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

[XRaySpeX]

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

1. 1st connect the Secondary BB individually to your PC to do these 1st 6 steps below.
2. 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.
3. Set Protocol of Secondary BB = Bridging, under Basic Settings.
4. 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.
5. Disable DHCP on Secondary BB.
6. Disable NAT on Secondary BB.
7. Make the Wireless SSID & pwd of Secondary BB to be same as Primary BB (or you can play around with a separate WLAN).
8. Connect Primary BB LAN port to Secondary BB WAN port by Ethernet cable or PowerLines, as suggested in other reply.
9. Reserve the Secondary BB's Gateway IP Addy in the DHCP of the Primary BB.
10. 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.

[TribalHound]

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..

[XRaySpeX]

@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.

[TribalHound]

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.

[ducknroll]

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!

[XRaySpeX]

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

[baldmosher]

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#Post44...

[XRaySpeX]

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..

[ducknroll]

thanks very much, @baldmosher 

[XRaySpeX]

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.

1. 1st connect the Secondary BB individually to your PC to do these 1st 6 steps below.
2. 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.
3. Set Protocol of Secondary BB = Routing, under Basic Settings.
4. 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.*.
5. Keep enabled DHCP on Secondary BB.
6. Keep enabled NAT on Secondary BB.
7. Make the Wireless SSID & pwd of Secondary BB to be same as Primary BB (or you can play around with a separate WLAN).
8. Connect Primary BB LAN port to Secondary BB WAN port by Ethernet cable or PowerLines, as suggested in other reply.
9. Reserve the Secondary BB's IP Addy as 192.168.1.2 in the DHCP of the Primary BB.
10. 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.