Author Topic: WZR-600DHP: Great Router, Just Don't Try to Make It Be a Bridge  (Read 12414 times)

lorriew

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WZR-600DHP: Great Router, Just Don't Try to Make It Be a Bridge
« on: February 25, 2013, 03:52:14 AM »

I'm leaving the original message below in case anyone else has this problem, but here is the result:

 

The WZR-600DHP can join two LAN's together...sort of...but in either of the available theoretically appropriate modes, WDS or Client Bridge (Routed), it does not create a true network bridge, where two LAN segments are completely and seamlessly combined. 

 

 

1) UPnP requests will not be relayed to the client "bridge":

This means that, for example, your XBox will say "You are under Moderate NAT Restriction".

 

2) Services that depend on network polling to announce available services will not work right between the two segments.

If you were expecting a network scan for a printer, shared hard drive,  AV device, AirPlay, or so on, and you wanted the two halves of the network to nicely share this data, you probably won't get it. 

 

Now, each half of the network will happily share this data with itself. The half that's on the client "bridge" (it's not; it's routing a second LAN into the same space as a larger one--call it a "brouter"?) will be able to get out to the Internet. If that's all you need for your network to be all that you need, then you're good.

 

However, if you want all your devices to operate on exactly the same LAN no matter where you are in your coverage area, go buy a real wireless Ethernet bridge. After haunting other forums and review sites, I wound up with a Netgear WNCE3001 for a bridge, and I plugged its lonely Ethernet port into an eight-port Netgear GS108 switch. Together, I paid less than I would have done for Buffalo's four port bridge/switch in a single chassis--I probably lost antennas and theoretical maximum bandwidth in the process, but this didn't appear to harm anything in my testing...and wow I was getting really tired of driving to my local electronics emporium (the name rhymes with Bry's, and there is an evil there that does not sleep).

 

The only hurdle to getting the bridge to talk to the WZR-600DHP was that I had had my wireless encryption set up to use TKIP only (thinking this may have presented a barrier to entry). The WNCE3001 wouldn't do TKIP, so if you buy this bridge based on my recommendation, make sure you have set the WPA Algorithms to TKIP+AES in Wireless > Wireless Security. AES is stronger, faster, and preferred, but older/cheaper hardware may only speak TKIP.  

 

My lingering annoyance with the Netgear WNCE3001 is that I'm so thoroughly spoiled by dd-wrt that the extremely simpleminded web interface on the bridge won't even let me change it's name.

 

I'm very happy with the WZR-600DHP's performance as a router. I'm going to take the second one, blast it back to factory defaults, and give it to a friend who has problems pushing signal through her hundred-year-old wood-frame house. I'm hoping we can ditch her repeater, because the high gain antennas on this thing have greatly improved signal strength exactly where I needed it..

 

Best,

 

-- Lorrie

 

Original Problem (click to view):

 

Today, my husband and I bought a pair of WZR-600DHP wireless routers:

 

* "office", hooked up to the WAN and serving wired and wireless clients

* "living-room", to be a wireless bridge in the living room, serving wired clients, including an XBox and a stereo that can handle AirPlay from our iOS devices

 

We set living-room up according to the manual's instructions on how to set up a wireless bridge, and also turned UPnP on on both routers. I have turned off the firewall on living-room, as well. Both routers have the latest Buffalo-supplied dd-wrt firmware, build 20180. 

 

Both the XBox and stereo can get out to the greater Internet just fine. However, neither are talking to the local LANs very well, and UPnP isn't relaying properly. Here's what I've observed so far:

 

The XBox:

1) The XBox complains about NAT settings, and it has every right to, as UPnP doesn't appear to be doing anything about it on either router.

2) Devices with wired connections to office are doing the right things to UPnP, so it's not an overall NAT problem.

3) If the XBox connects to the WLAN directly, there are no UPnP problems. Unfortunately, we can't leave it on the WLAN because the radio signal can't always cut through the interference caused by the rest of the stereo rack, our building's crowded airspace, and so on).

 

The Stereo:

1) The stereo doesn't show up as an AirPlay option on any iOS device (and it is configured correctly).

2) The stereo cannot be accessed by the manufacturer's own application (running on an iOS device on the wireless network).

 

The Routers:

1) Every few seconds, the MAC address of the living-room router shows up as a DHCP client on the office router with an IP address of 1.1.1.1.

 

In short, the devices with wired connections to the wireless bridge don't act like they're on the same LAN as the wireless devices, and reasonable requests to contact devices with wired connections to the wireless bridge aren't being accepted.

 

Is there anything that can be done?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

-- Lorrie

 

 

 


buddee

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Re: Problems Bridging with WZR-600DHP
« Reply #1 on: February 25, 2013, 06:52:21 AM »

Main thing here is that if you linked the routers together via wireless (or even wired for that matter) you don't need upnp turned on both units, only the main gateway unit needs the main services such as DHCP and UPNP etc on, the second unit that is linked into the main gateway unit will only work as a pass thru to the main AP, so it doesn't need things like UPNP, DHCP etc turned on because its basically functioning as a wireless switch - which should pass thru its services needs to the main AP/Gatewa and should be served up accordingly.

 

I have to head to work shortly, if i have time this evening i will explain better how you should set this up when i return in about 10 hrs or so.


lorriew

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Re: Problems Bridging with WZR-600DHP
« Reply #2 on: February 25, 2013, 10:56:53 AM »
Right. I have DHCP disabled on the router with the Xbox attached, and whether UPnP is enabled or disabled on that device makes no difference--I've tried it both ways, and turned it off again when I read this.

For the rest, I'll eagerly await your return home from work!

buddee

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Re: Problems Bridging with WZR-600DHP
« Reply #3 on: February 25, 2013, 11:20:29 AM »

Lets just say i sometimes do sneak peaks from work... :)

 

Now onto the linking, might i ask how the manual instructed you to link the units? Wild guess: WDS?


lorriew

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Re: Problems Bridging with WZR-600DHP
« Reply #4 on: February 25, 2013, 01:04:35 PM »
Nope. Client bridge (routed). I would have protested WDS anyhow; don't need my bandwidth kneecapped.

lorriew

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Re: Problems Bridging with WZR-600DHP
« Reply #5 on: February 25, 2013, 01:05:40 PM »
I'll c/p the Beefalo directions when I get home--out buying another piece of the new stack ATM.

buddee

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Re: Problems Bridging with WZR-600DHP
« Reply #6 on: February 25, 2013, 01:54:40 PM »

Excellent, i was hoping it wasn't WDS. i would advise a hard reset on the client bridge unit and reconfig using this guide:

 

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Repeater_Bridge#Atheros


lorriew

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Re: Problems Bridging with WZR-600DHP
« Reply #7 on: February 25, 2013, 04:52:23 PM »

The only effective difference between these directions and the ones in the Buffalo manual is the addition of the virtual interface (or, in this case, pair of them: one for 2.4 GHz and one for 5.0 GHz). However, I've done the old 30-30-30 and configured as per spec so we're both on the same page.

 

The XBox still complains about UPnP not being set (and checking the tables on the primary router, it's still right to do so).

 

Still getting the client bridge's MAC address in the DHCP table, intermittently, with an IP of 1.1.1.1.

 

The iOS app to talk to the a/v receiver doesn't see it when it polls the network, but if I give it the IP of the stereo, it can communicate.

 

AirPlay still doesn't work, of course, because it will only work with devices that have been polled. You can't force a non-droolproof solution; it either Just Works or not at all, from what I've seen so far.

 

The problem, I suspect, is that broadcast traffic isn't being handled properly between the LAN segments.

 

If it helps, I'm no stranger to dd-wrt, networking, or Linux—so if the next answer is, "ssh in and smack the routing tables with a pick-axe", I'm down with that. I didn't lead with that so as not to overthink the problem.


buddee

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Re: Problems Bridging with WZR-600DHP
« Reply #8 on: February 25, 2013, 05:32:05 PM »

Have you considered assigning a static DHCP lease to the Xbox MAC and then just forwarding the appropriate ports thereof? I ask because lately i have read alot of problems regarding the UPNP libraries and most of the comments i see made are of this exact nature, it just isn't working.


lorriew

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Re: Problems Bridging with WZR-600DHP
« Reply #9 on: February 25, 2013, 05:59:12 PM »

If I use the XBox's built-in wireless supplicant, it works fine: UPnP is properly registered on the master router, and the XBox doesn't complain about the NAT.

 

However, I can't have it wireless all the time because its physical location in the stack, combined with my local crowded airspace, keeps the 2.4 GHz signal from reaching things there reliably. More to the point, this doesn't explain why the a/v receiver on the client bridge's wired segment doesn't respond to polling requests—I suspect these to be related problems.

 

I'd rather not kludge in a set of port forwards/triggers if there's any other option; I'll toss this around my friends and see if we can come up with something more elegant. If so, I'll post it here and then we'll both know.

 

Thanks for your help!


lorriew

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Re: Problems Bridging with WZR-600DHP
« Reply #10 on: February 26, 2013, 02:22:57 AM »

When is a bridge not a bridge?

 

When it's a router.

 

The supplied configuration instructions make a repeater/bridge out of the client router, which we found out this evening when, to our amazement, we could poll the stereo...from the living room. After amusing ourselves with the controller apps on our devices, I bet my husband a penny if he cycled Wi-Fi on his iPad while standing in the office, the stereo would disappear.

 

I won that bet. 

 

The two wireless segments do bridge nicely with one another. However, on the DHCP client table, the devices that are wired into the client router show up with the MAC addresses of the client router, not their own...because this bridge is no bridge, it's a router trying its best to act like a bridge and not quite making it. As a "Hail Mary" pass, we even tried the WDS configuration that Buffalo also recommends, but it didn't work any better than Buffalo's manual or the dd-wrt guide.

 

I think a little later this week one of my friends is going to get a shiny new router...shortly after I buy a wireless bridge that's only ever wanted to be a bridge and isn't a router in a funny hat. Honestly, if I'd thought it out, I could have seen it when I noticed that the bridge option is actually called "Client Bridge (Routed)". It does deliver exactly what it says, which isn't quite what one wants if one wants a bridge.

 

Not being a real bridge is also why UPnP requests aren't being properly propagated, I'm sad to say.

 

Thanks for all your help!


visiter555

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Re: Problems Bridging with WZR-600DHP
« Reply #11 on: March 08, 2013, 08:37:57 AM »

I ran into the exact problems with the Bridge on various WZR products running DD-WRT last year.  No devices are seen on the lan segment off the second router running in Bridge mode (hard wired or wireless).  I can use my tablet on either of the wireless connections and I cannot see my third WD Live Plus, my Oppo 93 or any other device.

 

Theoretically all should be visible and as you also discovered all theory is not reality.

 

I also had a friend gain a new WZR-600DHP and they love it and its Open VPN feature.  lol

 

You think Buffalo would look at this, but....c'est la vie.