BE98 Pro VLANs Limits

[proctorngambler]

Looking to experiment with VLANs.

Anyone know what the limit is for the number of VLANs on the Asus BE98 Pro routers?

After hours of experimenting, I found that each radio can have a max of 5 VLAN/SSIDs. So in theory, I should be able to do 20 VLANs without issue. But in reality I'm discovering that after 15 VLANs, 16th VLAN and onwards doesn't broadcast the SSID. I've tried various band combinations, even tried creating VLANs on ethernet (not Wi-Fi).

I'm also running the 3006.102.7_alpha1 so not sure if this is a bug in the firmware or a router/firmware limit.

Has anyone else come across this or know the limit of this route?

 

[jksmurf]

@bennor, @visortgw did a bit of work on this, possibly also @Seth Harman.

See here for example; not your model exactly, but a general GNP limit. Sounds like a lot, not sure how manageable that would be in the end, whether it would overtax the Router, especially if you're trying to propagate the VLANs to nodes.

 

[jzchen]

While searching seems to suggest that 3 SSIDs per band are allowed, ASUS documentation also mentions that to pass the network onto a node would be limited to the "first set" of bands. My Chinese English translator interprets that as 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz-1 but not 6 GHz-2.

I believe the ExpertWiFi series allows 5 SSIDs, but it is unclear whether that is total across all bands, or 5 per band. I suspect it's a combination of these rules 5 per band and only the first set so 2.4, 5, and 6-1 makes 3*5=15 as you noticed...

 

[jksmurf]

ASUS documentation also mentions that to pass the network onto a node would be limited to the "first set" of bands.

Yeah, this has been rattling our cage on a quite a few past discussions on GNP, VLANs and propagation to Nodes especially.

5Ghz GUEST Network not propagating to AiMesh nodes?

In this image, a 2.4 GHz IoT is already created on the left, VLAN 53, therefore the yellow warning your 2.4 GHz limit has been reached...

www.snbforums.com

Guest Network Pro not broadcasting on XT8 nodes (GT-AX11000 Pro + XT8 mesh setup)

Hey everyone, I’m running a GT-AX11000 Pro as my main router. I recently changed that to the main router from an XT8 being the main router. The XT8s are now AiMesh nodes. I’ve set up Guest Network Pro, enabled it for both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, and selected the nodes to broadcast the guest SSID as...

www.snbforums.com

Shelly IoT Devices (Switches) Drop off Network with kernel 'not mesh client, can't delete it' messages

Hi I have 2 Shelly 1PM Gen3's switching on and off Hot Water in the Main and Annex HW Cupboards. They are on the 2.4GHz Wifi. None of my other 20-odd Shelly's have this issue. Annex DC:DA:0C:B1:0A:18 MainHWC DC:DA:0C:B1:00:2C They keep dropping off the Wifi at (every time) almost the exact...

www.snbforums.com

Any way to force an AIMesh node to broadcast a certain SSID?

I have an RT-BE92U, and have an IoT wifi network setup. However, none of my nodes are offering it. I suspect it's because they're older routers (three RT-AX1800S's and one RT-AX55). They're all running the latest stock firmware for their model, except the main router, which is running...

www.snbforums.com

Switch capabilities of AiMesh Nodes?

If you have managed switches as workaround this means you also have Ethernet to nodes available. Not sure why you decided to pair your pfSense gateway with consumer AiMesh as AP and fix deficiencies with extra hardware. Sounds like self-inflicted complication to me. What was the idea behind this...

www.snbforums.com

Trying to understand Guest Network Pro limitations

For what ever reason the Guest Network Pro on my RT-AX86U Pro gets wonky if I've added and removed a bunch of Guest Network Pro Profiles. Sometimes it doesn't show all the available settings or options in newly added Profiles. Typically what I've had to do is remove all the Profiles, reboot the...

www.snbforums.com

 

[jzchen]

Unfortunately there may be bugs that did not help or make things more confusing....

I corroborate my suspicion with this screenshot from Employee SDN I can create with a EBG15, and GT-AXE16000, GT-BE98 Pro, and BQ16 Pro nodes. Notice the option for 5 GHz, and 6 GHz are there, but no -1, -2 designation....

EDIT- Actually the EBM68s have 5 GHz-2 but I forgot to note them...

 

[jzchen]

The older nodes as warned in red, I would guess 2 SSIDs maximum, I think I read somewhere here maybe @Tech9 was the one who mentioned it, (it was related to the Guest Network non-Pro creating 2 specific VLANs which translates to the third triplet in 192.168.5x.yyy.

 

[jzchen]

Oh, I never did get the VLAN, guest network through my switch(es). The closest I got was connecting to the SDN/GNP/GN network, if for example I assigned a static IP. At times with whatever incorrect setting the password gets corrupted which results in can not connect warning. (At least this is what I suspect. I probably should not expand my main subnet to 255.255.252.0 which really complicated setting up the managed switch)....

EDIT- If I remember correctly, as my attention has drifted some. I could illicit "incorrect password" by setting the VLAN Tagged or Untagged setting incorrectly. I would get "can not connect" because there was no DHCP service to assign an IP address. This was circumvented with assigning a static IP. Even connected though, I got no access to the WWW....

 

[proctorngambler]

Thanks @jzchen and @jksmurf and @bennor.

I'm running the BE98 Pro in AP mode, my router is a PFSense box with a lot of VLANs.

I was hoping to be able to get all the VLANs to work on the BE98 Pro.

For testing purposes, I created (in the order listed):
- 5 VLANs on 2.4G Band
- 5 VLANs on 5G Band
- 3 VLANs with Wi-Fi Band set to "None"
- 5 VLANs on 6G Band

Giving me a total of 18 VLANs. The last three VLANs created on the 6G Band are not broadcasting SSID, so only 15 of the 18 VLANs actually work.

It would appear that the max limit for VLANs is 15. Just wish Asus would publish such info.

 

[jzchen]

Considering I could not get a single VLAN to work... How does VLAN with no WiFi radio work? I'm not jealous or anything but how is that even an option, is it wired/Ethernet port based?

 

[jzchen]

@proctorngambler Thank you for sharing your findings on the upper limit. Curious what happens if you create the 15 WiFi VLANs first and then the 3 no channel ones. Do the 3 no channel ones not work?

 

[proctorngambler]

Considering I could not get a single VLAN to work... How does VLAN with no WiFi radio work? I'm not jealous or anything but how is that even an option, is it wired/Ethernet port based?

Exactly - it's for the ethernet ports. You can go to LAN > VLAN, select the mode to Access and select one of the VLANs you defined earlier from the drop down menu.

@proctorngambler Thank you for sharing your findings on the upper limit. Curious what happens if you create the 15 WiFi VLANs first and then the 3 no channel ones. Do the 3 no channel ones not work?

I have not tried this (yet), but I suspect anything after the 15th VLANs won't work.