RT-AX86U and WAN/IPTV interaction...

[Steve23]

Greetings. I've been reading here on the SNB Forums for some time. It's always nice to see such a supportive place where help is available.

I'm migrating from my venerable RT-N66U to a RT-AX86U as my internet service is about to get a lovely, major upgrade to fiber-based service from my daily-outage-prone ADSL service that achieves 12Mbps, at best. I am interested in some details covering several topic but will begin with WAN-port assignment and some IPTV details.

I have contacted Asus elevated tech support folks. They are polite, friendly, and helpful, although it seems to me they're also very conservative and (perhaps too) careful with their answers. I do understand that it's hard to gauge the experience and full intent of the person behind a query even though I try to be careful in my wording. I will aspire to do that here too.

With regard to the WAN-port assignment and IPTV, I can report that they have confirmed to me that if I use the 2.5G ethernet port for WAN (as I plan to do), the IPTV functions will work properly. The help and text in the router's UI isn't very clear about this, nor is it clarified anywhere on Asus' support areas that I could find.

What I haven't gotten a straight answer about is: what do the IPTV settings effectively accomplish? Help in the UI is not present, nor is this explained on Asus' support pages. I have no plans to get one of the STBs listed in the ISP Profile field. I am trying to understand what this does because, nominally, I can watch 'IPTV' without any special setup.

I looked at the "Manual" ISP profile and I'm curious what the settings* there are and what they do. If I choose the "Manual" ISP profile, settings are shown for 2 ethernet ports but if I choose "None" the selections are more numerous, including LAN 1 thru 4 and a couple of paired-selections (LAN1 & 2 or LAN 3 & 4), but other settings aren't there.

When I assign an ethernet port to this function (IPTV), is it isolated from other ports (approximating switch control or VLAN)? Is it now unable to function as a normal ethernet port or limited in how it functions as an ethernet port?

What's going on there? Can I make this do something useful for me otherwise?


* VID and PRIO

 

[ColinTaylor]

Some IPTV providers use VLANs to differentiate their internet feed from their IPTV or VoIP service. The router's IPTV settings allow you to specify which LAN ports are used for internet and which port you should connect your IPTV/VoIP box to. As you aren't using IPTV none of these settings affect you.

Note that "IPTV" is not the same as streaming websites like Netflix, Amazon, etc.

 

[Steve23]

...so if I were to specify an ethernet port and no other particular configuration, it would essentially restrict traffic on that port from accessing other LAN ports?
(You can see that I'm trying to make this do something useful for me.)

 

[ColinTaylor]

I can't see this as being particularly useful outside its original purpose. This is effectively a VLAN pass-though from the WAN port to a LAN port. So unless your WAN port is connected to a managed switch (or router) on an upstream network running multiple VLANs it's not going to do anything. Even then, just passing through a VLAN to single LAN port doesn't sound that useful - I guess you could connect it to another switch.

 

[Steve23]

If it does that, I feel that it is quite useful. I will definitely have to experiment with this!
For example, I have my smart TV connected via a wired network connection. I don't want it on my LAN. With my new high-speed internet service I plan to connect streaming devices using a wired connection too.
If I could connect a network switch to that port, it would be very useful indeed.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Sounds interesting. Let us know how you get on. Bear in mind that your upstream VLAN will have to provide the necessary DHCP, NAT, routing, etc. as you will be bypassing your router.