Re: Connecting to GS728TPv2 home network with CAX80 and EAX80?

PharmlyDoc · ‎2021-01-01

I just setup the GS728TPv2 in my basement. It's on the opposite side of where my Netgear CAX80 cable modem/WiFi-6 router is located so I ran a cat8 cable to it. I have smart phones and tablets throughout the house. I have the Netgear EAX80 on the second floor which a Macbook Pro is wirelessly connected to. The Macbook Air on the first floor is connected wirelessly to the CAX80 in the basement. The cat5e ethernet cable running from the patch panel in the basement that terminates on the second floor does not work (lines 1 and 2 of the cable are open - it's a 568b setup, so I'm still troubleshooting about if I want to replace that cable).

I registered the GS728TPv2 with netgear and I was able to access the switch by directly connecting it with an ethernet cable to one of my laptops and running the Netgear Switch Discovery Tool. I was then able to change the password and access the user interface (GUI) by typing in 192.168.1.189 into the address bar in the web-browser. I've been able to access the GS728TPv2 GUI from the Mac mini in the basement, the Macbook Air via WIFI and the Macbook Pro on the second floor via WiFi.

The issue is that typing in the switch's IP address into the web browser does not always work - often times the webrowser fails to connect to the server. Also, on my Nighthawk CAX80 interface I am able to view all the devices wired and wirelessly connected to the CAX80, but the GS728TPv2 isn't listed. How do I make the GS728TPv2 show up on the CAX80's list of connected devices, and make the GS728TPv2 showup on my network app on my Macs? And what do I need to do to ensure I can seemlessly connect to the switch's GUI from any computer on my home network both via wireless and wired?

schumaku · ‎2021-01-05

Something very basic must be wrong between the GS switch and the CAX router. Either a basic Ethernet link issue, poor wiring, poor cabling, or ports configured to another purpose.

What happens when connecting the Mac USB-Ethernet port to the port/cable/link intended for the switch connection - locally on the CAX, remote near to the switch?

View solution in original post

DaneA · ‎2021-01-03

@PharmlyDoc,

It seems that the GS728TPv2 is set as a DHCP client. I suggest you to assign a static IP address to it. Kindly try the steps below:

1. Disconnect the GS728TPv2 from the existing network. The GS728TPv2 will go back to its default IP address which is 192.168.0.239.

2. Connect your PC/laptop to a LAN port of the GS728TPv2.

3. Set a static IP address of 192.168.0.210 on your PC/laptop.

4. Open a browser like Google Chrome or Firefox then at the address bar, type 192.168.0.239 then press Enter. Login to the user interface of switch. Enter "admin" as the username and "password" as the password without the quotation marks.

5. Click System > Management > IP Configuration.

6. On the IP Configuration page, select Static IP address. Then, enter an IP address that is within the IP Address range of your existing network in the field provided as well as the corresponding subnet mask and default gateway then click Apply.

7. Connect the GS728TPv2 back to your existing network and set the PC/laptop back to Obtain an IP address automatically.

To test the connectivity, connect your PC/laptop directly to the GS728TPv2. Open command prompt on the PC/laptop, then ping the static IP address you have set on the GS728TPv2 and ping the IP address of the router. You should be able to get replies.

Regards,

DaneA

NETGEAR Community Team

PharmlyDoc · ‎2021-01-03

@DaneA

Thank you for responding. I reset the switch to factory defaults. The firmware is uptodate. I set the IP address to static as 192.168.1.189 , the subnet mask as 255.255.255.0 . But what about the default gateway? Right now the default gateway is 192.168.1.1 ,which is the IP for my CAX80. Is this correct?

I am able to access the user interface of the switch if I (1) connect my laptop directly to the switch, (2) turn off the laptop's WiFi, and (3) set the IP address of the lan port for laptop to the 192.168.1.xxx range . Once I change the lan port on the laptop back to configure IPv4 using DHCP the connection to the switch GUI is lost. I am also unable to access the internet on my laptop when connected to the switch via an ethernet cable. Do I need to configure the routing settings for the switch?

I also went into the Nighthawk interface for the CAX80 and reserved 192.168.1.189 for the corresponding MAC address of the switch, but that doesn't seem to have helped.

Here are the ping results after setting the configuration of my laptop's IPv4 back to DHCP:

Computer ~ % ping 192.168.1.189
PING 192.168.1.189 (192.168.1.189): 56 data bytes
ping: sendto: No route to host
ping: sendto: No route to host
Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
ping: sendto: No route to host
^C
--- 192.168.1.189 ping statistics ---
15 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100.0% packet loss

CAX80 CableModem/Router_ReserveIPGS728TPv2_RoutingGS728TPv2_IP_Configuration

schumaku · ‎2021-01-04

@PharmlyDoc wrote:

Here are the ping results after setting the configuration of my laptop's IPv4 back to DHCP:

Computer ~ % ping 192.168.1.189
PING 192.168.1.189 (192.168.1.189): 56 data bytes
ping: sendto: No route to host
ping: sendto: No route to host
Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
ping: sendto: No route to host
^C
--- 192.168.1.189 ping statistics ---
15 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100.0% packet loss

This looks wrong to me. If the switch would not be reachable on the LAN, the response would simply timeout, but not result in a "no route to host" message. "No route to host" says this: When the destination of the ICMP message is not on the local direct connected subnet, it will be forwarded to the system default gateway to handle it. If there is no default gateway, or the gateway has no information in its routing table to forward the packets, you will see "no route to host".

PharmlyDoc · ‎2021-01-04

@schumaku

I think I inserted the wrong terminal code for pinging the switch.

Please see inserted images which are screenshots from my Macbook Air (MBA) connected via ethernet cable to the switch. The first screenshot is of sending a ping to the switch's IP address when the ethernet cable is hooked up and when the WiFi adaptor is turned on - in which case the WiFi normally takes precedence. Ping-to-switch_with_WiFi_on

As expected, the ping does not work when the MBA is connected to the switch via ethernet cable with the WiFi turned off, and with the LAN port IP is set to DHCP. (self-assigned IP address is 169.254.222.54) MBA ping to switch fails with this MBA network/IP configuration

Setting the IP configuration on the MBA from DHCP to "Manually" - I chose "192.168.1.251" , results in the MBA be able to ping the switch (MBA is directly connected to switch via ethernet cable). MBA ping to switch successful when manually setting the MBA's IP address to a value in the 192.168.1.xxx range

My question now is how do I get my internet signal to pass through the switch and to computers connected to the switch? – What should the configuration be for the routing tab in the GS728TPv2 GUI?

Also, how should I configure the switch settings so that I can access it's GUI from my laptop connected via WiFi to my CAX80 or EAX80? If that makes sense.

Thank you.

schumaku · ‎2021-01-05

Something very basic must be wrong between the GS switch and the CAX router. Either a basic Ethernet link issue, poor wiring, poor cabling, or ports configured to another purpose.

What happens when connecting the Mac USB-Ethernet port to the port/cable/link intended for the switch connection - locally on the CAX, remote near to the switch?

PharmlyDoc · ‎2021-01-05

@schumaku

I don't believe the port on the CAX80 (that connects to the switch via a CAT8 cable) is the issue. Reason being is because right now I am on my Macbook Pro which is wirelessly connected to the EAX80 (with my network devices setup as illustrated in my initial post), and I ran an app called LanScan. Upon starting the scan, all the devices on the network populate on the list almost immediately except the switch. But - after about 1 minute the IP address and correct MAC address for the switch populate on the list as well.

In other words, the LanScan app running on my MBP is able to pickup the switch, although with a delay, in which my MBP is wirelessly connected to my wifi-extender --> extender wirelessly connected to CAX80 --> CAX80 connected via cat8 cable to switch.

So why is it that the user interface for the CAX80 does not have the switch listed as a connected device? This makes me think I don't have the routing settings correctly configured in the switch's GUI?

And check this out, I went into the terminal on my MBP, still connected via WiFi, and pinged 192.168.1.189, and the switch pinged back 64 bytes and then the request timed out for 73 pings, then 64 bytes for pings 74-76, then timed out for pings 77-156...

Around ping 157 I typed 192.168.1.189 into my webbrowser on my MBP, and the pings were successful for a bit longer - I then had to allow my browser to trust the address...request timed out from pings 170 - 226...after trusting the Netgear certificate I refreshed the webbrowser around ping 258 and then the pings are successful off and on. The login screen for the switch user interface never populated in the webbrowser.

I terminated the terminal request after ping 405. Please see the attached pdf file.

schumaku · ‎2021-01-05

Well, if you want to troubleshoot the connection between the router and the switch ... for me the last thing I want to see in a test set-up is any fancy repoeaer or extender. Up to you - your set-up, not mine.

Disable routing on the switch - assume there is one single flat network only.

Nothing wrong with the typical self-signed certificate for https.

PharmlyDoc · ‎2021-01-05

@schumaku

Okay, so going back to what you said about the possiblity of poor wiring, take a look at this photo of the back of the CAX80. I made a straightforward mistake.

Note that the black cat8 cable running from the CAX80 to the switch is 100 ft long. The blue cat5e cable running from the CAX80 to the Mac mini is only a couple feet long, and the Mac Mini does not support multi-gig ethernet...so I switched out the cables, putting the black cat8 cable in the multi-gig port and the cat5e for the Mac Mini in port 3.

And voila! I can now seemlessly without delay log in to the GS728TPv2 GUI from my browser on my MBP and on my ipad. The GS728TPv2 also now shows up on the CAX80's list of connected devices! And there are no request time outs when I ping the switch!

Now I just need to test if my laptop can receive internet when connected to the ethernet jack on the first floor of my house.

PharmlyDoc · ‎2021-01-05

I can acces the internet when hardwired into the cat5e jack on the first floor! Though the internet connection is faster with WiFi-6 on the 5G channel (120 Mbps) than through the cat5e cable running from the first floor to the switch (91 Mbps).

@schumaku Thank you for your suggestions!

schumaku · ‎2021-01-05

Interesting discovery - this is however not a mistake, certainly not yours!. The CAX80 Multi-Gig port (2.5 Gb/s, blue link and activity LED) is supposed to be compatible to Gigabit (white link and activity LED) and Fast Ethernet (100 Mb/s, amber link and activity LED) - so it sould work with your Mac Mini flawless, again permitting it's a correct working cable (four pairs, CAT5A is fine).

@YeZ somehting the CAX80 engineering must look into - a standard Mac Mini should work on the Multi Gig port.

schumaku · ‎2021-01-05

@PharmlyDoc wrote:
I can acces the internet when hardwired into the cat5e jack on the second floor! ... through the cat5e cable to the switch (91 Mbps).

This could indicate again a wiring issue - four correct pairs (eight strands) should allow a Gigabit Ethernet link negotiated. Confirm this link is connected to one of the standard Gigabit LAN ports on the router. If there are only two pairs (two specific ones), the max is Fast Ethernet link speed, this is what the net throughput does indicate.