EdgeRouter Lite - i need help, or another router recommendation

[ddaenen1]

In my enthusiasm to upgrade my home network i went out and bought a 2nd hand Netgear GS724Tv3 switch and an EdgeRouter Lite to replace my RT-AC88u which has been giving grief on port 5-8 and i was running out of ports anyways.

After some tinkering i got the switch to run almost perfect. I had some lag issues with connecting to the internet via one WiFi AP but a factory reset of the switch seems to have fixed it. The only thing remaining a mystery is that i cannot access the router interface via my desktop that is connected via UTP to the switch whilst i can access from every other device including my iPad and macbook air so it is not a big deal right now but at some point i need to figure it out.

The big issue now is getting the EdgeRouter configured. I watch all the tutorials on youtube and got as far as having it connected to the internet and setting up a VLAN to get the devices connected to the switch an IP via DHCP. For the rest i am completely stuck. I cannot access the router from any device except when plugging it directly into Eth2 (switch is connected to Eth1) and i cannot seem to set up static routes for the devices connected to the switch that i want to have a static IP. This router is really a challenge whilst setting up the RT-AC88u router was a piece of cake.

I have looked on the net to find a config file to upload but i don't find anything that resembles my specific network situation.

This is my current situation but the intent is to connect the EA6400 AP directly to the switch (which will require a UTP cable extension) and also add the Asus to the switch configured as AP.

Maybe i should have done more research before buying the EdgeRouter as i really feel this piece equipment goes beyond my network knowledge so either i find some real expert help to get this set up properly or alternatively a recommendation for a router that is way easier to set up and sell the EdgeRouter again.

 

[umarmung]

Your network plan has nothing resembling VLANs.

"i cannot seem to set up static routes for the devices connected to the switch that i want to have a static IP", shows you don't know the difference between a static route and static IP.

Ubiquiti Edgerouters are intended for SOHO and SMB use, require above average network knowledge beyond initial plug and play, and support mainly comes from the Ubiquiti community. From your starting point, you will continue to face challenges that will consume much of your time and there will be even more to learn beyond that, when your network scales up. If you actually want experts, try "r/ubiquiti" for your home networking setup or ubnt forums for the professionals.

Alternatively, choose a good consumer router replacement like the TP-Link Archer C7, Asus RT-AC66U B1, Synology RT2600ac, or the Netgear R7800.

 

[ddaenen1]

Your network plan has nothing resembling VLANs.

"i cannot seem to set up static routes for the devices connected to the switch that i want to have a static IP", shows you don't know the difference between a static route and static IP.

I agree that it does not but i did mention that the EA6400 is to be connected to the switch once have the UTP extension done. with regards to the sentence you quoted, I do know the difference, i just made a mistake on what i wanted to explain English not being my native language. What i meant was that i cannot seem to find how to configure the router to allow static IP's connected through the switch to get internet access.

Ubiquiti Edgerouters are intended for SOHO and SMB use, require above average network knowledge beyond initial plug and play, and support mainly comes from the Ubiquiti community. From your starting point, you will continue to face challenges that will consume much of your time and there will be even more to learn beyond that, when your network scales up. If you actually want experts, try "r/ubiquiti" for your home networking setup or ubnt forums for the professionals.

Alternatively, choose a good consumer router replacement like the TP-Link Archer C7, Asus RT-AC66U B1, Synology RT2600ac, or the Netgear R7800.

I do agree that i went in over my head with buying the EdgeRouter Lite without doing further research but i don't give up easily and don't want to replace the RT-AC88u by another consumer wifi router. Then i might as well leave all as-is as the whole point is to replace the wifi router by a stand-alone router as i have no use for a Wifi AP where it is currently located and i cannot move the router location as it would require me to reroute a bunch of UTP cables which is not an option.

 

[roadwrenchtech]

The edgerouter is an amazing piece of equipment. Take the time to learn your way around edgeos. Look up willie howe on youtube, he has lots of tutorials on edgeos from basic first time power up to advanced configuration. I got stuck creating firewall rules and his vids cleared it right up for me.

 

[ddaenen1]

The edgerouter is an amazing piece of equipment. Take the time to learn your way around edgeos. Look up willie howe on youtube, he has lots of tutorials on edgeos from basic first time power up to advanced configuration. I got stuck creating firewall rules and his vids cleared it right up for me.

Thanks for the tip. I watched several of them and also others. I have made a test setup with the router and an ASUS EA-AC87 access point connected to my laptop to simulate my home network and i have tinkered around with the router now for several days and found some stuff out but not confident enough to move it into my home network.

What puzzles me now is how i can get the router to appoint IP addresses to the devices connected to my access points via wifi. Both AP's are Linksys routers configured as AP's as i need the ports to connect to both my Samsung TV's so here is an important question:

If i connect my NG switch to the ER using a static IP (192.168.1.2) and both my access points are connected to the switch with static IP's respectively 192.168.1.3 and 192.168.1.4 as in the above topology (with the exception of the EA6400 that is now also connected to the NG switch) and i set up a DHCP server in the ER with a range from 50-150, will the devices that are connected to the wifi of both AP's get an IP address assigned from the DHCP server and routed to the internet via the gateway or do the static IP's need to be configured within the range of the DHCP server set up?

 

[roadwrenchtech]

Thanks for the tip. I watched several of them and also others. I have made a test setup with the router and an ASUS EA-AC87 access point connected to my laptop to simulate my home network and i have tinkered around with the router now for several days and found some stuff out but not confident enough to move it into my home network.

What puzzles me now is how i can get the router to appoint IP addresses to the devices connected to my access points via wifi. Both AP's are Linksys routers configured as AP's as i need the ports to connect to both my Samsung TV's so here is an important question:

If i connect my NG switch to the ER using a static IP (192.168.1.2) and both my access points are connected to the switch with static IP's respectively 192.168.1.3 and 192.168.1.4 as in the above topology (with the exception of the EA6400 that is now also connected to the NG switch) and i set up a DHCP server in the ER with a range from 50-150, will the devices that are connected to the wifi of both AP's get an IP address assigned from the DHCP server and routed to the internet via the gateway or do the static IP's need to be configured within the range of the DHCP server set up?

As I understand your plan it should work. I would reserve the ip of all the access points in the ER, and include them in your dhcp range as it would be cleaner or maybe thats just me.

 

[ddaenen1]

So, i did all that and got the router to work, e.g. connected directly to the modem on Eth0 and my laptop on Eth1. Laptop picks up an IP from the DHCP server and has internet connection. So far so good.

However, also first disappointment about the ER-router: I have have a 200/20mbps connection coming into the house and with almost every client, wired or wireless and all of them behind my NG switch, with my current Asus RT-AC87U which is functioning as the network router i get on average 180mbps download and 19mbps upload with speedtest. with the ER though, i barely reach 100mbps download. That is almost 50% less. I have not configured anything on the router except the basic wizard and i configured the hardware offloading via CLI. I also noticed that pings are higher than usual around 20 to 25 where via the Asus they are always 11-12ms

Is this the speed i should be expecting from the ER Lite or can this be improved?

 

[ColinTaylor]

Other people have said that they can get near gigabit speeds with the ERLite but HW acceleration must be enabled. So it seems possible.

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/i...r-gigabit-internet-service.35516/#post-287470

 

[roadwrenchtech]

Sounds like something isn't right. Even the smallest ERX can do over 950Mbs, the light is faster yet. Pings to ER should be 1 to 3 ms. I use wifiman app by ubiquiti for ping testing among other things.

 

[ddaenen1]

Other people have said that they can get near gigabit speeds with the ERLite but HW acceleration must be enabled. So it seems possible.

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/i...r-gigabit-internet-service.35516/#post-287470

Well, that at least gives me some motivation to look deeper into the issue. I guess with what i have learned so far, the best would be to do a reset to defaults and then only do the basic config and set up one DHCP server for Eth1. I did enable HW offloading but i did so for all possible services, as recommended in the Ubnt help page: https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/115006567467-EdgeRouter-Hardware-Offloading. Are there partiular HW offloading that i need to enable / disable for a simple router application?

 

[coxhaus]

One DHCP server seems to make all networks a little better in my way of thinking.

 

[ddaenen1]

Well, i think i figured it out and it was just a limitation of my buggy Thinkpad T400 laptop. Hooking up my Macbook Air via an accesspoint to the ERL gives me the same speeds as with my Asus RT-AC88u.

Progress!

 

[ddaenen1]

Well, today was D-Day. After having it running in the test-stand for several days, I decided to move my freshly and basically configured ERL3 into my network. A big deal as my first acquaintance wasn't really successful and with the whole family being on the network, delays and lags were not an option to maintain peace of mind. I must say, i have learned a lot in the past couple of weeks and much credit to this forum for this steep learning curve.

Long story short is that i replaced the RT-AC88u by the ERL3 whilst the family being out and the transfer was a success. The ERL3 is performing flawless and smooth and no one actually noticed any difference which is what you would want. I do feel that i am only at the beginning. I still haven't looked into IPv6 and surely i want to tighten security going forward but so far, i am really impressed by the ERL3 in combination with my NG switch.

After a factory default reset, the RT-AC88u has now been degraded to an access point, which is much of its own doing as i got tired of port 5-8 going down and the endless list of small nuisances such as small lags, incomplete lists of connections and log flooding with dnsmasq connection errors and what not.

 

[coxhaus]

If looking for a wire only router I have had good luck using a Cisco RV340 router. I don't pay for any licenses. I just run it the way it comes. I believe it is a little easier to setup vs ERL3 but I have not setup a ERL3. The RV340 has a GUI menu system. There are lots of options so you kind of need to understand networking. Still I believe it will be easier than a CLI system.

 

[ddaenen1]

If looking for a wire only router I have had good luck using a Cisco RV340 router. I don't pay for any licenses. I just run it the way it comes. I believe it is a little easier to setup vs ERL3 but I have not setup a ERL3. The RV340 has a GUI menu system. There are lots of options so you kind of need to understand networking. Still I believe it will be easier than a CLI system.

Thanks for the tip. For now the ERL3 seems to be doing its job very well. I will closely monitor the performance in the next weeks to evaluate whether the ERL3 is for keeps. I must say the UNMS iphone app is a great help in that aspect.

Next steps is learning about setting up a robust firewall on the ERL3 although i read somewhere that even the firewall set up through the basic wizard is pretty solid.

 

[roadwrenchtech]

The basic firewall on the edgerouter is very good. Essentially nothing on wan can contact anything on lan, unless it is initiated from within the lan. All unwanted incoming traffic is blocked. Outgoing traffic is allowed. I added additional rules to mine preventing my ip cameras from accessing the internet.

 

[coxhaus]

I think you are going down a good path. You will learn a lot on the way.

 

[ddaenen1]

I think you are going down a good path. You will learn a lot on the way.

Thanks for the encouraging words. I do have to agree that the CLI approach requires more work but then again, it is not that you change these things often once entered. For now, i am a bit puzzled on IPv6 functionality. In my Asus router, i had this configured as "passthrough" which worked fine and every capable device got their IPv6 assigned. First of all i am not sure if this functionality also exists on the ERL3 and more over, the NG switch also has a IPV6 DHCP option so i am unsure where i need to go configure IPv6 functionality. My gut feeling tells me in the router as this is where IP's are assigned to all devices.

 

[coxhaus]

If IPv6 is slowing you down skip it and wait for later. Just make sure it is off. IPv4 is still where the meat of the internet is.

 

[ddaenen1]

If IPv6 is slowing you down skip it and wait for later. Just make sure it is off. IPv4 is still where the meat of the internet is.

I agree. No rush in getting this done.

End of day one. ERL3 still running smooth. No issues. I did notice these entries in the log. All 3 are IP's that i have configured as a static mapping. Not sure what to do with that as all seems to be running as it should.