Cascading vs Router-Switch-Routers Set Up

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Limbones

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Feb 4, 2014
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10,510
I'm trying to get my internet working at work but for some reason it'll only work for a day before it stops working for some customers and I would have to reset the network for those people to pick it up again.

I'm wondering what's causing this. I have 8 routers currently running through the wings. There's about 3.5 acres to cover, so I went ahead and purchased 2 other modems in order to service those in need. Right now the 3 modems are sitting here in the main office, the routers are sitting in metal boxes outside to service customers. My current setup is 3 networks, each cascaded to a main router that is connect to a modem here in the main office. Each cascaded network has about 3 routers on them. Would it be ideal for me to get a switch for each network instead? Modem straight to switch then to 3 routers? Or is there a problem with my setup? I have the ones close to eachother on different channels, I'm wondering if the problem is maybe too many people get on the gateway so it maybe causes the whole network to go down?

Current setup for each network.

Modem - Routed Bridge
R1 - DHCP on, 192.168.2.1
R2 - DHCP off, 192.168.2.2
R3 - DHCP off, 192.168.3.1

I have them set to only service 50 addresses. Should I increase this? Should I set the networks to
R1 - DHCP on, 192.168.2.1
R2 - DHCP off, 192.168.2.2
R3 - DHCP off, 192.168.2.3
Then set the first router to service from 192.168.2.5 - 192.168.2.254?

Please help, I need this fixed asap.
 
Solution
B
You could be running out of IP addresses in your DHCP pool it depends on your lease time and how many unique devices request a IP address. There really is not a lot of downside to making the DHCP pool larger, the number of ip reserved is much less critical than the actual number of users really using the network at the same time and DHCP is not a good way to limit that.

If your "modem" is actually a router you could let it do all the DHCP and NAT functions, the three "routers" at the remote end would just be running as "AP" and the switch would just reduce the number of cable you need to run back to the modem. If the modem is really a modem then you still need a router inbetween the modem and the 3 devices at the remote end of...
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bill001g

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Aug 9, 2012
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You could be running out of IP addresses in your DHCP pool it depends on your lease time and how many unique devices request a IP address. There really is not a lot of downside to making the DHCP pool larger, the number of ip reserved is much less critical than the actual number of users really using the network at the same time and DHCP is not a good way to limit that.

If your "modem" is actually a router you could let it do all the DHCP and NAT functions, the three "routers" at the remote end would just be running as "AP" and the switch would just reduce the number of cable you need to run back to the modem. If the modem is really a modem then you still need a router inbetween the modem and the 3 devices at the remote end of the connection.

Wireless issues are a pain in the butt to figure out why they just magically stop working and rebooting fixes it. Sometime this is a bug in the firmware and other times it is a capacity issue in the "routers". Tends to take lots of experimenting when you get the network in a broke condition...of course the users just want you to reboot it NOW.
 
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Solution
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Limbones

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Feb 4, 2014
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10,510
Well, the modem is really just a modem, but it does have the option to assign IP Addresses built in, even though there is no wireless feature. When I obtained the modem, they just told me to set it to bridge if I plan on using it with a router, which I did. Before, we had satellite internet and they gave us a modem/router. It worked very well for 2 years, no problems, no resets necessary. So I'm wondering, what's causing me to reset once a day on this new network I daisy chained myself? My only thought was IP addresses may be running out. maybe because one customer has 3 devices to himself, and the main router only supports 50 or so. Is there any other things I should check into before I head off? Could there be any other problems? I don't believe it's a bug in the firmware since these are the same routers that ran so well before for those 2 years.

Also I noticed my routers DHCP reservation having 3 Mac Addresses after I unplug the other 2 routers and I plug in my computer. Do you think DHCP reservation could help keep the connection good for the other routers that are daisy chained to this one? The one I'm currently looking at usually doesn't have connection problems, or so I'm told.
 
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bill001g

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Aug 9, 2012
28,319
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125,640
You can fix any DHCP issues by increasing the pool size or reducing the lease time.

Still the normal symptom of no DHCP ip is that users who are on work fine but no one else can get on. When you get everyone broken it is much harder.

You would have to see for example if you even get a radio connection. Then you want to ping other IP within the subnet. You would want to verify the arp to ip mapping for the default gate is correct also. There are a ton of things that can go wrong.
 
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