Help With Squeezebox/Raspi on ASUS RT-AC66U Router! (I'm a desperate man)

[TheHellYouSay]

I purchased a new, not refurbished, Asus RT-AC66U router because it has excellent specs. It's just one step down from the RT-AC68U and, to me, that meant it might be more stable. I am in the vortex of hell with this thing and I don't know why. I hoped that life would get better when I left my Linksys WRT54GL with wrt-dd behind, but I can see now, that it was a fool's errand.

Started with the original firmware, updated it, and so on. There are 2 things that need to go through this wireless router. A Squeezebox, so I can listen to music on the whole house audio, and a Raspberry Pi that serves as a security camera and weather station database.

I have had a terrible time hooking up the Squeezebox. I could not get it to work at all until I disabled the firewall. Admittedly, its a bit of a complex setup. A Squeezebox Duet requires that I have a Squeezebox Receiver, a Squeezebox Controller (a.k.a remote control) which can connect wirelessly to the wired Squeezebox Receiver, and a (wired) Squeezebox Server that also must connect to the (wired) Squeezebox Receiver. The ReadyNAS Duo is the Squeezebox Server. A service on the ReadyNAS plays music from a folder on the ReadyNAS, but the Squeezebox controller needs to hook up to the ReadyNAS on port 9000 for this all to work. Furthermore, I read that port 3843 had to be open, but since I wasn't sure where, I opened it up with another port forward to the ReadyNAS.

I'm not a networking expert, but I do work in IT and have some idea how things work. Not a deep knowledge, but some. I see the strangest things with this router. The Squeezebox Receiver, which doesn't even have a place to plug in a Cat5 cable shows up under the Network Map as a "wired connection" but its clearly not. The Squeezebox Reciever seems to hook up to the ReadyNAS to read the music database and I've had the whole thing working, but only until I reboot, them I have to reset the Squeezebox and go through this really painful and awkward setup process again.

On the Raspberry Pi front, I need that to be a static IP in my network. I should back up. Since the Infinty/Comcast modem have 192.168.1.1 as its internal IP for delivering service, I chose to change the Asus router to be 192.168.2.1 by plugging into it directly with an ethernet cable before putting the router into the wiring closet. Anyway, I finally, finally got the router to issue a static IP (192.168.2.99), but when I go to get the wireless card working, despite hours and hours of research on the Internet, the wifi dongle (EDIMAX, standard fare for Pi's) cannot connect. I have even installed wicd-curses so that I have an interface to view what's going on, but it looks like the Asus router just refuses to let it connect.

I began to think that it's a firmware problem and so the Asuswrt-Merlin firmware, with rave reviews and good support, seemed to be a step up. I flashed that and it didn't really make much difference. Slightly different look-and-feel, but problems persist. Never, ever, had these kinds of problems with DD-WRT and so I don't know if its bad firmware or bad hardware, but it's utterly maddening. Want to take a baseball bat to this wireless router! I suppose I could flash to Tomato firmware (shibby?) but that just seems like more work if this stupid thing has a fundamental flaw. I see all other wired/wireless devices just fine, it's just these oddball things that don't work. I feel like there must be a way to add a Mac Address somewhere so that the wireless Mac Address for the Raspberry PI would be acknowledged, but the screens I see all have dropdowns that only show the IP for the Raspi's wired conmection.

Please help! Where should I be looking to troubleshoot either of these issue?

 

[thiggins]

If all these things are on the same LAN, which is created from the RT-AC66U, you should not have to open any ports. That's only to allow traffic through the router firewall.

First thing I would check is whether the devices all have valid TCP/IP addresses in the router's range. Set everything to obtain IPs via DHCP. That way you can see if they are talking to the router.

If things then need to have static IPs, you can set reservations in LAN > DHCP Server > Manually Assigned IP around the DHCP list

 

[coldwizard]

...
On the Raspberry Pi front, I need that to be a static IP in my network. I should back up. Since the Infinty/Comcast modem have 192.168.1.1 as its internal IP for delivering service, I chose to change the Asus router to be 192.168.2.1 by plugging into it directly with an ethernet cable before putting the router into the wiring closet. Anyway, I finally, finally got the router to issue a static IP (192.168.2.99), but when I go to get the wireless card working, despite hours and hours of research on the Internet, the wifi dongle (EDIMAX, standard fare for Pi's) cannot connect. I have even installed wicd-curses so that I have an interface to view what's going on, but it looks like the Asus router just refuses to let it connect.

Please help! Where should I be looking to troubleshoot either of these issue?

Since you are running two networks like so
ISP router (192.168.1.x and SSID#1) --- Asus router (192.168.2.x and SSID#2)

Lets make sure that the networks are connected correctly.
First I should tell you that I am running John's fork update 07, so my screens may be a little different, but the ideas will be the same.

I assume that you have WAN port on Asus connected to LAN on ISP.
On the WAN connection, you have it set to 192.168.1.2 (or DHCP assigned to a reserved address), with gateway 192.168.1.1
On the LAN connection, you have it set to 192.168.2.1, DHCP server is running

If you connect to SSID#2 (Asus) with a laptop you will want to check two things. (a) connection to Internet and (b) connection to ISP router. Both connections should be working with a mostly default configuration on the Asus. (only changing the IP addresses on the LAN and WAN, and configure the SSID#2)

Now we want to turn off NAT on the Asus, so that all NAT translation is done by the ISP router.
On the Asus WAN Advanced settings Internet connection tab, look for enable NAT. Change this to NO, This should break both (a) and (b) above. While you are here turn off the firewall on the Asus.

Now connect to the SSID#1 (ISP router). You need to set a static route to get from the ISP's router to the Asus router network. On the Asus it would be under Lan advanced setings Route tab, you need to find this on the ISP router. You want to define Network= 192.168.2.0 mask= 255.255.255.0 Gateway= 192.168.1.2 (note this is the address of the Asus WAN interface) metric= 1 interface= LAN.

Now reboot both routers, connect to SSID#2 (Asus) and test (a) and (b) again. If they do not work, connect back to ISP router and see if you can display the route table. On Asus that would be under System Log, Routing table tab, again you need to find it on the ISP router. Try running from the laptop a tracert 192.168.2.1. If the traceroute goes out the the Internet, look again at the routing table.

Now that the network are connected together, we can turn on the firewall on the Asus again to protect your security network from your normal network. The DHCP server on the Asus will be giving out 192.168.2.x ip addresses and the DHCP server on the ISP will be giving out 192.168.1.x addresses. You may notice in the logs that as you switch from one network to the other, the DHCP server NAKs the other networks IP address. This is normal.

So on to connecting the devices. The Security cameras connect to the Asus either the SSID#2 or the LAN ports on the Asus. The music server and printers connect to the ISP router via either the SSID#1 or LAN ports on the ISP.
Should you want to connect something on the other network for some reason, (like a shared printer on the Asus secure network) then you have to open a port(s) on the Asus firewall to let that happen.

 

[TheHellYouSay]

Thank you. I may need to read your email a couple of times before it really sinks in, but before I go too far I want to go over some of your premise that you base your recommendations on. The WAN port on the new Asus runs back to the real wiring closet and plugs into a punch down block, if you will, and that connects directly to the outbound port from my buddies at Comcast. I want the signal to come in and go directly to the router so that the firewall is between them and the rest of my network. In my case, it means I run a long cat5 cable into the house to the Asus router because it is a more central location and it's hidden behind a firewood storage area next to the fireplace. Also on that shelf alongside the Asus is the Netgear Duo NAS which then gets plugged directly into the Asus. Aside from the outbound back to the patch panel, there is another outbound ethernet cable tied hooked into the Asus which hops over the fireplace and comes into the Squeezebox Receiver. The Squeezebox controller is stored over there, all in very close proximity to the Asus RT-AC66U router.

On the WAN connection, you have it set to 192.168.1.2 (or DHCP assigned to a reserved address), with gateway 192.168.1.1

For the WAN connection it's set to "Automatic IP" and on the Internet Status information there's all that sort of personal information like the IP that Comcast lent to me for $40 a month. Gateways and so on all specify real world IPs. Maybe this is where I'm going wrong? There are no references anywhere in my configuration to those two IPs? The cable modem is mine, a Motorola Surfboard, can't remember the model, but I bought it because I didn't want to have all their wireless monkey business to turn off. Already played that game with Frontier.

On the LAN connection, you have it set to 192.168.2.1, DHCP server is running.

Yes, this is true.

Ok, now that I've read on, I can see now that your response is premised on having two routers. This should be simple right? I must be making way harder than it has to be, aren't I?

 

[TheHellYouSay]

If all these things are on the same LAN, which is created from the RT-AC66U, you should not have to open any ports. That's only to allow traffic through the router firewall.

First thing I would check is whether the devices all have valid TCP/IP addresses in the router's range. Set everything to obtain IPs via DHCP. That way you can see if they are talking to the router.

If things then need to have static IPs, you can set reservations in LAN > DHCP Server > Manually Assigned IP around the DHCP list

Thanks, I think I'm confused about this part too. I want to reserve 192.168.2.99 for the Raspberry Pi and 192.168.2.118 for the ReadyNAS Duo, so I've entered them both into the area you've described. Further up there is an IP Pool Starting Address and an IP Pool Ending Address. In the dd-wrt software, that meant that DHCP could have those addresses, so if you wanted to specify a static IP stay out of that range. I have tried this both ways, like setting the IP Pool Starting Address to 192.168.2.150 (assumes DHCP starts assigning at a higher number), but when I started having all these issues, I thought maybe the IP Pool Starting Address had to include my manual assigned IPs as well. I still feel like the correct setting is to specify a range that does not include any of your manual IP assignments so that DHCP won't try to assign them, but then again, the router knows what's already hooked up and doesn't assign duplicates, so I don't fully appreciate the relationship between these two fields?

Feeling really stupid this evening...

 

[coldwizard]

For the WAN connection it's set to "Automatic IP" and on the Internet Status information there's all that sort of personal information like the IP that Comcast lent to me for $40 a month. Gateways and so on all specify real world IPs. Maybe this is where I'm going wrong? There are no references anywhere in my configuration to those two IPs? The cable modem is mine, a Motorola Surfboard, can't remember the model, but I bought it because I didn't want to have all their wireless monkey business to turn off.

Ok, now that I've read on, I can see now that your response is premised on having two routers. This should be simple right? I must be making way harder than it has to be, aren't I?

You said

Since the Infinty/Comcast modem have 192.168.1.1 as its internal IP for delivering service, I chose to change the Asus router to be 192.168.2.1 by plugging into it directly with an ethernet cable before putting the router into the wiring closet.

Therefore I assumed the Comcast is your ISP router and is doing NAT for the 192.168.1.x network.

On the WAN connection, you have it set to 192.168.1.2 (or DHCP assigned to a reserved address), with gateway 192.168.1.1

There I am talking about your Asus router. It's wan will be connected to the Comcast router so have an address in the 192.168.1.x range. Sorry, I made the assumption that you would assign a low reserved (DHCP) number or a static assigned number on the Asus router.

If I misunderstood and you are getting a public IP on the Asus, then ignore everything I said, since you do not have a two router configuration.

Since all your devices plug into the Asus, as thiggins said above, the firewall is not involved with internal traffic.