# A Wireless Networking Question



## jbolt (Sep 6, 2021)

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.


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## woodchucker (Sep 6, 2021)

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.


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## MrWhoopee (Sep 6, 2021)

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.


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## matthewsx (Sep 6, 2021)

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.









						Networking, Cloud, and Cybersecurity Solutions
					

Cisco delivers innovative software-defined networking, cloud, and security solutions to help transform your business, empowering an inclusive future for all.



					www.cisco.com
				




John


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## ttabbal (Sep 6, 2021)

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.


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## rabler (Sep 6, 2021)

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.


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## jbolt (Sep 6, 2021)

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!


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## matthewsx (Sep 6, 2021)

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


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## jbolt (Sep 7, 2021)

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


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## Lo-Fi (Sep 7, 2021)

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"?


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## jbolt (Sep 7, 2021)

Lo-Fi said:


> 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"?


Maybe "operation mode"? Currently set as Client Router.


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## Lo-Fi (Sep 7, 2021)

jbolt said:


> Maybe "operation mode"? Currently set as Client Router.
> 
> View attachment 377598


You'll want it set to AP Bridge both ends. That essentially extends the remote end into an extension of the house network, rather than being a segregated joined network that needs extra config to do anything sensible with. Get that up and running and it should "just work" 
Manual should tell you how to go about that, but it's not usually difficult to configure.

(I'm an IT pro for a living)


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## jbolt (Sep 7, 2021)

The RadioLabs system I have is just a single antenna pointed in the direction of where the primary wireless router is in the other building. 




I think this is similar to how the primary router is setup where the antenna that is up in a tree is pointed at a tower on a mountain 5 miles away.

Should I be using a different bridge system than the radio labs? I have no problem scraping what I have and starting over.


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## ttabbal (Sep 7, 2021)

The "router" mode is causing you to create what amounts to a separate network on the RadioLabs system. It can work, sort of, but you will end up creating a double-NAT that can cause other issues. 

It sounds like the radiolabs setup is just to connect to the main router? It's not to distribute wifi? Try Client Bridge. That should connect to the "main" router over wifi and give you working wired access as if you connected over wifi to the main router. It also avoids having a repeater setup, which cuts throughput in half and can create another failure mode. You can add an AP there to provide wifi, but make sure you disable DHCP on the lan and connect to one of the LAN ports, ignore the WAN port.


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## pontiac428 (Sep 7, 2021)

It would be easier to run CAT5/6 and just run a router in the shop.  I wish I hadn't gotten lazy after digging my power trench and just laid another run of conduit for a hard line.  Instead, I'm using a patch antenna on the house to talk to a wireless bridge inside the shop.  That means manually connecting my phone to the bridge instead of seamlessly transitioning to a router, like the rest of my home network.  It's great for my shop PC that never leaves the bridge, though.


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## jbolt (Sep 7, 2021)

ttabbal said:


> The "router" mode is causing you to create what amounts to a separate network on the RadioLabs system. It can work, sort of, but you will end up creating a double-NAT that can cause other issues.
> 
> It sounds like the radiolabs setup is just to connect to the main router? It's not to distribute wifi? Try Client Bridge. That should connect to the "main" router over wifi and give you working wired access as if you connected over wifi to the main router. It also avoids having a repeater setup, which cuts throughput in half and can create another failure mode. You can add an AP there to provide wifi, but make sure you disable DHCP on the lan and connect to one of the LAN ports, ignore the WAN port.


Yes it does create a separate network. Internet only works over the wifi.

If I change to "Client Bridge" I lose the connection to the primary router. 

In either "Client Router" or "Client Bridge" and DHCP disabled the LAN address is always 10.x.x.x


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## jbolt (Sep 7, 2021)

pontiac428 said:


> It would be easier to run CAT5/6 and just run a router in the shop.  I wish I hadn't gotten lazy after digging my power trench and just laid another run of conduit for a hard line.  Instead, I'm using a patch antenna on the house to talk to a wireless bridge inside the shop.  That means manually connecting my phone to the bridge instead of seamlessly transitioning to a router, like the rest of my home network.  It's great for my shop PC that never leaves the bridge, though.


Certainly setup (for me) would be easier but as I stated before, trenching is not an option right now.


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## matthewsx (Sep 7, 2021)

jbolt said:


> Yes it does create a separate network. Internet only works over the wifi.
> 
> If I change to "Client Bridge" I lose the connection to the primary router.
> 
> In either "Client Router" or "Client Bridge" and DHCP disabled the LAN address is always 10.x.x.x


You can't set the IP address static? That doesn't sound right, should be able to just type in a 192.168.x.x address. If not I would question their support tech.

You could always set the other network to a 10.x.x.x network but you shouldn't have to.

 I really like the Ubiquity stuff though because it lets me manage my network remotely, something that would come in handy for supporting remote users too....

John


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## jbolt (Sep 7, 2021)

So set the RadioLabs LAN to a 192.168.x.x static IP and disable DHCP?

Sent from my SM-G981U using Tapatalk


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## matthewsx (Sep 7, 2021)

jbolt said:


> So set the RadioLabs LAN to a 192.168.x.x static IP and disable DHCP?
> 
> Sent from my SM-G981U using Tapatalk


Yes, that's what I would do. Your TP-Link router is serving DHCP but apparently it's not getting to the LAN interface of the wireless bridge. Set that to 192.168.0.200 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 and see if you can ping the outside world while hardwired to the LAN interface.

John


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## jbolt (Sep 7, 2021)

matthewsx said:


> Yes, that's what I would do. Your TP-Link router is serving DHCP but apparently it's not getting to the LAN interface of the wireless bridge. Set that to 192.168.0.200 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 and see if you can ping the outside world while hardwired to the LAN interface.
> 
> John


Ooops! That locked me out of the router. LOL.


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## matthewsx (Sep 7, 2021)

You changed the IP address on the wireless bridge and now you can's access the TP-Link router? What exactly is your computer connected to?


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## jbolt (Sep 8, 2021)

matthewsx said:


> You changed the IP address on the wireless bridge and now you can's access the TP-Link router? What exactly is your computer connected to?


No, I cannot connect to the RadioLabs bridge/router. The tp-link router is fine.


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## matthewsx (Sep 8, 2021)

Okay, I'm heading into work soon but if you're trying to connect to the bridge I assume you're plugged directly into it with a Cat 5 cable. Since it's not serving DHCP you'll need to set a static IP on your computer, something like 192.168.0.202 with the same subnet mask you used for the bridge. If none of this makes sense you can do a "factory reset" on the device and start from scratch, this may be best since you've done a bunch of things to troubleshoot and you may not be sure exactly where you're at.

This stuff isn't too complicated, just frustrating since you can't see exactly what's going on. You will figure it out eventually, just hopefully before you decided to rent the mini backhoe and start trenching.

Contact RadioLabs support for help with the factory reset, they should want to get you up and running....

John


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## jbolt (Sep 8, 2021)

No worries John. I don't mind the challenge!

The outdoor access point I installed on the shop yesterday is working almost as well as the bridge was working so I am covered while I sort this out.


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## jbolt (Sep 11, 2021)

BwwaaHaHaHa!

Success! Okay so after chatting with the tech guy again I got nowhere. He seemed disinterested in helping me make it work the way I wanted so I scrapped that bridge.

The only thing I could find available and in stock locally was a pair of tp-link CPR510s. I had some trouble with the first one setting it up as the access point. The web interface was buggy. It would not even work unless the browser was in incognito mode. Even then it was painfully slow with a lot of data errors. The one for the client side setup fine. On my first go, some of the settings didn't take on the AP unit, so when the client connected the connection wasn't stable and would disconnect every few seconds. At first it would not finish loading the GUI after the settings and IP change. I had to setup a different computer to log back in and when I did I found the distance was set to 27km instead of the 0.046km I had set it to. After correcting the settings it works perfect! The CPE 510 client connects to a switch in the office so no more wifi to my work computer.

Now I have an outdoor access point mounted to the shop exterior. The wireless network connection from the shop to my office and another outdoor access point at the front of the house that is connected via cable to the switch in the office. The wifi access points are all on the same network so as you move around the house/property the network roams to the strongest signal! 

Mucho Contento!!!


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