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How can Asus AC66U_B1 provide two different subnets?

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ndjur

New Around Here
I have a very basic network configuration at home.

My ISP (Shaw) provides me with 2 WAN IPs and a modem called Hitron CGNM-2250. The modem runs in so called IP Passthgough mode where one IP is used by the modem itself (Hitron is a modem/router) and another is passed straight to the one of 4 Hitron Ethernet ports at the back of the modem. My router - Asus AC66U_B1 is connected to that port, so it gets different WAN IP from the one used by the modem. I’m using very basic router features – no port forwarding or VPN.

The router LAN IP is set to 10.xxx.xxx.52, subnet mask is 255.255.255.0 and the DHCP range is 10.xxx.xxx.71 – 171 and of course, all the devices connected to the router are getting their DHCP IP addresses in that range.

That is – all but two. I have two identical very basic Lenovo tablets that are getting their LAN IPs in the 192.168.xxx.xxx subnet range instead of 10.xxx.xxx.xxxx? How is this possible?

Thanks a lot.
 
Are the tablets connecting to the WiFi on the Hitron instead of the Asus? What is the DHCP address range on the Hitron?
 
Or, if you are running 386 release firmware and connecting the tablets to Guest Network 1 they will be forced to a 192.168.101.x or 192.168.102.x address.
 
Thanks a lot for your reply.
In order not to interfere with my Asus WiFi radios, I completely disabled Hitron's WiFi, both 2.4 and 5.0. When I log into my Asus, I can see several devices having 10.x.x.x LAN IPs and two devices (two tablets) having 192.168.x.x IP addresses. Like I mentioned - the router is not getting its WAN address from the Hitron modem. Instead, it gets its WAN IP straight for the ISP. I can see that this works well because Hitron's WAN IP is different from the ASUS one and they are both in the same ISP subnet (174.x.x.x.). So basicaly - I don't use Hitron router at all and I was thinking to put it in the bridge mode, but having configuration like the current one is basically very similar. Practically, only one of the wired Hitron ports is in the bridge mode and others can be used by any other devices (although I don't).
Thanks
 
John - that's it. The tablets are connected to Guest Network 1 and I do run the latest stock firmware.
Thanks a lot John for this clarification.
If you have a minute, would you mind telling a few words about this feature - what is the reasoning, does it mean it's even safer to connect to the Guest Network 1, is there something special about the other Guest Networks, how to know about this feature, other than asking you, etc.
Cheers and thanks again
 
If you have a minute, would you mind telling a few words about this feature - what is the reasoning, does it mean it's even safer to connect to the Guest Network 1, is there something special about the other Guest Networks, how to know about this feature, other than asking you, etc.
I don't think I have good answers for your valid questions....

Why did ASUS do this? It may have been a response to wanting a more isolated guest network. It may also be related to how they extended Guest Networks to nodes in AiMesh 2.0. Really not sure.
The other tidbit for all the guest networks in ASUS 386 is that it will also automatically enable ap isolation (clients on that network will not be able to talk to one another).

How did I know? I probably spend more time than I should reading this forum :) Just for my own interest, I checked the 'official' ASUS release notes, and couldn't find it mentioned anywhere. So I'm not sure how anyone would know this without asking/searching.
 
Very impressive John, thank you very much for all this information.
I'll try my luck now and ask you an unrelated question about this Asus router. I'm not a huge fan of my particular uni as it leaves me without internet from time to time, sometimes even for a day or two (Hitron is not the reason, I checked). That relatively frequent issue was the reason to check the router system log which appears to be flooded by entries like this one:
Dec 31 18:14:38 syslog: wlceventd_proc_event(474): wl1.2: Deauth_ind A0:2C:36:55:B5:C8, status: 0, reason: Class 3 frame received from nonassociated station (7)
I have no device in the house with this MAC address (belongs to Fn-Link ) so I was really curious to find out why is this entry in every single log - every 30 seconds there are 10-15 of these entries, always with the same MAC address.
If I connect my older Asus N56U instead of AC66U_B1, these entries disappear which of course doesn't necessarily mean that they don't happen - maybe they just don't end up in the log.
Like I said, my AC66U hasn't been very reliable and I contacted ASUS service center hoping to get some help but so far we haven't made a significant move forward. Maybe we will, who knows. Of course, there is always an option to buy another router.
John, one more time, thanks a lot for the clarification regarding the different subnets.
 

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