Ozymandyus
Occasional Visitor
I appreciate the replies @coxhaus, and if it turns out to be operator error, I don't have any particular ego in it and would be happy to admit it. Before anything else, thank you for taking the time to respond and discuss, it's greatly appreciated.
The Cisco rep with whom I spoke freely admitted that the issues I was experiencing were related to bugs in the current firmware, and that I was far from the first person he'd worked with having difficulty. I will relate what happened to me in detail.
The first thing I did after connecting directly to the router is upgrade to the latest firmware from a file previously downloaded to my laptop. I do this to make sure I have the most up-to-date security fixes, but in this particular case it might not've been ideal.
The next several steps were very similar to yours. I connected initially via a DHCP-obtained address for simplicity, but knew I'd need to change it later. Went to LAN-VLAN1-Edit, and changed the IP address to what I'd wanted. You naturally lose your connection, so at this point I configured a static IP on the laptop in the new network. No connection. No matter how I tried to represent my laptop on the new network, it simply no longer connects. In order to be able to access the configuration again, I had to reboot the router (and lose my changes). After that, at the direction of the Cisco rep, I first setup remote management and saved the config (which doesn't break anything) and then connected through one of the WAN interfaces. Any change to the default VLAN1 renders it completely unusable.
Using the WAN port I was able to configure things and setup additional VLANs through which access on the LAN was possible. However, with the default VLAN unusable, I started running into other issues as well. It would be an easier situation if I had a layer 3 switch, but I do not. I've also had no luck getting VPN access working with the RV345, which I assume (but don't know for sure) has something to do with the default VLAN not working.
Basically, I'm at a skill level in networking where it's already challenging enough for me to get everything configured and working correctly. Having to fight the hardware itself on top of that makes it darn near impossible, and I don't have unlimited time to devote to trying. I figure that as a last resort, I'll try downgrading the firmware to see if that works better, although from what I read the earlier versions had their own problems.
The Cisco rep with whom I spoke freely admitted that the issues I was experiencing were related to bugs in the current firmware, and that I was far from the first person he'd worked with having difficulty. I will relate what happened to me in detail.
The first thing I did after connecting directly to the router is upgrade to the latest firmware from a file previously downloaded to my laptop. I do this to make sure I have the most up-to-date security fixes, but in this particular case it might not've been ideal.
The next several steps were very similar to yours. I connected initially via a DHCP-obtained address for simplicity, but knew I'd need to change it later. Went to LAN-VLAN1-Edit, and changed the IP address to what I'd wanted. You naturally lose your connection, so at this point I configured a static IP on the laptop in the new network. No connection. No matter how I tried to represent my laptop on the new network, it simply no longer connects. In order to be able to access the configuration again, I had to reboot the router (and lose my changes). After that, at the direction of the Cisco rep, I first setup remote management and saved the config (which doesn't break anything) and then connected through one of the WAN interfaces. Any change to the default VLAN1 renders it completely unusable.
Using the WAN port I was able to configure things and setup additional VLANs through which access on the LAN was possible. However, with the default VLAN unusable, I started running into other issues as well. It would be an easier situation if I had a layer 3 switch, but I do not. I've also had no luck getting VPN access working with the RV345, which I assume (but don't know for sure) has something to do with the default VLAN not working.
Basically, I'm at a skill level in networking where it's already challenging enough for me to get everything configured and working correctly. Having to fight the hardware itself on top of that makes it darn near impossible, and I don't have unlimited time to devote to trying. I figure that as a last resort, I'll try downgrading the firmware to see if that works better, although from what I read the earlier versions had their own problems.