Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2022 3:48 Post subject: VAPs on Netgear (Mediatek) R7200 won't offer up IP addresses
The gist of this message is whether r50274 works on a Netgear (Mediatek) R7200 chipset with WAPs (two VAPs) with no WAN and in router mode.
For some quick perspective, I have 40 years of computing experience and can debug/correct anything except when I'm up against the wall. I have not touched DD-WRT in 10 years as otherwise I've been dealing with UniFi routers. I spent a week looking through the quagmire of low cost Wifi routers to pick up a Netgear R7200 which I felt had adequate specs for what I needed and it was supported by DD-WRT. I chose that router purely for DD-WRT usage.
In short, I've pounded my head against the wall for the good part of a week to get two simple Wifi VAPs working on the R7200 with no-go (no VLAN usage and nothing attached to the ports except the external gateway router connection). I'm not the sort of person to ever reach out for help on forums but I'm now at the end of my ropes. My feeling as of yesterday is that the 50176 and 50274 beta releases may not be working on the Mediatek R7200 chipset and hence why I am penning this short message for the "powers that be" on the DD-WRT forum.
Let me explain my situation in a non-technical manner. I am setting up the R7200 as three WAPs (two of them VAPs), WAN disabled, router mode, running local-to-router DHCP on all 3 WAPs. I can connect to all 3. The main Wifi WAP (not VAPs) is working fine, as to be expected. However, the 2 VAPs do not offer their IP addresses after successful connection. I know that I'm not the first DD-WRT user to experience this problem when setting up Wifi Guest networks.
I have read every possible tutorial and posting that I could find over the last week, 3 to 4 times over. I've tried all old, current and in between variations of the system setup but no go. I've tried to keep everything very simple and have kept away from any complex firewall or startup scripts for now (although I have tried them as well, including the suggested Broadcom NAS reset at startup script).
Last night I migrated to release 50274 and noticed that I was seeing an IP address assigned to the two DHCP services of my two VAPs. I did not see that in release 50176.
I had also enabled syslogs a few days ago in hopes of seeing some status info but nothing is being shown once the connections are made.
I am not so much looking for a solution but rather a confirmation of whether I'm alone in this situation (R2700 + beta releases) or whether I may be heading down the wrong path to enlightenment?
Thank you for any suggestions that you may make as I need a new direction to pursue these otherwise simple DHCP issues.
Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2022 22:22 Post subject: Re: VAPs on Netgear (Mediatek) R7200 won't offer up IP addre
I wanted to provide a follow up to my own questions. Sometimes the subconscious mind has a way of working through an otherwise simple but blocking issue. Indirectly it reminded me that I had used a netmask of /0 instead of /24 for the IP addresses assigned to the virtual access points. Naturally that was affecting the clients trying to connect to them and hence why DD-WRT was not offering up the IPs.
Things are now working well on the MediaTek-based R7200 chipset for two WiFi VAPs but I am still dealing with the custom firewall rules stitched together from forum postings and document information. I may post to the forum if I cannot resolve some lesser issues with the net isolations.