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Forum Discussion
Guest Network to Private
Hello, I have a Orbi RBR750 with a internal network setup as well as a guest network. I'm trying to configure the Orbi to allow any IP on the guest network to access one single static IP (my Marantz AVR) for Airplay. I tried port forwarding for all UDP & TCP ports (just for testing) to the static IP of the Marantz and still can't see that IP from the guest network. Looking for help on what I might be doing wrong.
1 Reply
Alas, what you want cannot be done. The first generation of Netgear Orbi (WiFi5) provided an option for devices on the Guest WiFi network to communicate with devices on the primary network:
When the AX (WiFi6) product line was introduced, that option was removed, and has never been provided since.
Originally, one could imagine two reasons to have a Guest WiFi.
- So that "guests" could be told a WiFi password which could be changed at will. (maybe when they leave) With it being different from the primary WiFi password, changing the Guest WiFi password would not affect any permanent devices on the primary network.
- To set up a network that is separate from the primary network, so that devices on the Guest network cannot "snoop" on the primary network.
The WiFi5 firmware allowed the user to decide what was important (and what was not).
If you want people to access that AVR, you have to tell them the primary network WiFi password.
One might imagine that NAT Hairpinning (also called NAT Loopback) would provide a workaround.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_address_translation#NAT_hairpinning
All Netgear routers support NAT Hairpinning. When a device on the primary network attempts to connect to the public IP of the router and the appropriate port is forwarded to a specific local IP address, the connection will "loop back" at the router. It might be worth a few minutes to confirm:
- That a device on the primary network can use the public IP of the router (and the appropriate port number) to connect to the AVR, and
- Then attempt the same thing with a device on the Guest WiFi network.
