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Netgear Router is switch mode becomes unconfigurable
I bought a RAX20 AX1800 router from netgear. While it works great as a standalone router my setup requires it to act as a switch and handle all of the wireless connections. I do this by disabling DHCP and plugging it directly to my firewall using a LAN port. The reason i do this is because i want my firewall to handle DHCP and all connections. This was i avoid double NATing and can see the real IPs of anything coming through. The configuration works, for the most part.
For some reason netgear refuses to have its router and my firewall on the same network so it'll automatically change its IP to either 192.168.1.1 or 10.0.0.1. To manage it I thought i'd just have to change my IP to the same network but it appears to disable its GUI configuration all together and is unable to be reached at it's IP. Now my setup works but i'm unable to see the connected devices to my netgear router and more importantly, i can't access any of its configuration anymore.
To clearly state my configuration
ISP -> Firewall -> Netgear -> all end user devices (wirelss or wired)
Looking for some way to keep my router configurable in this setup.
Re: Netgear Router is switch mode becomes unconfigurable
> [...] my setup requires it to act as a switch [...]
What Netgear (and many others) might call a Wireless Access Point?
> [...] my firewall [...]
Not a very detailed description of that device.
Visit http://netgear.com/support , put in your model number, and look for Documentation. Get the User Manual (at least). Read. Look for "Set up the router as a WiFi access point".
> [...] is unable to be reached at it's IP. [...]
"unable" is not a useful problem description. It does not say what you did. It does not say what happened when you did it. As usual, showing actual actions (commands) with their actual results (error messages, LED indicators, ...) can be more helpful than vague descriptions or interpretations.
What, exactly, do you think that its IP address is?
Re: Netgear Router is switch mode becomes unconfigurable
> [...] my setup requires it to act as a switch [...]
What Netgear (and many others) might call a Wireless Access Point?
> [...] my firewall [...]
Not a very detailed description of that device.
Visit http://netgear.com/support , put in your model number, and look for Documentation. Get the User Manual (at least). Read. Look for "Set up the router as a WiFi access point".
> [...] is unable to be reached at it's IP. [...]
"unable" is not a useful problem description. It does not say what you did. It does not say what happened when you did it. As usual, showing actual actions (commands) with their actual results (error messages, LED indicators, ...) can be more helpful than vague descriptions or interpretations.
What, exactly, do you think that its IP address is?
Re: Netgear Router is switch mode becomes unconfigurable
Thats correct, you can say it's running as a WAP currently.
The firewall device is exactly that, it's a linux based firewall that does packet inspection fronted by a GUI. Its a custom PC that has two NICs, one internal and one external. ISP connection comes in the external nic and then the internal nic goes to my netgear device.
Its currently set to a static IP which it forces off of the same network as my firewall. If the firewall is on 192.168.1.1 and netgear is on the same, netgear will forcefully change the IP to 10.0.0.1. This took me a bit to figure out so i manually set it to a different network such as 192.168.10.1 so it won't change it by itself. I can ping it when i manually change my PC to that network. The problem is the GUI becomes unavilable - forever. The website i reach by its IP normally will show a timeout and i have no other way to configure it. I have to reset to factory defaults to get back into it. The lights are on, wireless works correctly and it passes traffic through to the firewall. All settings are saved from before changing it into a WAP. There are no issues with the device except being unable to configure it through its IP address.
Because it forces it on another network than my firewall (which does DHCP, which is required to do DHCP on the same network) my phone is unable to communicate to it through the netgear mobile application, which i'd like to avoid using at all costs.
Thanks for the links, ill read up on the WAP documentation.
Re: Netgear Router is switch mode becomes unconfigurable
Looks like you were correct on the WAP setup. That's what i was missing for it to get a dhcp address from my firewall and stop fighting about what network to exist on. Thanks for the assistance
