Recently moved to B_One_5G router at our remote Golf Club. Utilising Starlink and Cellular, so much better than our 17Mb broadband availability!
We only have one LAN configured and find that we need to reboot our router due to clients being unable to get an ip address.
This is understandable on a single LAN, with 1 day lease in DHCP, as Members come and go within a short period of time and the fact that so many phones will be configured with random MAC addresses when connecting to wireless!
Reducing the DHCP lease to 2 hours then impacts staff, who are at the Club all day.
We will be utilising VLANs in the near future to resolve this situation, allowing for multiple DHCP lease times for different VLANs, in addition to introducing some bandwidth controls over the VLANs.
In the meantime, we can automatically reboot the router Weekly or the only other option, it appears, is Daily.
We do not appear to be able to automatically reboot on Friday & Sunday !(Weekends are very busy, compared to busy through the week)
Am I understanding this functionality correctly, which has been configured via (://mars.ic.peplink.com/…/device_system_management)
You’re on the right track… I think what I’d do is separate staff and guests – different SSIDs and, importantly, different LAN subnets. Allow a one day lease for staff and much less for visitors. You should not have reboot.
Also, you may want to ensure your DHCP pool is sufficiently large for the guests so you don’t run out of address space.
Easy to configure directly on the router using the GUI (that’s the way we do it); IC2 will also work.
Thanks for the comments
This will be the route I will be going with respect to VLANS and Wifi. (once we get some new switches)
The DHCP address pool will be .50 through .254 based on a subnet mask 255.255.255.0
The concern I have is that looking at the DHCP Client List I see many items set to 0 minutes, often classed as on line or not. A lot of these do not disappear! When does the router refresh this client list, it is not obvious. Therefore, how many free/reusable ip addresses do you really have at any given time, when many show 0 minutes lease left?
A reboot clears the decks and at least shows your clients that are fixed in the premises (staff pc’s , servers, tills etc)
For our circumstances it would still good (tidy) to reboot on a Friday evening and a Sunday evening.
If you’re running out of address space simply change from a /24 to a /22 or larger, rebooting to free up DHCP leases is not something you should be doing.
Great option – so long as broadcasts don’t drag the segment into the mud. Regardless, there are numerous alternatives – all likely better than periodic rebooting to clear address space.
Reducing the DHCP lease to 2 hours then impacts staff, who are at the Club all day.
Why would reducing DHCP lease time impact staff? When the expiry time reaches 1 hour, the client device will silently renew the lease for another 2 hours. This is a seamless process and causes no interruptions for the client device.
It appears that this is not as silent as you suggest. I have seen connectivity drop, while using a browser (you are not connected to the internet) and then come back.
Conclusion being, after looking at the client list in the router, the device has acquired a new lease after the previous one expired.
This is a simple fix, and what I came here to suggest. Just because the LAN is configured by default with a /24 (255.255.255.0) netmask, doesn’t mean you have to stay with that. Configure a /22 (255.255.252.0) netmask and set a much wider DHCP range.
Why do you need to wait for new switches in order to setup new VLANs and SSIDs?
I would do that now so you dont have to deal with the reboots
also, change the DHCP pool size as others have suggested. Will the .50-.254 pool be for guest wifi or staff wifi? sounds like staff since you have some addresses out side the range that can be reserved for fixed in place hosts.
If you dont have a lot of staff and staff hosts (computers, phones, etc), you could keep that pool size the same and then increase the guest wifi to a /23 or /22 with a short lease time.
While I can set up a new LANs on the router (done), our switches and APs are old/unmanaged and cannot be configured to use VLANs. Therefore, we can not segregate traffic/users on the existing switches, hence the requirement of new switches.