devices that would need to be implimented..

Sorry, this is just not my area of familiarity, i've appreciated the responses so far, even if it's not what i want to hear

 

[bill001g]

Yes it is easy to get communication between 2 subnets...your get a real router

That is actually pretty much the definition of a "router". The devices home user buy in the electronics stores are better call gateways because their only real function is to convert a single IP from the wan subnet to single lan subnet.

If you can change the IP on the ISP router to 192.168.2.x and then plug everything into your other router that should work. The ISP router will only get traffic from your new router.

Your problem is you want features that your average home user does not use so they don't put the feature on the hardware. This would have been easy if your ISP router was not so restrictive. Almost every other router I have seen has the ability to change the DNS the router gives to end devices via DHCP.