This is a weird one, sorry in advance. I have a B310X that I’m currently using with an eero router/mesh WiFi system behind it. Right now the primary eero is serving as my home network router and thus my network is in a double NAT setup.
I’m considering having the Peplink serve as the router with the eero system in bridge mode just handling WiFi. In order for the eero mesh to operate optimally in this setup, they recommend the following setup: Router → primary eero → rest of network (which is physically how it’s set up now).
The downside to this setup is that I can’t use 8 of the 9 LAN ports on the B310X.
Now my question: is there a way to configure it so that it goes B310X LAN port 1 → eero port 1 → eero port 2 → B310X LAN port 2 and the rest of the LAN? Basically I guess I’m looking to “detach” LAN port 1 from the rest of the local network.
You should be able to. If the eero is in bridge mode, the B310x is acting as the gateway / DHCP server and the eero wifi network is a flat extension of the LAN of the B310x, so wifi devices on eero should be able to talk to wired LAN devices attached to the B310x…
Due to the way the eero mesh works they “strongly suggest” a primary eero be in front of all other devices on the network. Is there a way to configure that while still retaining use of the additional LAN ports on the B310X?
As I understand it, the eero has two fundamental deployment scenarios. Either as #1 the gateway (so firewall and NAT enabled) or as #2 a transparent Mesh AP solution.
If you use them in mode #1 then you get all the application control goodness.
If you use #2 bridge mode then you’ll lose access to the following:
Family Profiles
eero Secure
eero Labs
Device bandwidth usage details
Device blocking
Advanced network settings management through the eero app
In your OP you said you were considering bridge mode:
If you do that, the eero becomes a transparent mesh wifi AP so you don’t need any clever config on the B310x as its LAN ports will be on the same bridged Layer 2 network segment as the eero connected wifi clients.
However, If you want to keep the eero in its default role of network gateway then yes you can configure the spare B310x LAN ports to effectively act as a switch. You’d create a new VLAN on the B310 disable DHCP server on that VLAN, then assign it to the spare LAN ports (ports 2-9 set to access mode). then plug the WAN of the eero into LAN1 and the LAN of the eero into LAN2 and LAN3-9 would be on the same segment as LAN2.