Troubleshooting routing and stability issues

[IAmAndre]

Hi,

 

So I have issues on my home network, which consists in a main router in the living, connected to a switch, which is then connected to the ethernet ports across the house. I have a TP-Link VR400 in my office, connected to the wall ethernet port. The problem is I'm getting frequent disconnections, especially on my MacBook. So every 5 minutes or so, I'm disconnected for at least 30 seconds.

I have been advised to 1) change the IP address on the TP-Link to something other than 192.168.1.1 since it's the address used by the main router and 2) disable DHCP on the TP-Link to avoid any conflicts.

The problem is when I set the IP to 192.168.1.5 for example, I get no internet at all, with DHCP disabled or not. I think I'm missing something. What would be the process to have the TP-Link router connected to the main router using an address other than 192.168.1.1?

 

Thanks

[Falcon1986]

@IAmAndre

 

Assuming the VR400 is downstream of the switch (which is itself downstream of the primary router), you need to ideally set up the VR400 in AP mode. Unfortunately, because the VR400 is a gateway device (combo modem, router, AP and switch) this isn’t a simple task.

 

Try this…

 

Ensure it’s running in ‘wireless router’ mode, then choose ‘static IP’ as internet connection type. Give it a LAN IP within the same subnet as your primary router but outside of the DHCP pool (subnet mask is 255.255.255.0, gateway is 192.168.1.1, primary DNS is 192.168.1.1). Configure the LAN settings such that they use a different subnet than 192.168.1.x; for example, 192.168.2.1. The corresponding DHCP pool will be 192.168.2.x - 192.168.2.y. Keep gateway and DNS to blank or test with 192.168.1.1 if blank doesn’t work. Then you can set up the WiFi how you want ensuring to use broadcast channels that don’t overlap with any other APs.

[IAmAndre]

1 hour ago, Falcon1986 said:

@IAmAndre

 

Assuming the VR400 is downstream of the switch (which is itself downstream of the primary router), you need to ideally set up the VR400 in AP mode. Unfortunately, because the VR400 is a gateway device (combo modem, router, AP and switch) this isn’t a simple task.

 

Try this…

 

Ensure it’s running in ‘wireless router’ mode, then choose ‘static IP’ as internet connection type. Give it a LAN IP within the same subnet as your primary router but outside of the DHCP pool (subnet mask is 255.255.255.0, gateway is 192.168.1.1, primary DNS is 192.168.1.1). Configure the LAN settings such that they use a different subnet than 192.168.1.x; for example, 192.168.2.1. The corresponding DHCP pool will be 192.168.2.x - 192.168.2.y. Keep gateway and DNS to blank or test with 192.168.1.1 if blank doesn’t work. Then you can set up the WiFi how you want ensuring to use broadcast channels that don’t overlap with any other APs.

Thanks. So I found a temporary fix after because I've been suggested earlier to set it as an AP, and as I was googling how to do it, I found this tutorial video from TP-Link: https://youtu.be/dpmO10tSStA

 

Now the thing is I didn't have to follow through the video. I just reset the router, and right after I plugged in the cable in the WAN port, everything started working fine. I had nothing to do, and I haven't had any disconnection so far. I hope I didn't mess up anything though. I'll see if the disconnections actually disappeared for good, otherwise I'll look into implementing your solution.