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gigabituser1234's avatar
gigabituser1234
Organizer
6 years ago
Solved

Switch and Router Connected Directly to ONT

Hey everyone,

 

I have had an idea brewing for a bit now on how to fix the Wi-Fi upstairs. Long story short, we have a pretty big house that's been finished already. The previous owners only wired the first floor for Ethernet, and I've already ran a 100ft cable downstairs to the basement from the router to hard wire there. That leaves the upstairs above the garage basically a dead-zone for wireless. I'm talking speeds of around 1mbps when we have internet 750.

 

So anyways, my idea was to connect port one of the ONT to a dumb switch that I have already, which then connects to a Nightgear R7000 setup in AP mode via the LAN port. I would still be using the T3200M and the Optik TV boxes as well. So basically it would go like this:

 

ONT -> Switch -> R7000 in AP -> T3200M -> DLink in AP

 

Quite a bit confusing, but please do let me know if you notice any glaring issues right off the bat. I've tried it once and made it work properly, we get speeds of 400Mbps upstairs now with pings of less than 5ms but I want to make sure I'm not exposing any security flaws or something along those lines to the outside.

 

Thanks for your time everyone!

  • gigabituser1234's avatar
    gigabituser1234
    6 years ago

    I ended up just replacing the T3200M entirely with the R7000 instead. Wi-Fi speeds upstairs are improved in the dead-spots before, but still could be alot better. I'll probably end up using the mesh network like you mentioned. Either that or do a couple cable drops in the house to improve the connection upstairs.

     

    Either way thanks to everyone for your guys input, it definitely helped push me in the right direction!

     

    Cheers.

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  • Nighthawk's avatar
    Nighthawk
    Icon for Community Power User rankCommunity Power User
    6 years ago

    Can't quite figure out how you're going to connect things. Is it:

                    +--  R7000
                |
ONT -- Switch --+--  T3200M
                |
                +--  Dlink AP

    or

    ONT -- Switch --+--  R7000 ->-> T3200M
                |
                +--  Dlink AP

    ?

     

    One problem I could see is if you connect the R7000 directly to the ONT/Switch in AP mode is that the devices connected to the R7000 will all be trying to pull external IPs and there won't be a firewall since no router. That would be bad for security and also Telus usually limits the number of external IPs on a residential account to 2.

     

    If you want the devices in your house to be able to communicate with each other, you need a router before the APs. The config I had was Modem > T3200M > (LAN4) > Router. All my personal devices ran off the router which was running default settings as a router and not an AP. The Optik boxes were directly connected to the T3200. I had no issues on my personal devices in that configuration, even with gaming.

     

     

    • gigabituser1234's avatar
      gigabituser1234
      Organizer
      6 years ago

      Hey thanks for the reply! Bear with me here as it might get confusing haha. When it was buttoned up my setup took the original Eth cable that was connected to port one of the ONT which ran through the walls and linked up with the Ethernet port inside behind the TV and connected that to the router instead. After I added the R7000 router it was more or less like so:

       

      Wall Ran Eth Cable -- Switch -- LAN1 of R7000

      and from LAN2 of the R7000 it goes like so:

      LAN2 of R7000 -- Port 1 of ONT

       

      D-Link side of things of network is OK. Connected devices can communicate with each other and are able to use my PiHole that I set up, but the R7000 is pulling a 66.xxx ip address with a 74.xxx gateway so it can't.

       

      Now that I'm writing this up you'll probably be more confused by what I said. If that's the case I can take photos of what it was setup as and then upload them here 🙂

       

      Thanks again for your help.

       

       

      • Nighthawk's avatar
        Nighthawk
        Icon for Community Power User rankCommunity Power User
        6 years ago

        The original connection from the ONT > Ethernet > T3200 had the ethernet in WAN port on the T3200.

         

        You can't use a PiHole because your R7000 is not functioning as a router. Never connect a LAN port to a direct connection to the ONT. No device will be on the same network, since there isn't one with the exception of the Dlink. Dlink sounds like it's acting like a router and not a plain WAP unless you have it connected to a LAN port on the T3200.

         

        The only way you can likely get the R7000 to use the PiHole is if the R7000 is set up specifically as a router and not an AP. You should have the ONT first. Then the switch. Then the ethernet from the switch connected to the WAN port on your R7000 and reset it back to working as a router, not an AP. Connect the Dlink to that then.

         

        The alternate way is have the R7000 (WAN) connected to one of the LAN ports on the T3200 and use the R7000 as an AP that way.

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