Setup a Wireless Bridge and now my PC can't find my WHS 2011 Homeserver

[smitbret]

Basically this.

I have 2 identical routers (TP-Link Archer C7). One is the router and broadcasting 2.4 and 5Ghz. The other is bridging on the 5Ghz band.

I have disconnected the main PC from the original router and connected the PC to the bridge. Everything but this PC is still connecting through the original router. Disabled DHCP and the firewall on the bridging router and everything works great except that the PC connected to the bridge can't see the WHS 2011 Homeserver. It can see all the other devices (laptops, phones, WDTV Live Hub, etc.) that are running from the original router. I can't even PING it. It's like it's not connected but it is because all of the other devices can connect to everything else.



Dashed is wireless, solid is wired.

Is this a router issue or WHS 2011 issue?

 

[VirtualLarry]

I don't know, but I do know that IPv6 doesn't work right over a bridge.

 

[raf051888]

Did you try temporarily turning off the firewall on WHS? Are all of the devices on the same subnet? Also, is the main router the only one dishing out IP addresses? If its not set, I would set WHS to a static IP.

 

[smitbret]

I didn't even think of the Windows Firewall on the WHS box (facepalm). I'll have to do that first when I'm reconnecting everything tomorrow. That wouldn't explain why the WHS can see all of the other devices and vice versa.

When I turn DHCP off on the bridge, isn't that moving all the addressing to the original router? I was planning on making my hardwired boxes all static, anyway.

I'm wondering about the subnet thing, though. I don't really know how subnets work, but since the box having trouble is isolated on one side of a bridge from all of the other devices that could make sense.

Time to learn about subnets.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Bridging should be transparent. The main router will still give DHCP IP's to devices on the wireless bridge.

It sound like you need to check the config on the bridge, just to be sure you set it up correctly.

 

[smitbret]

Well, reset both of the routers and reconfigured the main one.

Set the IP address of the 2nd from 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.100, disabled DHCP, set my default gateway and enabled bridging. Seems to be working now. No problems accessing any computer across the network. Not sure what happened or if I just carelessly didn't set something right.

Getting about 200mbps across the 5Ghz band in AC mode at about -44 db. I had hoped for a bit higher since the LAN test showed between 600 & 800 when everything was wired up, but it is plenty for HD movie streaming and close to 3x what I used to get on my 300mpbs wireless N network.

The server and the tower PC are the workhorses and they'll be wired at the bridge so the biggest file transfers should still be pretty quick.

Just one quick question. Is there any point on keeping the firewall up on the bridge since it links through the router?

 

[ch33zw1z]

Disable the firewall on the bridge.

 

[smitbret]

Thanks.

One more question, or verification actually. I should probably disable NAT as well on the Bridge, correct? Right now it is enabled and everything is working, but just to be safe I should probably let NAT and DHCP work from the same device, right?

 

[ch33zw1z]

Yes, You don't want the bridge running any services. Technically the NAT is already not functioning on the bridge because it's all under the same network anyways...but I like to uncheck anything not required.