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Path to the problem

In the new apartment where I live in, a single router (vodafone) takes the internet signal and shares it over hubs to four other routers (3 tp link, 1 fritzbox) and one access point (tp link).

In the past we had many issues regarding not being able to access certain websites sometimes (felt very random). I contacted my provider and they told me that they see no issue on their side, but that maybe DHCP caused problems. That sounded reasonable. I checked the routers and indeed they all had DHCP activated. Therefore I decided to setup everything anew.

What I have done

Preparation

I unplugged all routers from the hubs (and therefore the router taking the internet initially) and reset them.

Connecting the other routers and access points

Vodafone ("directly" connected with the internet)

The vodafone router 192.168.0.1 has internet and works as expected.

Fritzbox

I then configured the fritzbox router and set his gateway to the vodafone's router ip 192.168.0.1 and deactivated the DHCP server. I also gave it a free static ip of 192.168.0.2 I made sure the subnet was 255.255.255.0 on both machines. The router restarted and now I am unable to connect to its wifi. I connected the router via the same Hub strategy like before with the vodafone router. A lamp changed on the router. I still can't connect to it via wifi. I also can't connect to it from the vodafone router and I do not see it connected to the vodafone router in the vodafone panel (maybe it is listed as unknown).

TP Link Router

Same story as Fritzbox Router. However, I noticed that before this router was connected to the Vodafone Router via the internet socket, but I don't think that is relevant

TP Link AP

This one just worked directly. I deactivated DHCP though and gave it a static ip.

What I am looking for

I currently don't know why the vodafone router is not talking to the other routers. I can imagine that I can't connect via wifi, because those routers aren't giving me an IP anymore as dhcp is disabled on them. However, vodafone should do this for them; shouldn't it? I don't know how to debug this issue any further as most tutorials online just mention activating DHCP, using a static IP and setting the gateway, but do not cover the issues I experience.

2 Answers 2

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Verify that the Vodafone router is the DHCP server and limit its allocation range to something like 0-200.

Assign to the other routers static IPs that are not within this range, for example from 192.168.0.201 and on and assure that they are in Bridge mode or Access Path mode (or whatever the firmware calls it).

If you have trouble accessing the router's login page, reset it and connect to a computer using an Ethernet cable for programming it. You could use wireless if an Ethernet cable is not available.

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  • Can you expand on why to set the static IPs outside the allocation range? Will the vodafone router still communicate with the other routers then, but only not allocate any other devices on those numbers? If so, is there anything against taking the first 10 numbers for routers so 10-255?
    – Natan
    Mar 29, 2023 at 9:36
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    The Vodafone router DHCP doesn't consider the IP of connected devices when allocating IPs for devices by DHCP. That means that you could have IP conflicts with two devices sharing the same IP and both not working. The very first IP to be allocated by DHCP would be 192.168.0.2.
    – harrymc
    Mar 29, 2023 at 9:45
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My issue was that something wasn't plugged in correctly regarding the hubs. Therefore the other routers were not truly connected to the dhcp server and therefore were unable to establish connections as no ip could be given.

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