ASUSWRT Dashboard - Some pages partly inaccessible

[Hthampton]

Hello All!

Just a couple of questions, primarily about the ASUS WRT Dashboard, and also about a second router I have downstream for my legacy laptops.

I'm currently running it on a Windows 7 platform, two year old Dell Desktop with I7.

I have two questions: the ASUSWRT (latest update, according to the site) Webpage interface has just recently started showing only partial pages on two of the areas I've tried to access. One is the main page, where I cannot see the current client list now when I try to click the button for that. The other is the page for port forwarding, that I used on initial setup to port forward for my two security cameras (DYNDNS type). One page I read on here said it might be a conflict down the line that's sending back erroneous or conflicting information.

Which leads me to my next question (and I'll provide a current configuration after that). I have one legacy (re: older with Windows XP) laptop and two newer Toshiba laptops running Windows 7 (N type wireless adapters) that were connecting to my previous Belkin Dual Band N-type router and got 150MB speeds, but after installing the ASUS, went to half of that.

I set up the older router (Belkin) with a different SSID and IP address, and that seemed to help, but it occasionally allows no internet access, though it's visible, connects, and seems like it should be working.

My set up for that is like this (and may be the issue) Centurylink High Speed into house (highest for our area, at about 10GB download, 1 GB upload), plugged into WAN on Asus. From Asus, one line goes directly to upstairs, into a TrendNet gigabit switch, which feeds a Blu Ray player and a Roku device. From the Asus, another LAN line goes to another gigabit switch (downstairs), and from that switch, it goes to three rooms, and one RJ45 plug above the fireplace. Hooked up to the downstairs: Two Blu Ray players (wired), one SONOS bridge (wired), and the older Belkin Router (in this case, from that room's RJ45 plug, it goes into the WAN port on the Belkin, then from the Belkin, it goes to the second Blu Ray player). Wirelessly, two desktops are connected, both with dual band adapters, USB type, two smart phones, an ipod, two SONOS speakers, two wireless cameras, and the three laptops. Yeah, it's a mess...!

I'm getting better at understanding all this, but keep getting snagged with issues like this, however, I'm technically savvy, and can understand what you might suggest (I hope!).

So, in a nutshell: what are some things to try, check, etc. for making the ASUSWRT interface work correctly again?

Should the second router (if I want to keep using it as a secondary) be connected ONLY to one of the LAN's from the Asus, or can it still work correctly connected after a gigabit switch? Is that correct plugging into the WAN port on the Belkin?

Note: after I hooked up the Belkin, initially, the laptops connected at their previous higher speeds.

The Asus and Belkin are on WPA2-AES, with different IP addresses.

The Asus is port forwarded (though I can't access that page currently on the ASUSWRT) for the two cameras, from DYNDNS.

It all worked pretty well BEFORE I hooked up the Belkin...!

 

[koan00]

Which leads me to my next question (and I'll provide a current configuration after that). I have one legacy (re: older with Windows XP) laptop and two newer Toshiba laptops running Windows 7 (N type wireless adapters) that were connecting to my previous Belkin Dual Band N-type router and got 150MB speeds, but after installing the ASUS, went to half of that.

Sounds likes you were connected with a single stream 40Mhz wide channel. Have you set the 2.4Ghz channel width to 40Mhz on the Asus unit too? Note that if you set both to 40Mhz, you will have overlapping channels between the 2 that will cause interference with each other and may reduce actual performance. If you must run 40Mhz, I'd suggest only doing it on one router and making sure they are on separate ends of the spectrum (channels 1 and 11)

Should the second router (if I want to keep using it as a secondary) be connected ONLY to one of the LAN's from the Asus, or can it still work correctly connected after a gigabit switch? Is that correct plugging into the WAN port on the Belkin?

While there should be nothing wrong with this setup as long as the 2 routers are using different subnet ranges, you are doing unnecessary NAT routing.

What I'd suggest is manually configuring the belkin LAN ip to be a static IP
on the same subnet as the asus unit's LAN. Take care to assign the belkin a static IP the asus unit will not give out via DHCP. Shutdown the router and make sure its diconnected from the asus unit. Connect PC, etc to the Belkin and disable it's DHCP server, then reconnect the belkin unit to the asus unit using a LAN port (not wan) on the blekin.

You should now be using the beklin as a combined access point/switch instead of a router.

Sorry I can't comment on the other page load issue.

 

[Hthampton]

Thanks so much! I will definitely try that out. The Belkin is where it is based on physical space considerations right now, otherwise I would probably have it in a more optimal spot. And to be clear, once I disable DHCP and assign a static IP to the Belkin Router, I can still hook up the Belkin like this: Internet -> ASUS Wan, ASUS LAN -> Gigabit switch -> Belkin LAN (not WAN this time). Also, since I'm still learning, to ensure the Asus won't give out the static IP for the Belkin (on the same subnet, right?) do I assign the static IP in a different range of IP's? I think I can find that, but since I'm a little lazy, where do I typically look to change that?
Thanks again!

 

[koan00]

And to be clear, once I disable DHCP and assign a static IP to the Belkin Router, I can still hook up the Belkin like this: Internet -> ASUS Wan, ASUS LAN -> Gigabit switch -> Belkin LAN (not WAN this time).

Yes.

Also, since I'm still learning, to ensure the Asus won't give out the static IP for the Belkin (on the same subnet, right?) do I assign the static IP in a different range of IP's? I think I can find that, but since I'm a little lazy, where do I typically look to change that?

To explain more fully: You will need to look at the Asus DHCP server settings. You most likely wont have to change anything on it. The Asus DHCP server will be configured to give out a certain range (Ex: 192.168.1.50-150). Any other LAN IP other than the Asus's own LAN IP (Ex: 192.168.1.1), or an IP in that DHCP range should be useable. In this example, I'd just choose 192.168.1.2 to make it easy to remember.

Now that you have picked a proper IP, the only configuration needed is to edit the LAN configuration on the Belkin. You'd only need to edit the Asus DHCP configuration if ther was no free address in the 192.168.1.x range. In which case you'd shorten the range by 1, and use the newly available address in the belkin.

For clarity, there are 3 things we are trying to accomplish here:
1) We don't want 2 DHCP servers running. Since they are on the same subnet (Ex 192.168.1.x). They'd be conflicting if they were. So we will use the Asus as the master.
2) Most routers dont have a DHCP client option for the LAN interface. But we still want to be able to access the web interface on the Belkin unit. Therefore we need to have an IP to address it. So we need to manually assign an IP address to the LAN side that is on our subnet.
3) Based on #2, we don't want the asus dhcp server to give another client the same IP address we are hard coding to the belkin.

 

[Hthampton]

Click! That's the sound of me getting it! I will definitely try that, and I have a feeling, that might be the issue with the ASUSWRT not functioning fully correctly. I think I found one other item in this forum where they suggested that something downstream (maybe another router with DHCP turned on!) was giving an erroneous "feedback" to the main router, the Asus. Could kill two birds with this one!

I'll let you know for sure, and thanks very much again!

 

[Hthampton]

@koan00 - just wanted to update you and let you know that that all worked! I assigned the Belkin the IP 192.168.1.2 (interestingly, though, I was unable to access it's webpage after that, but I had also turned off DHCP. Another thing to think about, but it worked!) and the other steps, voila! I also found that when I unplugged the two cables from the two LAN ports on the ASUS, reset it, then plugged back in, I got the pages back I was only 1/2 getting. Furthermore, updated to the current release of the firmware, and it's even better. All is right in ASUS-land!

 

[koan00]

Glad you got it working.