RBR20 Mesh System Hardwire/Wireless Mix

[arichter11]

Hello all,

I have the RBR20 Mesh system and it came with 2 direct plugin satellites. I recently purchased an RBS20 add on satellite to put in my exterior garage, but it's a little bit too far from the house, so while I was getting a conduit run from my house to garage for electric, he plumbed an ethernet line as well so that I could plug this satellite in directly to my Verizon router to get internet to the garage. I'm thinking I may made an error in my planning, but here is how my home network is currently configured.

- Verizon Modem (basement) is connected to 5 port switch (also basement)

- 5 Port Switch Has a line going to my Orbi RBR20 (2nd floor) and also through the conduit to my garage, where I plugged it into my RBS20

- I was under the impression that when the RBS20 was connected to the Verizon Modem that it would then sync up with the mesh system through the Sync button and all that. It didn't. What it did instead was tried to act like a router, which obviously it can't do because it's a satellite. My RBR20 cut out when I plugged in the RBS20. I unplugged and plugged in my RBR20 and it "took" the internet back and I was up and running again, but of course without that satellite

- Is the only way to get the mesh system to run as a whole if I plug the satellite directly into the RBR20? or is there a way that I can sync all of this up by keeping it plugged into the Verizon router directly?

Thanks friends.

Andy

[CrimpOn]

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@arichter11 wrote:

- Is the only way to get the mesh system to run as a whole if I plug the satellite directly into the RBR20? or is there a way that I can sync all of this up by keeping it plugged into the Verizon router directly?

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Yesd, you understand correctly. The Orbi router expects to see satellites either (a) over WiFi, or (b) over the ethernet LAN port.  NOT on the ethernet WAN port. That is what is keeping the satellite from syncing.

There are several ways to make this happen:

• Run a second ethernet cable inside the house to the RBR20 location and connect that garage ethernet cable to it using an ethernet connector.  I got some from Amazon:
  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016B13UDK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 
• Physically reroute that garage cable to the router location.
• Use a pair of managed switches to allow the single ethernet cable to carry both the WAN traffic and the LAN traffic at the same time.
  There is an excellent discussion describing how to do this in this post:
  https://community.netgear.com/t5/Orbi/Disabling-automatic-subnet-reconfig/m-p/2031354#M110164 
  29 posts is sort of a long read. The original question had to do with a problem which got solved along the way and much discussion of what might have caused the situation.  The end result appears to be really stable.
  A pair of GS108v3 switches is about $120 on Amazon, which could be less than the cost of running an ethernet cable.
  In my own case, installing ethernet cables in my two story house is nearly impossible. (I so fondly remember the crawl space and attic in the old house. Made wiring projects SO simple!)
  There are managed switches from other vendors that are less costly. The key is to be able to define port based VPN's.
  

[arichter11]

Thanks for clarifying, I am bummed because I wish I would have thought through it the first time and just had him run the conduit to the router rather than the modem...alas, too late now haha. I might just live with the wireless connection for now and see how it goes. If it's super slow, I will try one of the solutions you suggested, so thank you for those!! Though I think the second is over my paygrade a bit haha. 🙂

[FURRYe38]

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@arichter11 wrote:

Hello all,

I have the RBR20 Mesh system and it came with 2 direct plugin satellites. I recently purchased an RBS20 add on satellite to put in my exterior garage, but it's a little bit too far from the house, so while I was getting a conduit run from my house to garage for electric, he plumbed an ethernet line as well so that I could plug this satellite in directly to my Verizon router to get internet to the garage. I'm thinking I may made an error in my planning, but here is how my home network is currently configured.

- Verizon Modem (basement) is connected to 5 port switch (also basement)

- 5 Port Switch Has a line going to my Orbi RBR20 (2nd floor) and also through the conduit to my garage, where I plugged it into my RBS20

- I was under the impression that when the RBS20 was connected to the Verizon Modem that it would then sync up with the mesh system through the Sync button and all that. It didn't. What it did instead was tried to act like a router, which obviously it can't do because it's a satellite. My RBR20 cut out when I plugged in the RBS20. I unplugged and plugged in my RBR20 and it "took" the internet back and I was up and running again, but of course without that satellite

- Is the only way to get the mesh system to run as a whole if I plug the satellite directly into the RBR20? or is there a way that I can sync all of this up by keeping it plugged into the Verizon router directly?

To make the remote RBS work right, it has to connect directly to the back of the RBR, not the Verizon router:

If you can get a line from where it connects near the Verizon router up to the RBR, then it will work.

https://kb.netgear.com/000051205/What-is-Ethernet-backhaul-and-how-do-I-set-it-up-on-my-Orbi-WiFi-Sy... 📡