topic Re: To make a second Brightbox as a WAP on your LAN to the main Brightbox in Broadband & Landline

To make a second Brightbox as a WAP on your LAN to the main Brightbox

XRaySpeX — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 22:43:14 GMT

I have a BB1 currently acting as a WAP as an experiment & it works. Here's how for all types of Brightbox:

1st connect the Secondary BB individually to your PC to do these 1st 6 steps below.
Set Broadband Type of Secondary BB = Fibre/Ethernet for a BB1 or Ethernet for a BB2 (untick the "Enable ADSL/Fibre auto sensing" 1st), under Basic Settings.
Set Protocol of Secondary BB = Bridging, under Basic Settings.
Set the Gateway IP Addy of the Secondary BB, under DHCP, to be diff from that of Primary BB but on same subnet, e.g. if Primary BB's is 192.168.1.1, make the Secondary BB's 192.168.1.2.
Disable DHCP on Secondary BB.
Disable NAT on Secondary BB.
Make the Wireless SSID & pwd of Secondary BB to be same as Primary BB (or you can play around with a separate WLAN).
Connect Primary BB LAN port to Secondary BB WAN port by Ethernet cable or PowerLines, as suggested in other reply.
Reserve the Secondary BB's Gateway IP Addy in the DHCP of the Primary BB.
You should not need to make any other changes to the Primary BB.

If you ever need to reconfigure the Secondary BB, you may find that you cannot access it from http://192.168.1.2/ as it objects to "Duplicate Administrator" In which case you will need to again connect the Secondary BB individually to your PC to administer it.

Re: To make a second Brightbox as a WAP on your LAN to the main Brightbox

TribalHound — Fri, 15 May 2020 18:39:36 GMT

I know this thread has been knocking around for a long time in one guise or another, and it's entirely possible that my question has already been answered somewhere, or that it's just not possible.

But here goes....

Background:

Current config is using a BB2 for my home network...

192.168.1.x - LAN1 (SSID1) - my main (personal) network

192.168.2.x - VLAN2 (SSID2) Home Entertainment (TV / SAT / MEDIA Server / BlueRay etc..)

192.168..3.x - VLAN3 (SSID3) - Guest Network (visitors) - none of 'my devices' attached and used when working from home for work laptop - restricted to 50% total bandwidth usage

I have no trouble following the guide to use a BB1 with cable (BB2 LAN to BB1 WAN) to use as a switch / wifi repeater in another part of the house - works great with 192.168.1.x

What I really want to do (now working from home a LOT and there's too much wifi drop off with the distance / walls etc) is dedicate BB1 to 192.168.3.x - a wired and wifi extension to 192.168.3.x

My BB2 admin can be managed from all 3 networks - but can you lock BB2 LAN --> BB1 WAN so it doesn't default back to 192.168.1.x ??

Hope this all makes as much sense as your instructions, which took about 10 minutes to follow and has worked fine for over 6 months.

Tribal..

Re: To make a second Brightbox as a WAP on your LAN to the main Brightbox

XRaySpeX — Fri, 15 May 2020 19:16:56 GMT

@TribalHound : Ah, never thought of doing that. All I can suggest as per my original solution is:

4. Set the Gateway IP Addy of the Secondary BB, under DHCP (VLAN1), to be diff from that of Primary BB (VLAN3) but on same subnet, e.g. if Primary BB's (VLAN3) is 192.168.3.1, make the Secondary BB's (VLAN1) 192.168.3.2.

7. Make the Wireless SSID & pwd of Secondary BB (VLAN1) to be same as Primary BB (VLAN3) (or you can play around with a separate WLAN).

9. Reserve the Secondary BB's Gateway IP Addy (VLAN1) in the DHCP (VLAN3) of the Primary BB.

If that doesn't give the desired effect try setting VLAN3 of the Secondary BB instead of VLAN1.

Re: To make a second Brightbox as a WAP on your LAN to the main Brightbox

TribalHound — Fri, 15 May 2020 20:19:28 GMT

All makes sense in theory - but as soon as you plug the cable into BB2 it reverts to 192.168.1.x network

Need to lock one of the ports to 192.168.3.x vlan3 if possible.

Re: To make a second Brightbox as a WAP on your LAN to the main Brightbox

ducknroll — Wed, 20 May 2020 13:41:46 GMT

Hi @XRaySpeX

Thanks for these v useful instructions.

I was hoping the secondary bright box (the wireless access point one) could also be used as an ethernet hub, but it doesn't seem to recognise a wired connection, only WiFi (win 10 says something like "unrecognised network, no internet").

Do you know if it is possible to use the secondary bright box for a wired connection, i.e:

PC > ethernet cable > secondary (wap) BB2 > ethernet cable > primary ee smart hub > fibre

And, if so, what the required settings might be?

Thanks!

Re: To make a second Brightbox as a WAP on your LAN to the main Brightbox

XRaySpeX — Wed, 20 May 2020 17:20:37 GMT

@ducknroll : I would've thought that you can use the Ethernet ports of the Secondary BB but have never tried it..

Re: To make a second Brightbox as a WAP on your LAN to the main Brightbox

baldmosher — Wed, 20 May 2020 20:36:03 GMT

I think the LAN ports are assigned to the "default" network only. (Multiple DHCP on one network can be a minefield though. I've had to be very thoughtful about my Ethernet cabling as I have 4 separate subnets.)

Incidentally, I got mine working, after stumbling upon a really old post on the Think Broadband forums... Face2611 method sorted it out for me, after trying for ages with loads of different settings!

https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/multiuser/4145500-orange-brightbox-as-repeater.html?fpart=2#Post4456517

Re: To make a second Brightbox as a WAP on your LAN to the main Brightbox

XRaySpeX — Wed, 20 May 2020 21:46:23 GMT

Ah, yes. I have also run the secondary BB2 in "Router" mode rather than "Bridging" & with a completely diff range of DHCP IP's from the main router.

I'm surprised it worked in "Bridging" mode with the non-default VLANs as the SH has only 1.

The Ethernet ports are on the default VLAN0 but in "Router" mode the BB2 is operating independently of the SH DHCP-wise & is running in its normal configuration of multiple VLANs..

Re: To make a second Brightbox as a WAP on your LAN to the main Brightbox

ducknroll — Thu, 21 May 2020 20:56:17 GMT

thanks very much, @baldmosher

Re: To make a second Brightbox as a WAP on your LAN to the main Brightbox

XRaySpeX — Fri, 21 Aug 2020 01:27:46 GMT

As an alternative to having the Secondary BB just as a Bridge you could have it as a full-blown Router. However this does introduce a double NAT, but it does work.

1st connect the Secondary BB individually to your PC to do these 1st 6 steps below.
Set Broadband Type of Secondary BB = Fibre/Ethernet for a BB1 or Ethernet for a BB2 (untick the "Enable ADSL/Fibre auto sensing" 1st), under Basic Settings.
Set Protocol of Secondary BB = Routing, under Basic Settings.
Set the DHCP Range of Secondary BB to be on a diff subnet from that of Primary BB, e.g. if Primary BB's is 192.168.1.*, make the Secondary BB's 192.168.10.*.
Keep enabled DHCP on Secondary BB.
Keep enabled NAT on Secondary BB.
Make the Wireless SSID & pwd of Secondary BB to be same as Primary BB (or you can play around with a separate WLAN).
Connect Primary BB LAN port to Secondary BB WAN port by Ethernet cable or PowerLines, as suggested in other reply.
Reserve the Secondary BB's IP Addy as 192.168.1.2 in the DHCP of the Primary BB.
You should not need to make any other changes to the Primary BB.

If you ever need to reconfigure the Secondary BB, you may find that you cannot access it from http://192.168.10.1/ as it objects to "Duplicate Administrator" In which case you will need to again connect the Secondary BB individually to your PC to administer it.

Re: To make a second Brightbox as a WAP on your LAN to the main Brightbox

TechBeginner — Mon, 07 Sep 2020 09:33:09 GMT

Slight variation on the recent subject, but question more associated to the original question:

I have a Brightbox 2 Primary router and over the years have gathered some additional wifi routers from EE including a BB (original, flat); a BB(R) and a BB2. By following the instructions earlier in the thread I have successfully been able to get the BB and the BB2 connected to the Primary Router as secondary routers using IPs 192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.3 respectively.

For the Brightbox (R) wireless router I am having an interesting problem. The short summary of which is that i have been able to connect it to the primary router and it is working effectively with both LAN and Wifi extended, but in the process of changing the IP address from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.4 (being the fourth device) I am now unable to log back into this router to continue to configure it. I have tried doing this in various different ways with no luck! Only way I can re-access router is by resetting it first.

Has anyone else had any similar Is there any advice anyone can give on how to get the BB (R) to link up and still be able to log in to the router?