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Forum Discussion
WAX206 in AP mode with 2 SSIDs
Hope this isn't blatantly obvious:
I wanted to use the WAX206 as access points with a Draytek router and wanted to set up 2 different SSIDs, one for myself and one for guests with no access to my devices, only internet. I've created to subnets on the router with subnet masks 192.168.100.x and 192.168.200.x. My problem is that I can't see anything in the AP setup that would allow me to allocate the any of the 3 possible SSIDs to their designated subnet. Am I being blind or am I supposed to isolate the SSIDs in a different way?
Thanks, any help appreciated!
8 Replies
When I have it right, these basic AP offer three SSIDs, however there is no way for having the SSIDs mapping to dedicate subnet resp. a VLAN on thee models (like the WAX202 or WAX206). This feature became available on the later WX214/218.
Hmmm. If that's correct then my first thought would be - what's the point in having 3 SSIDs if they're essentially all doing the exact same thing. I don't care if 2 guests can see each others phone, what I'm after is that they can't see my NAS, let alone access it. However, if I connect my laptop to - shall we call it - the master wifi then obviously I DO want to see and access it.
The manual is a bit on the disappointing side as all the interesting aspects only apply to "Router Mode". I have a router, vastly superior to these puppies, and if I needed a private network at one end I'd stick another router on it, got a couple of spares. That is certainly not what I bought these for.
Sure, I can give all my devices a fixed IP and spend a few hours whitelisting them in the firewall but frankly that's not what I had in mind when I spend 70 quid a pop (of which 55 is probably for the router features I turned off). Surely there's more than router mode or FA.
Islandvolker wrote:
I've created to subnets on the router with subnet masks 192.168.100.x and 192.168.200.x.
A soft-subnetting on the same network won't help us much.
On one hand, the different IP subnet addresses won't add a lot of segregation, on the other hand there are "modern" features like IGMP Multicast or in general less sophisticated multicast e.g. as used by discovery mechanisms like apple's Airplay, Bonjour, uPnP and the likes still play on the very same L2 network, and don't care much about L3 addressing. Still a piece of cake to discover the other devices and services (like these provided by your NAS).
As you are a happy Draytek router owner, your subnets are (or should) segregated by VLANs. With anything else, you won't win a horse for what you intend to achieve. I have no idea, what made Netgear to stick on these multi-SSID ideas for far to long. Oh even major router vendors have up these secondary IP subnet design decades ago Ye, what you have configured the hard way must be considered history, .... oh sorry say'n.
Can't add more than for what you want to achieve with multiple SSIDs (logically each representing a different network - often abused by the WiFi industry to distinguish different "network" bands for decades. Yes, multiple SSIDs connecting to the same network does not make an awful lot of sense. The only exception is that some credentials don't have to be shared.
A wireless SSID does designate a network. And wireless access points - pure L2 devices, so no routers, not iPv4 aware for example - are L2 bridges. Not routers. some years ago i had to shout at some Netgear product managers - a long time ago they launched a new access point series. the first thing I had seen during an early product access period is that these access points were by default routers, had to browse some hundred pages of user manual on routing, before the reader found information on the access point, how to disable the routing features, ...
Meanwhile I got confirmation that what I had in mind cannot be configured in WAX206. Will have to figure out something else. The VLAN route is probably a dead-end as well as the AP only provides one ethernet port and doesn't support tags, at least not in AP mode.
Thanks for your help schumaku
Islandvolker wrote:
The VLAN route is probably a dead-end as well as the AP only provides one ethernet port and doesn't support tags, at least not in AP mode.
A major omission on the specs for these WAC20x or WAX202, 206, 208 in my opinion - that's why i have never considered to buy any of these. Mitigation should not be very difficult RaghuHR
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