Using 4GEE B625 with second router

[daryl_lloyd]

Does anyone have any good experiences of pairing the B625 with a secondary router?

I've just got set up today with the 4G router as my ADSL line is so poor (it basically falls over in heavy rain). Although the 4G modem is getting me faster connection speeds at 6-10 Mbps (I know, don't laugh, but 6 Mbps seems like a lot when 3.5Mbps was the fastest you ever hit before!) it seems to be deliberately built to be useless to anyone with even a slightly complicated LAN.

I want to give a few key devices fixed IP address - three couple of Raspberry PI servers, a printer and a Humax recorded. And, preferably, I'd like to just leave the IP addresses fixed as I've got them now so I don't need to reconfigure them all. But there seems to be absolutely no way of changing the LAN settings in this router nor anyway of allocating fixed IP settings.

So, my second thought was whether I could use one of my two Billion modem routers (which both have a WAN port as well as an ADSL port) to act as the main router. i.e. turn off the wifi on the 4GEE, connect it by ethernet to the Billion router, and then for the Billion router to handle all the firewalling, routing, DHCP, etc.

But I don't have enough know-how of how to implement such a system 😞 

Is anyone out there doing anything similar?

Failing this, I'll have to rebuild my network from scratch and put in a new access point to cover the part of the house that the Billion wifi used to cover.

How I'd like meet the person who thought that heavily restricting the configuration on this 4GEE router.....How can they justify this kind of thing? 

[XRaySpeX]

I presume there is no DHCP section in the 4GEE Home Router to reconfigure the DHCP. I was also similarly disappointed to find the same on the 4GEE WiFi Mini router, so I'm unable to run it in parallel to the other routers on my LAN as its Gateway IP clashes & I can't change it. Yet its predecessor, the Osprey, had a fully configurable DHCP. 

[daryl_lloyd]

Correct, there is no DHCP settings.

I can't the believe that the original firmware didn't have them. So someone at EE has deliberately sabotaged the router. Why would they do this? 

Is it absolutely necessary to turn off the DHCP? Are there routers that could put the 4GEE router into a DMZ and just use it as a modem? 

[daryl_lloyd]

If anyone else wants to get better control over their LAN settings, I can confirm that you can use a cable router to do so.

I have configured a Billion 7800N https://support.billion.uk.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/279/16/configure-7800n-as-a-rou... to manage the entire network.

The way it works now is the 4GEE connects to the EE network. The Billion router is then connected by ethernet. All computers connect to the Billion router. The Billion router then sets all of the LAN settings (IP range, fixed IP, firewall, etc) for all devices connected through it.

In effect, their are two subnets. One on 192.168.8.x subnet - covering just the 4GEE and WAN socket on the Billion. And one on 192.168.0.x subnet - covering the whole LAN, which is then granted internet access via the .8.x subnet.

It was actually very simple to set up in the end 🙂