Keep bridge mode enabled?

djdelarosa25 · December 4, 2021

Hi! I'm a bit of a networking noob so please bear with me.

My dad upgraded our fiber connection to 100 Mbps, and today the two TP-Link Deco M4s that were part of the deal arrived. I managed to set them both up no problems with the Huawei combo modem/router provided to us by our ISP around 4 years ago when we first signed the contract. It's shit: it doesn't even support 5 GHz, and I don't know why they didn't bother upgrading it with a newer model. Anyway, I read about enabling bridge mode and how it's apparently better especially in my case where the original router is shit. Unfortunately, our ISP locked admin access for it, so I had to do some hacky stuff to gain access and enable bridge mode (I don't even know if it's "real" bridge mode). After that, I set the main Deco unit to run in router mode. So far, it's been working fine. However, I ran some tests and the speed between previous setup where the Decos were set up as APs versus the current bridged setup is the same, 100 Mbps download upstairs where it's closest and 50 Mbps downstairs.

What do you guys think, should I keep bridge mode enabled, or just revert to the original configuration since I get the same speeds anyway? Also, is the hit in download speed normal?

Thanks in advance!

Allan B · December 4, 2021

If you don't enable bridge mode and use your own router, you are basically double "natting you network traffic. This will not impact download speeds for the most part, where it becomes a problem is if you ever require incoming connections. Since your router has a private ip address, port forwarding has to be done on both routers. But if you do not require incoming connections then either way would work, avoiding the double nat and using bridge mode on the ISP modem is ideal.

Various wifi speeds around your house are expected even when using the mesh setup with the Deco M4's. There are many variables based on your house and device loations. Having the M4's in locations where they can talk to each other with a strong signal would provide the best overall experience. Like keep them reasonably close together in the house vs one at each end of your house.

jec6613 · December 4, 2021

There is a hit to ping as well if you double NAT, and your routers both need to be pretty robust to handle tracking all of the connections. Either Bridge +NAT Router, or you can do NAT Router + Classical Router using RIP or OSPF (business equipment mostly) if you need more complex topologies.

Alex Atkin UK · December 4, 2021

2 hours ago, Allan B said:

If you don't enable bridge mode and use your own router, you are basically double "natting you network traffic. This will not impact download speeds for the most part, where it becomes a problem is if you ever require incoming connections. Since your router has a private ip address, port forwarding has to be done on both routers. But if you do not require incoming connections then either way would work, avoiding the double nat and using bridge mode on the ISP modem is ideal.

Various wifi speeds around your house are expected even when using the mesh setup with the Deco M4's. There are many variables based on your house and device loations. Having the M4's in locations where they can talk to each other with a strong signal would provide the best overall experience. Like keep them reasonably close together in the house vs one at each end of your house.

59 minutes ago, jec6613 said:

There is a hit to ping as well if you double NAT, and your routers both need to be pretty robust to handle tracking all of the connections. Either Bridge +NAT Router, or you can do NAT Router + Classical Router using RIP or OSPF (business equipment mostly) if you need more complex topologies.

You both seem to have missed "Decos were set up as APs versus the current bridged setup". So no, it wouldn't be double-NAT.

4 hours ago, djdelarosa25 said:

What do you guys think, should I keep bridge mode enabled, or just revert to the original configuration since I get the same speeds anyway? Also, is the hit in download speed normal?

I'd keep bridge mode, especially if the Deco has a faster SoC/CPU. You now have full control over the router functions rather than the locked-down router you had before.

You may find that under high loads (lots of connections rather than a few fast ones) performance and especially latency is improved. At least if its REAL bridge mode.

Also if there was any scope for upgrading even faster, it might handle it better. A router in bridge mode is doing a lot less work so can push higher bandwidth, as its simply passing the data over to your actual router without having to perform NAT, again assuming its REAL bridge mode and not something like DHCP passthrough where it potentially is still doing a NAT-like operation to fake bridge mode.