Strange WiFi issue

[Stahlmann]

I recently moved into a new apartment and i ran into a strange issue with my landlord. We have an arragement that i don't need to get my own internet contract, but pay him a bit of money and hook into his lan network which is wired throughout the whole house anyway. I still bought a router to have my own Wifi network. As soon as i connect my router he randomly gets age verification requests on netflix and youtube. He has verified 18+ accounts for both google and netflix. Once i unplug my router, he doesn't have the problem anymore. Both of his accounts and my router settings have all age restriction and family management features disabled.

 

Can anyone explain this?

[Radium_Angel]

Possible:

 

Two routers (his and yours) may trigger a Netflix etc to think you are running a VPN and as such, start popping up the issues you are seeing.

 

[Robchil]

31 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

I recently moved into a new apartment and i ran into a strange issue with my landlord. We have an arragement that i don't need to get my own internet contract, but pay him a bit of money and hook into his lan network which is wired throughout the whole house anyway. I still bought a router to have my own Wifi network. As soon as i connect my router he randomly gets age verification requests on netflix and youtube. He has verified 18+ accounts for both google and netflix. Once i unplug my router, he doesn't have the problem anymore. Both of his accounts and my router settings have all age restriction and family management features disabled.

 

Can anyone explain this?

check that you don't have same ip range infront and behind your router.. if you do change the ip range your router uses. 

that's if you have NAT on behind your router.. 

 

[Stahlmann]

1 hour ago, Radium_Angel said:

Two routers (his and yours) may trigger a Netflix etc to think you are running a VPN and as such, start popping up the issues you are seeing.

my router is hooked up after his router, not the modem directly. So his TV (which is using LAN, not WIFI) shouldn't be impacted by my router at all. As far as the network is concerned, my router should just be recognized as one more device for his router.

 

1 hour ago, Robchil said:

check that you don't have same ip range infront and behind your router.. if you do change the ip range your router uses. 

that's if you have NAT on behind your router.. 

You lost me...

 

 

I'm gonna try something else and set my router to work as an access point with it's own SSID and password, as this is pretty much what it's used for atm.

[LIGISTX]

1 hour ago, Stahlmann said:

 

I'm gonna try something else and set my router to work as an access point with it's own SSID and password, as this is pretty much what it's used for atm.

If you do this, it won’t do what you seemingly want it to do. This is no different then just using the landlords Wifi. A different SSID with 0 firewall or subnet segregation means nothing from a network standpoint. If you set it up in AP mode, you would have 0 network separation from the landlords LAN, which maybe you are fine with, but based on you “wanting your own Wifi”, this wouldn’t do that for you. You both would be able to see each others devices as if you were just using the single SSID from your landlord (basically, this is just adding the complexity of a second AP and SSID for 0 benefit). 
 

If you want network segregation, you need to use your own router as a router, and make sure it’s subnet is not 192.168.1.1 (assuming your landlords is 192.168.1.1… yours just needs to be something different). This can be found in the routers setting somewhere, every router is different. 
 

So set yours to be 1 off from his for ease (you can use any private network as defined here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_network, but easier to just do 192.168.2.1 for example). 

[LIGISTX]

To add an analogy to this to make it easier to comprehend… 

 

Your LAN subnet (192.168.1.1) is like a room, and SSID’s and their passwords are like doors. A single subnet of 192.168.1.1 with multiple SSID’s is like having 2 doors going into the same room, each from a different hallway using a different door handle code to open. But once inside… you’re in the same exact room.

 

Two subnets (192.168.1.1 and 192.168.2.1[assuming there is a firewall between them, which there would be if you have a router in between them]) is like two rooms that don’t have doors connecting them… you need your unique door code (SSID and password) to get into either room, but once inside either room, you can’t see anything in the other room since they are physically separated rooms. 
 

Hopefully that helps explain this a little more. It’s not a great analogy, but… at this level, I think it should suffice. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

31 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

but once inside either room, you can’t see anything in the other room since they are physically separated rooms.

Its more like you have a private room at a club with a bouncer at the door (the firewall/NAT in the router).

 

Anyone from within that private room can send messages to people in the main room via the bouncer, or to the Internet where your bouncer passes to the message to your landlords bouncer, and so on.  But the people in the main room or the Internet cannot send messages back to the private room unless there were asked for information by the private room residents first.

 

It works better with this analogy as LANs have broadcasts, which is why you can see a list of who is in your room, you know they are there as you can hear them talking - but anyone in the main room you have no clue if they are there or not, but you can still ask the bouncer to go send them a message (you can talk to clients in the landlords room, as his router is one of those clients).

 

This is basically how the main router works to the Internet too, it doesn't know who is out there so you have to say "hey, go send a message to this server" and various mechanism figure out who that is and routers along the way figure out WHERE they are.

[LIGISTX]

8 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Its more like you have a private room at a club with a bouncer at the door (the firewall/NAT in the router).

 

Anyone from within that private room can send messages to people in the main room via the bouncer, or to the Internet where your bouncer passes to the message to your landlords bouncer, and so on.  But the people in the main room or the Internet cannot send messages back to the private room unless there were asked for information by the private room residents first.

 

It works better with this analogy as LANs have broadcasts, which is why you can see a list of who is in your room, you know they are there as you can hear them talking - but anyone in the main room you have no clue if they are there or not, but you can still ask the bouncer to go send them a message (you can talk to clients in the landlords room, as his router is one of those clients).

 

This is basically how the main router works to the Internet too, it doesn't know who is out there so you have to say "hey, go send a message to this server" and various mechanism figure out who that is and routers along the way figure out WHERE they are.

I think we are saying the same thing, just in a slightly different way…

 

But for OP’s needs, either should make enough sense to understand just adding their router as a simple AP doesn’t gain them anything security or segmentation wise. Just adds an extra headache. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

13 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

I think we are saying the same thing, just in a slightly different way…

 

But for OP’s needs, either should make enough sense to understand just adding their router as a simple AP doesn’t gain them anything security or segmentation wise. Just adds an extra headache. 

I just felt it important to note that technically while they are blocking the landlords clients from seeing theirs, they are not blocking their clients from seeing the landlords.  Probably unimportant for the scenario but worth knowing in case they re-use this knowledge later on for a different scenario where full isolation might be wanted.

[Stahlmann]

On 2/14/2023 at 9:08 PM, LIGISTX said:

If you do this, it won’t do what you seemingly want it to do. This is no different then just using the landlords Wifi. A different SSID with 0 firewall or subnet segregation means nothing from a network standpoint. If you set it up in AP mode, you would have 0 network separation from the landlords LAN, which maybe you are fine with, but based on you “wanting your own Wifi”, this wouldn’t do that for you. You both would be able to see each others devices as if you were just using the single SSID from your landlord (basically, this is just adding the complexity of a second AP and SSID for 0 benefit). 
 

If you want network segregation, you need to use your own router as a router, and make sure it’s subnet is not 192.168.1.1 (assuming your landlords is 192.168.1.1… yours just needs to be something different). This can be found in the routers setting somewhere, every router is different. 
 

So set yours to be 1 off from his for ease (you can use any private network as defined here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_network, but easier to just do 192.168.2.1 for example). 

This worked and there are no more problems after changing the subnet IP on my router. Thank you!