NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
RocketSquirrel
Nov 06, 2021Luminary
How to enable "Allow guests to see each other"
I have a guest in my house on the guest network who wants to have 2 of his devices talk to each other. When I go to the Guest Network page of the RBR50 GUI, "Allow guests to see each other and access...
- Nov 07, 2021
Eureka, I have found it!
Grepping through the /www directory, I found the file WLG_wireless_guest1.htm. I changed the line
if(enable_ap_flag == 1 || fbwifi_enable == '1' || enable_extender_flag == '1') setDisabled(true, form.allow_access);
to
if(/* enable_ap_flag == 1 || */ fbwifi_enable == '1' || enable_extender_flag == '1') setDisabled(true, form.allow_access);
to comment out the check for AP mode and the check box is now enabled and seems to work.
RocketSquirrel
Nov 07, 2021Luminary
Running Fing (free edition) with both my iPad & iPhone on the guest network, each of those can see all the devices on the main network, but cannot communicate with any of them. They can't access their web servers or telnet to them or even ping them. And the 2 iDevices can't see each other at all.
So the label of the GUI setting to "allow guests to see each other and access my local network" is pedantically correct. It doesn't say anything about allowing or not allowing guest devices to see the existence of the non-guest devices.
With your devices on the guest network, can they do anything more than "see" devices on the main LAN?
Unfortunately, setting those 2 variables I mentioned earlier seems to only affect the GUI. "Allow guests to see each other and access my local network" is checked but the guest devices still cannot access the main LAN devices.
Now I'm trying to understand endis_wlg_guest_wireless_isolation and endis_wla_guest_wireless_isolation. Those are both 0 which would seem to indicate isolation is off, but maybe they're backwards. (What is "endis" anyway?) Grumble. I wish the GUI checkbox was simply enabled and worked.
CrimpOn
Nov 07, 2021Guru
RocketSquirrel wrote:
Running Fing (free edition) with both my iPad & iPhone on the guest network, each of those can see all the devices on the main network, but cannot communicate with any of them. They can't access their web servers or telnet to them or even ping them. And the 2 iDevices can't see each other at all.
Very strange. My primary network has one Epson printer which has a web interface and two Pi-hole DNS servers which also have web interfaces. When I have the test Orbi in AP mode and connect a tablet to the Guest WiFi on this test Orbi, I can open the Epson printer web interface and the Pi-hole web interfaces. I can also 'ping' devices on my primary network which respond to ping. And, I can ping the tablet from the primary network.
I connected a second device to the Guest network on this AP Orbi (phone). It can ping the other device (tablet) on the Guest network. (Neither of these devices hosts a web server, so I cannot test that.)
I have no explanation for what would cause your RBR50 to behave differently than mine.
My contention remains that in router mode, the Orbi is able to manage the behavior of devices connected to the Guest WiFi network (there is no concept of Guest on the wired network), but in AP mode the Orbi is a "plain access point", just like any brand of access point. It is totally unaware of any difference between devices connected to the primary network or the guest network.
(I also contend that "iThings" are the spawn of the devil and are inherently evil and not to be trusted.)
- RocketSquirrelNov 07, 2021Luminary
CrimpOn wrote:
It is totally unaware of any difference between devices connected to the primary network or the guest network.Not totally. The RBR50 in AP mode can see which devices are on the guest network and show them on the Attached Devices page.
.
- CrimpOnNov 07, 2021Guru
Good catch, thanks. (I am well on my way to my allotment of five mistakes per day!)
I remain puzzled how devices connected to my test Orbi Guest WiFi are able to connect to web pages on the primary network and yours apparently cannot. I'll have to conduct some more experiments.