Switch capabilities of AIMesh Nodes?

[Seth Harman]

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 setup?

I think you're confusing my setup with someone else's, I've just got an RT-AX88U Pro main router, two RT-BE58U AiMesh nodes, and one of the nodes has a managed switch plugged into it so I can force a few wired IoT devices onto the IoT VLAN setup using GNP on the main router.

 

[Tech9]

Ah… sorry!

All DHCP is handled by my pfSense firewall.

 

[Seth Harman]

Ah… sorry!

No worries, this whole subject is such a convoluted mess I'm not surprised. The Asus marketing department really dropped the ball on this one.

 

[Tech9]

You’ve mentioned pfSense in one of the posts and I was under impression this is your current configuration. Good luck solving AiMesh puzzle.

 

[Seth Harman]

You’ve mentioned pfSense in one of the posts and I was under impression this is your current configuration. Good luck solving AiMesh puzzle.

If so I was quoting someone else as I've never used it, maybe it was visortgw or jksmurf?

Edit: It was td99, I was quoting something he said using italics and not using the Quote BB code.

 

[Tech9]

Why RT-BE58U as nodes then? Came cheaper than better fit RT-AX86U Pro?

 

[jksmurf]

What you are tryiing to do with the managed switch does in fact work IF you:

1. Connect the switch to one of the downstraem LAN ports of the AiMesh node (i.e., output from the AiMesh Node).
2. You properly configure the switch as described in the TP-Link community forum: Setting up VLAN tagging on ports.

One of the problems with long threads over time is that stuff earlier in the thread starts to get lost from memory.

After my trial putting a managed switch between 3006 Primary and 3004 node did not work, I did actually end up trying, successfully, to attach the wired ESP32 to the managed switch, which I set up with VLAN tagging and successfully got the device on the 53 IoT network.

I believe this is exactly where Seth landed.

 

[Seth Harman]

Why RT-BE58U as nodes then? Came cheaper than better fit RT-AX86U Pro?

Yeah, they were on sale so I got them cheap enough that RT-BE58U + managed switch ended up costing less than RT-AX86U Pro. This also sets me up so when I finally upgrade my main router to something that supports WiFi 7 I'll be WiFi 7 across my entire network.

 

[jksmurf]

VLAN tagging local Ethernet ports does NOT work, using a TP-Link TL-SG108E Managed Switch plugged into the RT-BE58U to provide VLAN ID tagging for wired clients

Could I suggest you edit that (if that is what you mean) to state?

“….VLAN tagging local Ethernet ports does NOT work; instead I am using a TP-Link TL-SG108E Managed Switch plugged into the RT-BE58U to provide VLAN ID tagging for wired clients”

 

[Seth Harman]

Could I suggest you edit that (if that is what you mean) to state?

“….VLAN tagging local Ethernet ports does NOT work; instead I am using a TP-Link TL-SG108E Managed Switch plugged into the RT-BE58U to provide VLAN ID tagging for wired clients”

Done, good suggestion.

 

[jksmurf]

Maybe it's time we start a running list of what works and what doesn't?

Here's my contribution:

• RT-AX88U Pro, Merlin firmware 3006.102.4, running as Main Router: Guest Network Pro works, VLAN tagging of local (to the Primary Router) Ethernet ports works
• 1x RT-AX3000 AIMesh Node (wired for the purposes of this trial), Merlin Firmware 3004.388.9_2: Guest Network Pro works (with limited interfaces as stated by ASUS being limited by a non 3006 codebase node). VLAN tagging local Ethernet ports does NOT work; instead I am using a TP-Link TL-SG105E Managed Switch plugged into one of the RT-AX3000 LAN ports to provide VLAN ID tagging for wired clients.

 

[Tech9]

I'll be WiFi 7 across my entire network

The hardware choice is entirely yours, but dual-band Wi-Fi 7 routers are mostly marketing. The same 5GHz band limitations apply and in close to ideal conditions you can get ~Gigabit vs ~800Mbps from similar AX-class routers on common 80MHz wide non-DFS channel. Basically getting cheaper nodes is creating the issue you are currently dealing with. Someone setting up a new AiMesh system can avoid this situation and have all the controls in the AiMesh configuration screen.

 

[jksmurf]

The hardware choice is entirely yours, but dual-band Wi-Fi 7 routers are mostly marketing. The same 5GHz band limitations apply and in close to ideal conditions you can get ~Gigabit vs ~800Mbps from similar AX-class routers on common 80MHz wide non-DFS channel. Basically getting cheaper nodes is creating the issue you are currently dealing with. Someone setting up a new AiMesh system can avoid this situation and have all the controls in the AiMesh configuration screen.

If money and aesthetics are no issue, the solution is simple, do what @visortgw did and have VLAN capable nodes (as well as a primary router). This obviates the need for (if you have multiple mesh nodes) multiple managed switches, one attached to each node, which gets ugly, with power bricks etc.

Unfortunately as mentioned before the list of VLAN capable routers you can buy is quite short; and not only that, none of them are ZenWifi form factor with internal antennas that 3 year olds can’t break.

 

[Seth Harman]

The hardware choice is entirely yours, but dual-band Wi-Fi 7 routers are mostly marketing. The same 5GHz band limitations apply and in close to ideal conditions you can get ~Gigabit vs ~800Mbps from similar AX-class routers on common 80MHz wide non-DFS channel. Basically getting cheaper nodes is creating the issue you are currently dealing with. Someone setting up a new AiMesh system can avoid this situation and have all the controls in the AiMesh configuration screen.

I'm holding out for something that supports 6GHz for the main router which is what most of my non-IoT wireless clients are connecting to. In the case of my IoT devices none of them are WiFi 7 and they're all connecting to AiMesh nodes so I don't really care about maximizing communication speeds in those cases (most of them don't even support 5GHz). And it wasn't worth the upcharge to get something "better" to use as nodes since I only have 4 wired IoT devices I wanted to force onto a VLAN and that was easily solved with the managed switch. The reason I upgraded the nodes is because I had RT-AX57Us that don't support 3006 so wireless client VLAN tagging using GNP didn't work on them; that is a major issue for me considering the number of IoT clients I have that I wanted to isolate on a VLAN and they're in remote enough locations that I can't reliably connect them to a single node by just making one of them an AP and running the backhaul through a managed switch to tag everything.

 

[Tech9]

In the case of my IoT devices none of them are WiFi 7

Hmm... how many of your IoT devices are even Wi-Fi 5?

none of them are ZenWifi form factor with internal antennas

Well... you have requirements your vendor of choice can't meet with the current product line.

 

[jksmurf]

But can you confirm you've got/had nodes running 3004-firmware, a main router with 3006 running GNP, and the wireless clients connecting to the nodes can properly get tagged with a GNP VLAN ID other than 1?

I can confirm this works. Two separate setups.

Whilst I use dnsmasq-x.conf.add to assign IP addresses (and this is no different to the same 32# device option in the GNP setup screen), IIRC, whe. I first set it up (pre dnsmasq) they also got IP addresses in the correct subnet associated with the SSID/PWD.

I remain puzzled that the earlier poster is not seeing them on the correct subnet.

 

[Seth Harman]

Hmm... how many of your IoT devices are even Wi-Fi 5?

Quite a few. I used to work in the security camera industry so I have a bunch of WiFi cameras that do 5GHz. As well, I've got random devices that support 5GHz like Amazon Echos, some dedicated hubs for IoT stuff, tablets, gaming devices, etc...

 

[Seth Harman]

I remain puzzled that the earlier poster is not seeing them on the correct subnet.

I'm puzzled as well, but the giant mess this is all turning out to be leaves me unsurprised.

 

[visortgw]

I'm puzzled as well, but the giant mess this is all turning out to be leaves me unsurprised.

There is significant configuration necessary in order for this to all work. Earlier poster is most likely missing a step.

 

[visortgw]

Have anyone tried any of the Asus ExpertWifi devices that support VLAN tagging?