I have a Max BR1 HW1 that I want to act as a bridge to my wired LAN. I connect existing LAN to WAN port on Mini, and LAN port on Mini to non-managed hub switch. Mini gets a DHCP address from existing LAN, and devices on switch can communicate, but I cannot get traffic from the switch out past the Mini to devices on the existing LAN. I tried the IP Passthrough and a static route on the Mini, but see no change. I just want the Mini to act as a simple bridge to existing LAN.
Hi, @AirBourn
Welcome to Forum.
I am not a Peplink developer, but… BR1 was built to be a router.
Do you try to use ip forward?
Click at " ? " after " Routing Mode " to enable this.
Can you draw your network with ip address and netmask?
Thank you.
With a default WAN NAT configuration (and untouched firewall rules), devices on the LAN of your BR1 Mini (on a 192.168.50.x IP range) will be able to access devices on your existing network as the BR1 Mini 's WAN s plugged in there.
If this is not happening then it sounds like a configuration issue. Can you ping devices on your existing network using the ping tool on the BR1 Mini?
As @MarceloBarros says, network sketch with IPs might help, as well as screenshots of your BR1 Mini config.
Thank you Martin and Marcelo for responding! Network diagram is simple.
Existing LAN is 192.168.10.x and Mini is 192.168.50.x.
I have both IP Forwarding and IP Passthrough enabled in the WAN settings. WAN connection picked up a 192.168.10.x address via DHCP on existing network. LAN IP Settings show IP address of 192.168.50.1. I can ping the Mini from the Mini side, and I can ping the LAN router at 192.168.10.1, but cannot ping any device on the existing 192.168.10.x LAN side.
I suspect I need different subnet masks or add static routes in both directions?
Hi…
Yes… You need to add a static ip address and also need a route. Let the forum see your message… and maybe they have other suggestions.
Hmm - what device needs a static IP? The Mini LAN on the 10.x side? Like 192.168.10.2? How do I make the message visible on the Forum?
Also - the router on the existing LAN side is an eero Pro 6, and it doesn’t do static routes. This is why I wanted the Mini to act as a simple bridge, extending the existing wired LAN. Is this possible with the BR1 Mini HW1?
Hi…
Please…
who is the gateway of your existing LAN 192.168.10.x ?
eero Pro 6
Where is this device at your draw?
The eero is the router from the ISP to the 10.x LAN. I have static WAN IP from ISP and LAN on my side is the 10.x net. 10.1 gateway is the eero.
This configuration below will work fine (BR1 Mini in factory default settings):
The devices on the Orange LAN will be able to access the internet and other devices on the existing blue network.
If that doesn’t work we need to work out why.
Yeah, that’s the physical config I have. My hardware is BR1 Mini HW1 with 8.3.0 build 5256 firmware. WAN side of Mini gets 10.x address from DHCP, and LAN side is static 50.1. Since you mentioned factory default, I turned off IP Passthrough and Routing Mode is now NAT. I cannot ping from 50.x device to 10.x device. But I can connect to internet.
So routing is working & DNS is working.
On the BR1 Web Admin, can you ping that device on the 192.168.10.x network using the ping tool there?
I wonder if the Eero is doing client isolation, can you ping devices on the 192.168.10.0 network from other devices on that same network?
Yes, I can ping 10.x devices from the Web Admin ping tool on the WAN connection (10.x) which makes sense, but not from the LAN (50.x) connection. Ping has always worked fine from device to device on the 10.x connection.
I don’t understand what the underlying issue is here.
I wonder if the device you are pinging from on the 192.168.50.x LAN is blocking the return traffic somehow.
What is that device? If its a PC, I would likely run a wireshark capture on it to confirm if the traffic is being returned or not.
What are you doing here is a standard thing, a typical topology and should just work…
UPDATE: I’m not sure what happened, but now it works. I suspect maybe a DHCP lease refreshed or something similar? I can now ping from 50.x network to devices on 10.x network. I’m using a MacOS laptop on the 50.x.
I cannot, however, ping the other direction. I cannot ping from a different MacOS desktop on 10.x to the laptop in the 50.x network. Should that work?
Excellent!
That is expected. On you original 192.168.10.x network, when you ping 192.168.51.x because its not local, the device will forward the request to the default gateway (the eero). That device will forward to the internet as it does not have a route to the 192.168.50.x network either.
If you could add a static route to the eero of 192.168.50.0 > WAN IP of the BR1, then you could enable IP forwarding on the BR1 WAN and routing both ways would work.
For now, your BR1 LAN devices can only talk to the 192.168.10.x network using the WAN IP of the BR1 mini which is also on that network - this is the purpose of NAT on this WAN.
Makes sense. I thank you for all the attention you’ve paid to this!
Because the eero won’t let me add a static route, the Mini isn’t going to act like a bridge and won’t work for this situation. Let me explain what I’m trying to accomplish here and maybe we can brainstorm another solution.
I have a remote mobile observatory with computers, PLCs, cameras, etc wired to an ethernet switch. When the observatory is here at home, I run a long ethernet cable from my home (10.x) LAN out to the switch so all the devices are now connected and I can work with the observatory. I bought the BR1 Mini in hopes that I could install in the observatory, and take advantage of cellular or satellite WANs to provide connectivity while it’s in a remote location. This should work fine. But, when I have the observatory at home, I want to connect it to the home network.
I thought of a few things. One was to just plug my long wire into the WAN port and have it work like a bridge (that’s what I’m doing now). But because the eero won’t let me set a static route, that’s not going to work. Can I use my home WiFi as WAN or will that have the same routing issue? Could I specify the WAN port as another LAN port and just have it act like a switch? Other ideas to connect the observatory devices to home network?
This sounds interesting!
- When at home, does any device in the mobile observatory need internet access or are you just connecting to it over the local network?
- How many devices are wired to the BR1 in the mobile observatory? Could we statically assign their IP addresses do you think or do they change a lot.
- I assume that when mobile you’ll want wireless devices to to connect to the BR1 and access the internet sometimes?
Yes, the computers in the observatory need internet for software updates, etc. The observatory network as a whole definitely needs internet when mobile remote - that’s the only to communicate with it! When I’m onsite with the observatory, I just run an ethernet cable from laptop to the switch in the observatory for a simple LAN and laptop uses hot spot for internet.
Static IPs for the observatory equipment wouldn’t be a problem.
When the observatory is mobile, internet access would be through BR1 cellular WAN, WAN to Starlink, or other hotspot. Most of the equipment in the observatory is wired to the switch. I only have two little devices that need to communicate wirelessly, and only to local devices, so the wireless AP of the BR1 would be fine.
What I’m doing with the switch and ethernet cables works great for now. What I’m trying to do with the BR1 is to easily add remote internet to the observatory and still be able to easily wire up to home LAN without a bunch of config work. The multi-WAN function of the BR1 seemed perfect - it’s just that my home LAN router can’t do a static route.
Ok got it.
Then what you can do is this:
- When at home, run a LAN cable from your home network to the LAN port of the BR1. This gives you a flat network.
- Configure all the wired devices on the mobile observatory to use static IPs, set the gateway to the new BR1 Mini LAN IP of 192.168.10.254
- Configure the BR1 Mini with a LAN IP in the .10 network eg 192.168.10.254, disable DHCP server on the LAN (the EERO is already doing DHCP). Set an outbound policy to use WAN>WiFI WAN > CELL
- Add a new vlan and SSID for WIFI clients, this has DHCP enabled so that if anyone connects they get an IP.
When at home, if you need to give the LAN devices wired to the BR1 internet access and you don’t want to use cellular, you could either connect the WiFI WAN to your hotspot or let it use cellular or you could unplug the cable from the LAN on the BR1 and plug it into the WAN (you’d lose connection between home LAN and BR1 LAN then of course).
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