Hey guys,
First time posting, to a forum I've been looking at for some years now! Great job and kudos for all your work! Anyways, I don't want to waste time so I'll first introduce you to my setup and then to my problem with it.
At home I have a Cisco router getting its internet straight from our ISP, and giving internet to an archer c7 TP-Link through one of its LAN ports in a LAN to LAN bridged mode connection. Of course, it is also managing the IPs of the devices connected to it through DHCP (I disabled that option for the TP Link when I was configuring it to act as a bridge). I also gave my TP-Link a different LAN IP to avoid problems with the Cisco's LAN IP and set it to 192.168.0.254.
So far so good, the home network was working and all was good up until to a point when I decided to add a USB Hard drive to one of the USB slots of the TP-Link, which I was planning to use as a file server. Firstly, I noticed I couldn't access my router because the IP the Cisco was giving me through the Wi-Fi connection I was having with the bridged router, was different from 192.168.0.X, thus preventing me from being on the same network as the TP-Link. However, I changed my IP to 192.168.0.253 while retaining my connection with the WiFi and voila, I was in. I went to the USB settings in the firmware and was given 3 options to choose from:
1) Network Neighbourhood - (which I understood as default, as it simply added the file server to my Finder, without any configuration)
2) FTP - which allowed me a connection through ftp://192.168.0.254:21 (from a browser or from my MAC's connect to server option) with 21 being the default port it gave me
3) FTP (remote) - which had to be the best solution for me as it allowed me a connection over the internet and not just my local network.
However, it needed an IP and was giving me a default of 0.0.0.0:21 because of the fact that my WAN port was unplugged (due to the bridge mode). That meant that even if I gave it an IP it would still show a red sign saying YOUR WAN PORT IS UNPLUGGED, and thus gave me no results whatsoever.
So my question is - How do I connect a hard drive to a bridged router and is it even possible to do it. It is also important to note, that I had no problems accessing my hard drive through 1) and 2) when I changed my IP to 192.168.0.X but was absolutely unable to access it through an IP handed to me from the DHCP of the Cisco.
P.S - A friend of mine, who is a network admin, told me he was using an openWRT system on his router and it was doing the job for him, but I'm completely clueless about it. However I read about it and looked into it and found out that it was limiting the capabilities of the TP-Link (and that's coming from their own forums, so it shouldn't be a marketing trick, hehe) so I would prefer not to use it.
Anyways, sorry for the long post ppl!
Elarith
First time posting, to a forum I've been looking at for some years now! Great job and kudos for all your work! Anyways, I don't want to waste time so I'll first introduce you to my setup and then to my problem with it.
At home I have a Cisco router getting its internet straight from our ISP, and giving internet to an archer c7 TP-Link through one of its LAN ports in a LAN to LAN bridged mode connection. Of course, it is also managing the IPs of the devices connected to it through DHCP (I disabled that option for the TP Link when I was configuring it to act as a bridge). I also gave my TP-Link a different LAN IP to avoid problems with the Cisco's LAN IP and set it to 192.168.0.254.
So far so good, the home network was working and all was good up until to a point when I decided to add a USB Hard drive to one of the USB slots of the TP-Link, which I was planning to use as a file server. Firstly, I noticed I couldn't access my router because the IP the Cisco was giving me through the Wi-Fi connection I was having with the bridged router, was different from 192.168.0.X, thus preventing me from being on the same network as the TP-Link. However, I changed my IP to 192.168.0.253 while retaining my connection with the WiFi and voila, I was in. I went to the USB settings in the firmware and was given 3 options to choose from:
1) Network Neighbourhood - (which I understood as default, as it simply added the file server to my Finder, without any configuration)
2) FTP - which allowed me a connection through ftp://192.168.0.254:21 (from a browser or from my MAC's connect to server option) with 21 being the default port it gave me
3) FTP (remote) - which had to be the best solution for me as it allowed me a connection over the internet and not just my local network.
However, it needed an IP and was giving me a default of 0.0.0.0:21 because of the fact that my WAN port was unplugged (due to the bridge mode). That meant that even if I gave it an IP it would still show a red sign saying YOUR WAN PORT IS UNPLUGGED, and thus gave me no results whatsoever.
So my question is - How do I connect a hard drive to a bridged router and is it even possible to do it. It is also important to note, that I had no problems accessing my hard drive through 1) and 2) when I changed my IP to 192.168.0.X but was absolutely unable to access it through an IP handed to me from the DHCP of the Cisco.
P.S - A friend of mine, who is a network admin, told me he was using an openWRT system on his router and it was doing the job for him, but I'm completely clueless about it. However I read about it and looked into it and found out that it was limiting the capabilities of the TP-Link (and that's coming from their own forums, so it shouldn't be a marketing trick, hehe) so I would prefer not to use it.
Anyways, sorry for the long post ppl!
Elarith
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram