B818-263 Bridge Mode

[Lynx]

I have a B818-263 which I want to put into its bridge mode and then have my BT Business Smart Hub 6 act as my main router and handle DHCP. The motivation for this is because the Wi-Fi on the B818 is poor and also a perhaps mistaken notion that this might help safeguard against any exploits in the B818. The Smart Hub only has 4x LAN ports (I do not think it has a WAN port). Yesterday I tried to set this up as follows:

- B818-263 IP: 192.168.8.1; bridge mode: on
- Smart Hub IP: 192.168.1.1; DHCP: on
- B818 and Smart Hub connected via LAN

First I tried putting both on the same subnet. I could then access the web interface of the B818 but no internet. I understand that for this to work the router has to be on a different subnet. But this arrangement did not work. I could not ping my B818 from the Smart Hub and was unable to access the internet. Trying to access 192.168.8.1 failed. I read that to make it work a static route should be set from the router to the B818 but I am not sure what to set. 

The fields in the Smart Hub for setting a static route are:

Subnet IP; Subnet Mask; Gateway

It seems to have a default 0.0.0.0; 255.255.255.0 0.0.0.0 IP_TRAFFIC and more static routes can be added.

I tried adding: 192.168.8.0; 255.255.255.0; 192.168.8.1 but I am not sure that if that makes sense.

Even though the Smart Hub 6 does not have a WAN port, is what I am trying to achieve here still possible? 

If so how should I configure the Smart Hub 6 such that this arrangement works?

Although I have not been able to get the above to work, as a workaround I see that I can simply turn off DHCP on the Smart Hub and then access the stronger Wi-Fi signal of the Smart Hub. That seems to work but I imagine I am losing some of the benefits of the bridge mode? Or are these benefits just imaginary?

[Seán]

Unfortunately, this type of configuration will not work as at least one router needs to act as a gateway to route traffic. From the info I could find, the BT Smart Hub 6 only routes traffic to its DSL port. Bridge mode effectively makes the Huawei router act like a dumb modem, i.e. it simply passes all data from the 4G connection to its Ethernet port and vice versa.

By connecting the bridged Huawei router to a LAN port, this bypasses the routing capability of both routers, bridging the Internet directly to everything on your network. Technically if you turn off the DHCP server on the BT Smart HUB 6 (don't do this), your network devices would pick up the DHCP directly from your ISP. However, as all traffic is bridged out to the Internet, there would be no firewall or security in the path.

If you would like to repurpose your BT Hub 6 as a Wi-Fi access point, you will need to take your B818 out of bridge mode, then disable its Wi-Fi. For the BT Hub 6, configure it to a different IP address on the same subnet, e.g. 192.168.8.5 and disable its DHCP server and anything IPv6 related (if present, such as DHCP6, RA, etc.) Then connect your B818 to a LAN port of the BT Hub 6. It should now transparently pass any traffic between its Wi-Fi to the network port leading to the B818.

I came across the following guide to explains better how to reconfigure the BT Hub 6 as an Access Point:
https://community.bt.com/t5/BT-Devices/B...-p/1675678

[Lynx]

Thank you very much for the very helpful response. I have a couple of TP-Link RE200 Wi-Fi extenders which seem to work very well (I think they might be simply repeaters and I believe they can simultaneously transmit/receive on 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz and when connecting to them I do not see any drop in bandwidth). Would it be worthwhile purchasing a TP-Link router to get mesh functionality and possibly quality of service? My reservation about the latter is that I have reservations about how effective this mesh functionality really is and I see much criticism about QOS in terms of doing what I want it to do - i.e. stop HD streaming from occasionally impacting upon Zoom/MS Teams calls. What is the cause of the latter and is it fixable without setting up an independent 4G router? My bandwidth seems to be pretty solid, e.g. 50-70 down and 20-25 up.

[Seán]

I've had bad past experience of Wi-Fi repeaters intermittently dropping out, so I suggest try running some extended ping tests.

On the PC you use for the Zoom/MS Teams calls, run a continuous ping test to 8.8.8.8 or another public IP prior to your Zoom or Teams call.

Connect another PC such as a laptop directly to the 4G router with a wired Ethernet connection and run a continuous ping test on it to the same IP address.

The next time you notice your Zoom or Teams call glitch, check the ping test for spikes or time-outs and the same with the separate PC connected directly to the 4G router. If that hardwired PC also shows ping spikes, then the issue is with the 4G connection, which would be outside of your control. Otherwise if its pings are stable, then the Wi-Fi or repeater is the culprit.

So far the most stable Wi-Fi I've used is with the Tenda MW6 mesh kit that I've been using for about a year now. I have my desktop PC connected to the second node with an Ethernet cable, so it carries the connection wirelessly to the main node, which is plugged into the 4G router. I've yet to experience a drop-out, unlike every USB Wi-Fi adapter and Homeplug Powerline kit (which carries data over the house electrical wiring) I tried up until then.