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Forum Discussion
DHCP with a /23
I switched my orbi subnet mask to 255.255.254.0 in order to gain more usable addresses, however the DHCP settings hard code the first three octets and won't allow me to use more than 253 addresses. Anyone else use/need more than 253 addresses and have the orbi as the DHCP server serving a /23?
7 Replies
What model NG Orbi system do you have?
Most home and small office network environments on average only need the factory default network subnet for .254 addresses. Anything beyond this would be enterprise and corporate networks which home class routers don't support and would need a enterprise class router system.
Even when you set that subnet mask I don't believe you'll get more than .253 addresses out of the router. Just not designed for that.
Sending DHCP and having a local cache of more than 254 requests isn't really "enterprise" level work. If you VLAN it up and begin tagging networks, maybe, but basic DHCP for any number of addresses isn't really that taxing.
Page 155 of the user manual says this:
This gives the impression that this router is not suitable for your intended use.
If the router is put into access point mode and an external DHCP server is used, it would be interesting to know "what happens" when more than this number of IP addresses are active on the network at the same time using a /23 subnet mask.
To my knowledge, this isn't supported, neither on the consumer routers, nor on the later released BR500 and BR200.
schumaku wrote:To my knowledge, this isn't supported, neither on the consumer routers, nor on the later released BR500 and BR200.
I know for a fact that TP-link XE75 and BE85 (there may be more models, the XE75 did not work very well for me) use a subnet mask of 22 bits and the DHCP server works fine with my 100 or so devices which is more than I can say for the Orbi.
raven_au wrote:
schumaku wrote:
To my knowledge, this isn't supported, neither on the consumer routers, nor on the later released BR500 and BR200.
I know for a fact that TP-link XE75 and BE85 (there may be more models, the XE75 did not work very well for me) use a subnet mask of 22 bits and the DHCP server works fine with my 100 or so devices which is more than I can say for the Orbi.
I was talking about Netgear devices only. The point is not the limited subnet size, the key point are the resources like storage and dynamic memory required to properly support to support 1024 devices in every aspect - which is more required than just allowing the LAN and the DHCP server to be configured to a /22. Other aspects in the design must be considered and properly covered. For reasons, the vendors carry notes like "Connects up to 200 Devices†". And no, this is not about the limitations in the WiFi subsystem. Re-think how useful a /22 subnet configured can be in reality - misleading at most.
