New to forum and need some setup advice on using this cellular modem/router. I currently am using wifi as wan and have disabled the wifi. I connected the TP-Link Deco to the Pepwave Lan port. Everything appeared to be working fine, but I noticed my computer had an IP Address that was on a different subnet than the Pepwave (ex: 192.168.68.000 versus 192.168.50.1). I then set the TP-Link Deco to AP mode and the IP addresses now appear to be assigned by the Pepwave. Is this the best setup or can the Pepwave be setup as modem only and allow the TP-Link Deco assign IP Addresses? Thanks for any help.
Hello Gary,
It highly depends on what you are trying to achieve. Also it depends on your network topology. If your deco system is connected to peplink LAN and is set on router mode, then it creates different network 192.168.68.0/24 is default network for tp-link deco systems. So lets say if you have wifi printer installed on tp-link network but laptop connected to peplink wifi, then printer and laptop would be on different networks and won’t be able to communicate. Also all “slave” deco routers need to be connected directly from first (main deco router), for example you cannot connect switch to peplinks LAN and then cable all your deco routers to the switch (slave nodes would not be able to see main deco, because it will be on different network (peplinks networks and to work they needs to be on tp-links network)), however if you have deco system in AP mode then you can do it because it won’t create new network.
As you have for now is good setup, because its petty much impossible to connect something wrong when you have DHCP server on one device (peplink) and decos in AP mode AP mode means it only does wifi, not doing routing and ip addressing). The only downside is that some tp-link deco functions are not working when its in AP mode.
Hope that helps. Cheers.
Regards,
Laurynas
Thank you for the reply. I think I will follow your advice and continue with leaving the Decos as AP"s since everything is working well.
Thanks again,
Gary