Model BT Home Hub 5A
Architecture xRX200 rev 1.2
Target Platform lantiq/xrx200
Firmware Version OpenWrt 23.05.2 r23630-842932a63d / LuCI openwrt-23.05 branch git-23.306.39416-c86c256
Kernel Version 5.15.137
My network consists of wireless clients plus a wired connection to one of a pair of fibre-connected switches, each of which has additional wired clients, one client being a second wireless router. All clients throughout the network are on a single subnet 192.168.9.0 and the Openwrt router on 192.168.9.1 is providing DHCP and DNS for the whole network. The WAN port is connected to an EE router with a VDSL interface for internet access. (Sadly I had to retain the EE router for the VDSL connection because our landline service has been switched to Digital Voice.)
Everything works well except for 2 issues which I would like help with.
- When the router is rebooted the local (.lan) DNS entries compiled from the DHCP transactions are dropped. This is not a problem for "local" (wireless and wired) clients connected directly to the Openwrt router because they will (it appears) automatically renew their DHCP lease on reconnecting when the router comes back up, thus recreating their .lan entries in DNS. But the "remote" clients do not automatically renew their DHCP lease and hence even though they remain connected their DNS entries are no longer available and so communication between the local clients is disrupted. The only solution I have at the moment is to reboot the fibre switches (actually I just disable-reenable the connected ports) which forces the clients to make a new DHCP request.
Obviously one solution is to use static IPs (for the important clients) with corresponding entries in Network/DHCP_and_DNS/Hostnames but I'm wondering if there is a way to make the DNS server preserve its table of .lan entries across reboots?
- Some of the "local" wireless clients which I have setup using the "Wireless WPS" button on the Openwrt router (a printer and a smart TV in particular) are prone to losing their connections. Whether or not this is correlated with rebooting the router I'm not sure. When I look at the configuration (in the smart TV for example) everything seems to be in order and it is trying to connect but failing - obviously the device believes it has the credentials but for some reason they no longer work! The only solution I have found is to start over by discarding the current config and setting it up again (including pressing the WPS button again). I assigned a Static DHCP lease for the printer but this has made no difference. I've yet to try any alternative mechanism for connecting up these clients, using a PIN code for example, which might solve the problem, as I'd prefer to retain the convenience of using the WPS button.
Any help will be appreciated!
Thanks
John Sutton