Multiple Network Setup

Support RACHEL-Plus 1.0 (2015 - 2016)
#1

@LarryY writes in with questions about using the RACHEL in a setup where you’ve already got a router:

I have set up my RACHEL Plus as you recommended. My Wi-Fi IP address is set to 192.168.88.1 and my LAN setting is DHCP Client. I plugged RACHEL into an old Linksys SOHO router (WRT54G Vers. 6). RACHEL’s SSID is RACHEL; the router’s SSID is Residencia. I started the DHCP addresses on the router at 192.168.1.10, which is the address RACHEL received. I connected to SSID Residencia & received IP address 192.168.1.11. I attempted to connect to 192.168.88.1. I can’t. This doesn’t surprise me since I have no idea how my router is supposed to know where network 192.168.88.0 is, but according to what you, Jeremy, & Sam have told me in the past, this is the preferred method of setting up RACHEL (unless I misunderstood). Please explain to me how my router learns about a network on the Wi-Fi side of RACHEL. Have you enabled RIP or some other routing protocol to advertise how to reach 192.168.88.0?

In the setup you describe (which is indeed the recommended setup for your situation) there will be two ways to connect to RACHEL:

  1. If your computer/tablet/phone is connected to the Residencia wifi, or if it is plugged into the network through an ethernet cable, then you will access RACHEL at 192.168.1.10

  2. If your computer/tablet/phone is connected to the RACHEL wifi, then you will access RACHEL at 192.168.88.1

Essentially you’ve got two networks. There’s no (easy) way to bridge them completely. If your plan is to have users access everything through Residencia (wired or wifi), then have them access RACHEL at 192.168.1.10. If your plan is to have users access everything through RACHEL (wifi) then have them use 192.168.88.1. This is how I have things set up at my home.

When I connect to the SSID Residencia, I can ping the default gateway 192.168.1.1 but I can not ping 192.168.1.10. Why can’t I ping RACHEL from the LAN side?

That I don’t know – RACHEL should respond to ping, so either ping is being filtered on that network or something else is wrong. Can you access http://192.168.1.10/ from a browser when connected to Residencia? If not, can you connect to the RACHEL wifi, visit http://192.168.88.1/, and verify the LAN IP shown in the upper right corner?

I can’t find a definitive matrix chart that shows the latest & greatest releases. I bought my RACHEL Plus devices several years ago & have upgraded them to the new file schema. I have attempted to upgrade their firmware because of the battery problem, but I had some serious problems there so I’m not sure if it worked or not. Here’s what RACHEL tells me.

I wish we had a definitive matrix – for now I can confirm that:

  • 1.2.24 is the latest firmware for the RACHEL-Plus 1.0 (WRTD-303N)
  • 2.2.15 is the latest firmware for the RACHEL-Plus 2.0 (WAPD-235N)

Both of those include the battery adjustments provided by the manufacturer Gemtek.

Hope this helps!

#2

Thanks for the feed back Jonathan. As always, it’s very helpful.
I only have 1 thing to add to this. Since I wasn’t confident that the LAN interface on RACHEL will ALWAYS get IP address 192.168.1.10 (since it’s set to DHCP Client, you never know), I decided that would not be an option for me, so I talked with a friend of mine that teaches Cisco routing & he showed me in my manual where to define a static route to 192.168.88.0. I set RACHEL’s LAN interface to a static IP address of 192.168.1.2, set the static route for the router to point to the now static IP address & everything worked great.
I recall that Jeremy made a Youtube video on that a few years ago, but I couldn’t find it. Maybe it should be reposted.
Thanks again.
LarryY

#3

Excellent point about dynamic IP addresses. If the RACHEL is always on it should keep the same IP address, but if things get powered down for a while it’s likely to change… and that’s bound to happen at some point.

In that case you should either define a static IP address on the RACHEL device that is outside the router’s DHCP range (from the RACHEL admin), or you should reserve a DHCP address (from the router admin).

If you’ve got things working now, that’s great!