Connecting 2 Routers

[Zerpersande]

As far as the thread title goes, I did it. And it has worked for over a year. Still chugging along. ASUS RT-AC3200 as my main router, ASUS RT-AC85U as my secondary router. To see how I set it up, check out this tutorial.

but just recently I decided to update the firmware on the routers. The update process went fine for the main router. But when I started on my secondary router I got a message stating that it was not connected to the Internet. That was quite interesting because I was using the Internet. My mail was working, my browser was going to websites. (In fact, I using a wireless channel to write this right now that “isn’t connected to the internet”.)Everything was normal. When I checked the router information using my browser, I found that, indeed, it showed that the router was not connected to the Internet.(See pic) I did a factory reset on the secondary router and installed everything again, thinking that maybe I had done something wrong. Nope, it still showed it wasn’t connected to the Internet, but everything still worked. And I still get the same message about not being able to update the firmware.

One last note… I use this router in my living room and have a LAN cable running to my Firestick TV. In checking that things were okay after the factory reset/reconfiguration I checked the download speed. With the cable it was running at 94Mbps??? Switched to wireless and i jumped to 325Mbps. What’s happening here?

Any ideas what is happening here?

 

[ColinTaylor]

Fire TV Sticks only have a 10/100 Mbps Ethernet socket.

 

[Zerpersande]

Fire TV Sticks only have a 10/100 Mbps Ethernet socket.

Then it doesn’t matter. Then why does the WiFi give a higher figure, 3X that of the cable. (Not that such matters now.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Then why does the WiFi give a higher figure, 3X that of the cable. (Not that such matters now.

Because the WiFi adapter in the Fire TV Stick has a much higher bandwidth. The link speed over WiFi could be up to 867 Mbps.

 

[Zerpersande]

This is actually interesting, but my main question was why it shows itself, router #2, as not being connected to the internet.

 

[ColinTaylor]

You can get a false message in the GUI that the internet is disconnected if the router has problems with DNS. But if everything else is working you can just ignore it.

 

[Zerpersande]

You can get a false message in the GUI that the internet is disconnected if the router has problems with DNS. But if everything else is working you can just ignore it.

Good to know. I set this up to try to reduce interference when my wife is doing Zoom meetings from home.She says she has been having some problems recently, so I figured I should check this out.

 

[Tech9]

Try disabling Network Monitoring in Administration, System... if it's enabled:

 

[Zerpersande]

Try disabling Network Monitoring in Administration, System... if it's enabled:

View attachment 45357

Main Router has that setting as seen in pic. Secondary router does not have the setting.

 

[Tech9]

This is happening because of the way you have configured your RT-AC85U router. The video above shows how to convert a router to Access Point by disabling DHCP server and using a LAN port. Your router though doesn't need that - it has AP mode. See the User Manual, Page 81:

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/wireless/RT-AC85U/E11433_RT-AC85U_Manual.pdf

In AP mode you have no WAN connection and DHCP server anymore. Your router is set to Router mode and it shows correctly WAN disconnected. Internet works because you have connection to LAN port and the router acts like a switch with wireless bridge. Just use AP mode and you're done.

 

[Zerpersande]

The video above shows how to convert a router to Access Point by disabling DHCP server and using a LAN port.

With it’s own separate channels, right?

Just use AP mode and you're done.

Okay, but how do I log on to the secondary router now? I turned it on but 192.168.1.2 no longer works, but the WiFi channels are the same and work fine.

 

[Tech9]

Okay, but how do I log on to the secondary router now?

You have 4 options:

- look at the main router GUI and find what IP was assigned to the AP
- find the IP using Asus Discovery Tool (download from Asus support website)
- try all the IP's in main router DHCP range (just joking)
- reset the secondary router and use static IP when you set it up as an AP

Here, Asus Device Discovery:

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/wireless/ASUSWRT/Discovery_1483.zip

With it’s own separate channels, right?

Whatever you prefer. You can make the SSIDs the same for sort of roaming between the two routers. Same or different channels, your choice.

 

[Zerpersande]

You have 4 options:

- look at the main router GUI and find what IP was assigned to the AP

Did this, but I can’t log into the GUI with the old credentials.

- try all the IP's in main router DHCP range (just joking)

Tried all of them. None worked with the old credentials.

- reset the secondary router and use static IP when you set it up as an AP

I think the way to go is to read the manual and do this. I used the video, in large part because the documentation I had was in Japanese. And when I first got it almost all Google search results were for Japanese sites. So I gave up.

Thanks a lot for your help.

 

[Tech9]

Tried all of them. Nobe worked with the old credentials.

Just reset it and set again in AP mode the way you want it.

 

[Zerpersande]

Just reset it and set again in AP mode the way you want it.

Yep, that sounds like the ticket.

And I was joking about trying them all. Emoji won’t work here, huh?