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How to enable "Allow guests to see each other"
I have a guest in my house on the guest network who wants to have 2 of his devices talk to each other. When I go to the Guest Network page of the RBR50 GUI, "Allow guests to see each other and access...
Eureka, I have found it!
Grepping through the /www directory, I found the file WLG_wireless_guest1.htm. I changed the line
if(enable_ap_flag == 1 || fbwifi_enable == '1' || enable_extender_flag == '1') setDisabled(true, form.allow_access);to
if(/* enable_ap_flag == 1 || */ fbwifi_enable == '1' || enable_extender_flag == '1') setDisabled(true, form.allow_access);to comment out the check for AP mode and the check box is now enabled and seems to work.
One brief note: my guess is that these settings will disappear any time the Orbi router reboots. I have my Orbi on a UPS to prevent minor power hits from having it reboot, but we had a scheduled four hour power outage yesterday and my UPS gave out before it was over, and my Orbi rebooted. Had to run the Python script again. Reload my Attached Devices hack, etc.
I remain mystified by this situation because my experiment was a total sucess.
My primary Orbi RBR50 has 192.168.1.x for the LAN.
I connected another Orbi RBR50 to one of the ethernet ports, set up a Guest network on it, then changed from router to AP mode.
Then connected a PC to one of this Orbi's ports, a smartphone to its primary WiFi SSID, and a tablet to its Guest WiFi SSID.
Runing Network Analyzer I was able to see all devices, on all networks. i.e.
- Connected to the primary Orbi, I see all devices on the primary Orbi and also the devices on the AP Orbi.
- Connected to the AP Orbi primary WiFi, I see all devices.
- Connected to the AP Orbi Guest WiFi, I see all devices.
So, my impression is that your guest made an invalid conclusion (assumption?) and sent you on a wild goose chase. Before "the next time", you might conduct your own experiment. I would like to hear the results.
Running Fing (free edition) with both my iPad & iPhone on the guest network, each of those can see all the devices on the main network, but cannot communicate with any of them. They can't access their web servers or telnet to them or even ping them. And the 2 iDevices can't see each other at all.
So the label of the GUI setting to "allow guests to see each other and access my local network" is pedantically correct. It doesn't say anything about allowing or not allowing guest devices to see the existence of the non-guest devices.
With your devices on the guest network, can they do anything more than "see" devices on the main LAN?
Unfortunately, setting those 2 variables I mentioned earlier seems to only affect the GUI. "Allow guests to see each other and access my local network" is checked but the guest devices still cannot access the main LAN devices.
Now I'm trying to understand endis_wlg_guest_wireless_isolation and endis_wla_guest_wireless_isolation. Those are both 0 which would seem to indicate isolation is off, but maybe they're backwards. (What is "endis" anyway?) Grumble. I wish the GUI checkbox was simply enabled and worked.
Eureka, I have found it!
Grepping through the /www directory, I found the file WLG_wireless_guest1.htm. I changed the line
if(enable_ap_flag == 1 || fbwifi_enable == '1' || enable_extender_flag == '1') setDisabled(true, form.allow_access);to
if(/* enable_ap_flag == 1 || */ fbwifi_enable == '1' || enable_extender_flag == '1') setDisabled(true, form.allow_access);to comment out the check for AP mode and the check box is now enabled and seems to work.
RocketSquirrel wrote:
Running Fing (free edition) with both my iPad & iPhone on the guest network, each of those can see all the devices on the main network, but cannot communicate with any of them. They can't access their web servers or telnet to them or even ping them. And the 2 iDevices can't see each other at all.
Very strange. My primary network has one Epson printer which has a web interface and two Pi-hole DNS servers which also have web interfaces. When I have the test Orbi in AP mode and connect a tablet to the Guest WiFi on this test Orbi, I can open the Epson printer web interface and the Pi-hole web interfaces. I can also 'ping' devices on my primary network which respond to ping. And, I can ping the tablet from the primary network.
I connected a second device to the Guest network on this AP Orbi (phone). It can ping the other device (tablet) on the Guest network. (Neither of these devices hosts a web server, so I cannot test that.)
I have no explanation for what would cause your RBR50 to behave differently than mine.
My contention remains that in router mode, the Orbi is able to manage the behavior of devices connected to the Guest WiFi network (there is no concept of Guest on the wired network), but in AP mode the Orbi is a "plain access point", just like any brand of access point. It is totally unaware of any difference between devices connected to the primary network or the guest network.
(I also contend that "iThings" are the spawn of the devil and are inherently evil and not to be trusted.)
CrimpOn wrote:
It is totally unaware of any difference between devices connected to the primary network or the guest network.Not totally. The RBR50 in AP mode can see which devices are on the guest network and show them on the Attached Devices page.
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Good catch, thanks. (I am well on my way to my allotment of five mistakes per day!)
I remain puzzled how devices connected to my test Orbi Guest WiFi are able to connect to web pages on the primary network and yours apparently cannot. I'll have to conduct some more experiments.