I just got a BE3600 and am setting it up as a wi-fi access point inside my LAN, to start with, using a wired connection to the LAN via the BE3600’s WAN port with a wired laptop for setup and an IPhone as a wi-fi test. I’m following the “Connect to the Internet via an Ethernet cable“ section of the “Interface Guide”.
I currently have an old ASUS router performing the task so I have a good idea what’s supposed to happen.
Right now I’ver hit a brick wall, neither the laptop nor the phone can access the internet.
In the Admin system on the BE3600 on the “INTERNET→Ethernet” page there is no warning “The interface is connected but the Internet can’t be acccessed“, the IP/Gateway/DNS info is all correct and the router to which it’s connected shows that IP address as being connected.
The last thing the “Connection” article says is the Multi-WAN page may be helpful but when I go there I’m nite sure what I should be looking for. I see the “Ethernet” line has a green indicator, there’s the ‘Ping’ button which doesn’t do anything when I click it but I see a tooltip showing the 4 IP addresses configured by the ‘cog wheel’ popup.
Is the ‘ping’ button supposed to be clickable? On one of the other pages I’m told the firmware is up to date so I presume the router was able to phone home so it seems IT can talk to the Internet and since the laptop is driving the BE3600 it presume it too should have Internet access but it doesn’t.
I’m at a loss to see what’s going on, can someone think of something simple I’ve overlooked?
Sounds like you need to change the network mode to AP. You don’t want to be connecting via the WAN port while its still in router mode if you are trying to use it as an access point as NAT etc will still be enabled.
Access Point: This mode enables a router to connect to a wired network via a LAN cable and broadcast wireless signals, expanding Wi-Fi coverage in large spaces to allow more devices to access the network.
In Access Point mode, the router disables its NAT and DHCP functions, operating purely as a wireless signal transmitter and switch rather than a standalone gateway.
After switching to Access Point mode, you will not be able to access the web admin panel using the original LAN IP address. Instead, you need to log in to the upstream router to find the IP address it has assigned to this AP, then use this IP address to access the web admin panel. If you do not have access to the upstream router, press and hold the reset button for 4 seconds to revert it to the default Router mode.
Sorry, forgot this, the main reason for nout using AP mode is that my intention is to use on ‘on the road’, setting it up in router mode was what I thought would be the easiest way to get it going in my home environment.
I did look at using AP mode, but haven’t because (1) I didn’t need to do that with the ASUS I set up to act as a AP (it was still a ‘router’ as far as it was concerned) and (2) that warning about no longer being able to access the BE and didn’t understand why the BE’s LAN IP would change and hitting factory reset was simply going to wipe anything I’d done.
I played a bit more and realised there is no Internet access even though the Network page says there is. The BE’s time isn’t correct and I presume it can’t contact a time server and every 5 mins there’s a log entry reporting a :443 timeout from somewhere it seems to be trying to get a CA from.
I don’t have time to play right now, I wasn’t expecting it to simply ‘not work’ as the docs made it seem very simple, I don’t know why a firewall would be involved and haven’t found anywhere in the Admin section where I could disable it.
Thanks for the thought, it’s infuriating it must be something so simple I just can’t figure, I’m not a net ‘guru’ but I thought I knew far more than enough to trouble shoot something like this.
So sidestepping why its reporting no internet for a moment, the problem with using it in router mode and connecting via the WAN port is you will end up with two networks and NAT twice.
This will break things that require all devices to be on the same network, like discovering printers, accessing smart devices like smart speakers and other things that don’t expect this setup. In addition double NAT can break internet connectivity for some applications like voice protocols and FTP. So unless you really know what you are doing this is probably not a recommended setup.
That being said, as long as your primary router is giving out DHCP addresses, and you have the travel router WAN port setup with DHCP as the internet access method it should get internet access and devices behind it should be able to access the internet, even wifi is not an optimal solution.
I would suggest a doing factory default and starting again I believed DHCP WAN should just work out of the box but you should be able to validate when connected via the LAN on the internet page to ensure the mode is set to DHCP for the WAN port.
Regards the firewall, this is enabled out of the box and can not be disabled/changed without going into the advanced settings and doing configurations through a different GUI but I would recommend avoiding that for now until you can get the basics working.