I have a B One router in my house that is the synergy controller of a B One router in my barn. My Starlink is at the barn to get a clear sky view and is connected to Wan 1 of the SD B One in the barn. SD Wan 1 appears on the dashboard of the SC B One at the house just as it should.
I also have an AP Mini at the barn plugged into a POE switch which is plugged into the B One lan port. I get WiFi in the barn but I’m noticing that the synergy device is assigning IP addresses from a different network independent of the synergy controller.
This means I cannot see barn cameras and other WiFi devices from the house.
Questions:
Are lan ports on the synergy device supposed to work? There is discussion on the forums that sounds like they are not.
Is there a way to get the SC and SD devices on the same network? I don’t want to make changes to the SD because it is supposed to stay factory reset.
Should I just be glad to get WiFi from that AP One and Internet in the barn even if it’s a different network? I only have a one-pair fiber cable connecting the house and barn so I do not have another way to get lan access up to the barn.
You kinda blew my mind with this, for all that people want and request this (myself included), I didn’t remember anyone actually saying that they tested the synergized device LAN ports.
Well, you got me out of bed to go do an initial test. It gives out a 169 ip address with a gateway and dns server of the synergized device.
Now all 4 of the connections on my synergized device are currently down (long story) but it did give me an interesting result, I didn’t get internet at all. The synergy host has 3 perfectly working connections that by outbound policy should have routed fine if this link passed things back to the synergy host.
So, since it works for you, I am going to say that you are going out your starlink connection, your ap mini is handing out 169 ip addresses from the B One in the barn and routing out to the internet from there. No idea how outbound policy would be being applied if at all?
As to your actual problem, your synergy controller in the house has one free VLAN as WAN that you can use as the synergy link (as long as you are over firmware 8.4.0). This would mean that you should be able to:
connect say, LAN 1 to the fiber connection going to the barn, configure the synergy connection to use vlan 10 on LAN port 1, set LAN port 1 settings as a trunk port carrying untagged LAN and VLAN 10.
add a VLAN capable switch in the barn between the fiber connection coming in and the B One. In the switch should be set to trunk port on the fiber coming in port expecting untagged LAN and VLAN 10, then configure port one (or whatever port you want) to be native VLAN 10 and connect that port to the B One in the barn however you have that connected now. All other ports on the switch can be native untagged LAN.
If you buy a switch that has POE, for this, you can also eliminate the current switch in the barn for simplicity if you want, all the remaining ports on the switch will be on your internal house LAN.
I can’t give specific instructions on the setup for this since it is very different on each switch (even within a brand) but it shouldn’t be too bad to get set up.
If you end up with a switch that is capable of inter VLAN routing, make sure it isn’t routing between VLAN 10 and the untagged LAN.
I will point out that I have never actually tested this, I can’t see a reason it wouldn’t work fine since it’s specifically mentioned that the synergy link can be a VLAN, unless something about the synergy link stops you from being able to route the untagged LAN on the same port or something. I highly doubt it will be a problem but if anyone has tested this, chime in. Worst case, a switch capable of VLANs on the house side too would be able to work around this completely transparent to both the B Ones and all ports and settings on them would remain how they are now.
Edit:
Also occurred to me in the morning, you can actually use a VLAN in the same way to connect the starlink WAN back to the house and eliminate the barn B One entirely. That assumes you only have the 1 internet connection in the barn, if you are using the 5G connection in the B One at the barn for better signal, have other connections in the barn or plan to add more, then your current layout is fine too.
You need to be careful with VLAN configs but I run almost all of my connections back to my main building in VLANs through wireless links and then connect them to my synergized devices in that one location in a mix of VLANs and physical connections in to the devices. Once it’s set up correctly, it works fine.
Thanks so much for your reply and for all of the effort you put into this!
I’m seeing the 169.x on the synergized B One in the barn as well and that is the network being assigned from the AP as you said.
I did actually try a couple of NETGEAR fiber routers on each end of the fiber. I built a vlan in both NETGEAR routers and assigned to a lan port. When I plugged Starlink into and out of those vlan ports the Starlink wan would not come up on the house end.
I eventually returned those routers and bought the B One for the barn to use as a synergized device. I did not realize at that time that the lan ports do not synergize.
At this point, I am considering NOT using synergy and trying a vlan on the B Ones assigned to a port and trying to bring Starlink down to plug into the wan port on the House B One. This would be a little weird since I would run a short Ethernet cable from the vlan port to the wan port at the house. I would turn off DHCP at the barn to maintain a single network.
So in this scenario, I would plug the fiber converter Ethernet output into port 1 of both B Ones. That should get the lan to the barn. Then build a vlan assigned to port 2 on both B Ones with Starlink into port 2 at the barn, and a short Ethernet cable from port 2 at the house into a Wan port on the same router.
Thoughts on that?
Alternatively, before buying more equipment, I would likely bury a 2 pair fiber cable to the house. Fiber media converters are cheap and that would solve my problems for about the same cost as more gear would and give me two more paths.
Yah, the B One in the barn could be used as just a switch. You would have to take it out of synergy mode on both devices and set the B One to a manual internal IP in the same range as your current network (IE, if you use 192.168.1.1 then set it to 192.168.1.2 and set the DHCP server to start at a higher number than that on the house B One.
Basically on the Barn unit just disable the dhcp server, disable InterVLAN routing (both done on the Network tab > LAN > Network settings > click Untagged LAN)
You would want that disabled on both Untagged LAN and whatever VLAN you set up, install it like you said. Make a new VLAN 10 (or basically any number except 1) and set up Barn LAN port 2 as an access port for VLAN 10 (done on Network tab, > LAN > Port Settings > click port 2)
Port 1 on both devices needs to be set up as a trunk port with Untagged and VLAN 10 selected
That will leave you with ports 3 and 4 free on the barn end.
On the house end, if your included VLAN WAN is free, just configure Starlink as VLAN 10 on that connection in your list of available connections. If your included VLAN is used, you can repeat the settings for port 2 on the house B One and have a short cable from port 2 loop back in to one of your WAN ports.
If you have no other place to use the B One in the barn, this is a perfectly reasonable solution, if you can use it elsewhere later you can always buy a sub $100 switch to do the same thing.
I actually have similar setups between buildings but I have each building set to be it’s own router and leave by the router in that building, the wireless link or the fiber between buildings carry a VLAN for every available internet connection and if any internet connection or interbuilding link goes down, all traffic routes via the other available connections. Really just depends how complex you want to get. For me, cameras are non essential, the flood, temp and security stuff all has triple redundant connections.
I set up the house side using the VLAN WAN connection on VLAN 10.
On the barn side, I did the exact same thing (vs creating a separate VLAN with an IP) except I assigned that Reserved VLAN to port 3 as Access and plugged in the Starlink. I set port 4 to Trunk the Untagged LAN and Reserved LAN 10. The VLAN WAN is disabled still, but I guess once it builds Reserved VLAN 10 it doesn’t need to be active.
Since I don’t need the VLAN WAN port on that router this works for me.
Thank you for all of your help. I would not have gotten this going without you.