Hnet: changeable IPv4 addresses

Installing and Using OpenWrt Network and Wireless Configuration
1

Experimenting with Homenet, IPv6 is fine but IPv4 is causing some headaches. I realise that Homenet is really intended for IPv6, but I have lots of TVs, lights, power points etc that only talk IPv4. Also, I run a web server which needs to be NAT'ed over IPv4 for external access from IPv4 only clients.

Hnet working on the LAN side of a single gateway router is fine. I have configured it to use 192.168.0.0 for IPv4. When adding a downstream hnet router, it is fine with IPv6. Sometimes it accepts 192.168.0.0 for its own addresses (no problem), but sometimes it overrides the gateway router with 10.0.0.0 addresses.

Two problems with this:

  1. the changed IPv4 addresses aren't propagated immediately to all nodes. They sit there with 192.168.0.0 addresses, unable to connect. Unplug/replug the node fixes it, or wait until the DHCP lease expires. How do I get immediate updates?

  2. I have an HTTP server which needs to be visible externally. It needs a fixed IPv4 address in the NAT tables
    a) how do I assign a fixed IPv4 address using hnet; and
    b) how do I cope with changing IPv4 networks?

Any suggestions?

Thanks, Jan

2

Hi Jan,
I am trying something similar (I think).

I need a gateway router that plays well with older tech and then a second downstream router that will allow devices to use router-based VPN for connectivity.

Curious, did you have any trouble installing/configuring Homenet on your router following the (mostly 2016) instructions? I hit a couple of speed bumps along the way.

3

Hi nabatoo, I had been experimenting with an RPi as router, working fine but not designed as a router and limited on speed. So I tried a TP-Link Archer C60 with 8Mb of memory and installed OpenWrt on it. But OpenWrt would only see 4Mb, and the router became unstable when I installed Homenet on it (not surprised, not enough memory). Eventually I bricked the Archer and have given up the experiments for now. I suspect the problems were caused by the instability of the Archer C60.

4

Thanks for sharing your experience Jan. Sometimes we are limited in the time we can devote to diagnosing troublesome tech. :man_factory_worker: