Mt7621 DIR-860L does not support VLAN's

yathavan101 · February 20, 2017, 7:40pm

https://downloads.lede-project.org/releases/17.01.0-rc2/targets/ramips/mt7621/lede-17.01.0-rc2-r3131-42f3c1f-ramips-mt7621-dir-860l-b1-squashfs-factory.bin

Hi there,

first of all i want to say thanks to the LEDE and open source project developers in general. Here's my question.

I have tried the rc2 on my DIR-860L and it doesn't support VLAN.

I need VLAN of 621 on my WAN port to connect to the internet because of my ISP and for the life of me I couldn't get it working. The odd thing is I thought it might work because I used to use a snapshot of LEDE before I thought it was time to upgrade to a more stable version. So I had to revert back to my snapshot version which weirld works and I still don't understand how this problem hasn't been fixed yet.

Someone posted about this a few days ago and still no solution

Please help. Now my old build of LEDE doesn't have the correct sources for the repository and I can't install luci. I really need help

Mushoz · March 8, 2017, 11:48am

Has VLAN support been fixed in the final 17.01 release? I am looking to buy a DIR-860l myself.

yathavan101 · March 8, 2017, 11:36pm

I have not tested the unit yet on the latest firmware 17.01. But I will flash the latest firmware and test it by the end of today for you.

Mushoz · March 9, 2017, 7:07am

Thank you very much for your willingness to test this for me. I'm very much looking forward to the results!

Mushoz · March 10, 2017, 11:47am

Did you happen to run the tests? I'm curious for the results If VLANs are non-functional on the final 17.01 release, would you mind testing the latest master branch as well if time permits? Thanks again :)!

Mushoz · March 13, 2017, 8:44pm

Did you happen to have time for your tests?

Mushoz · March 14, 2017, 7:04pm

Bring up my post.

yathavan101 · March 15, 2017, 5:18am

Sorry for the delay. I was really busy the past few days. So I tested the DIR-860L with the latest firmware and sadly it doesn't seem like it is working. Sorry for the sad news

Mushoz · March 15, 2017, 7:37am

That's a pity to hear. I'll try to see if I can find some time to do a proper bug report on their bug tracker. Hopefully this issue can be fixed. Thank you very much for the test

Mushoz · March 15, 2017, 7:43am

Update: There is a workaround posted here: Problem with VLAN tagging on DIR-860L (MT7530)

Furthermore, the issue seems to be fixed in the master branch. I will order the dir-860l and see if I can get it to work

aufhaxer · March 15, 2017, 2:54pm

It would be nice if somebody could validate my results posted in the other thread.

Mushoz · March 15, 2017, 5:28pm

I already have my dir-860l, but my internet that is using VLANs will be available the 24th. Is there any test I can do with 2 PCs and a router to test VLAN functionality?

aufhaxer · March 15, 2017, 9:25pm

You could create a new Network with a different VLAN with a VLAN ID far away from your current VLANs (100+) with DHCP and everything and test if it is properly working on one of your PCs.

Create a new VLAN with VLAN ID 100
Tag it at CPU and assign a unused Port with "untagged" to it -> Save&Apply
Create a new interface at the Interfaces Tab, assign a name to it and assign the new Switch VLAN: eth0.100 to it. -> Save&Apply
Click on "Setup DHCP" at the bottom of the page.
Choose a IPv4 address like 10.1.2.1 and netmask 255.255.255.0 -> Save&Apply

Now you should have a new Network with DHCP at this port. If you plug in a PC at this port and get an IP, it should work.

After that you can delete the Interface you created and set your VLAN Switch settings to default.

Mushoz · March 16, 2017, 6:48am

Thanks for the setup description. I will be able to test this tomorrow evening. I will keep you posted.

Bartvz · March 17, 2017, 4:17pm

Let me know as well

Mushoz · March 18, 2017, 12:35pm

I can confirm the workaround from the other thread. By default, WAN is on VLAN 2, while LAN is on VLAN 1.

I added a third entry in the VLAN list, tagged it at CPU, untagged it at LAN port 2 (and set the same port to off under VLAN 1). Next, I configured a new interface on the 192.168.2.1 subnet and enabled a DHCP server.

Then I ran into the first bug. It seems like the labeling on the back of the router and in the switch interface is reversed. So port 1 on the back, was port 4 in LEDE, port 2 on the back was port 3 in LEDE, etc. So naturally, connecting my PC on port 2 did not result in the VLAN being used. Connecting it to port 3, however, successfully resulted in my PC getting an IP in the 192.168.2.X range.

Next, I renamed the VLAN id from 3 to 4 with the exact same settings otherwise. Then reconfigured the newly created interface to use VLAN 4 and.... Nothing. The VLAN was not working. I was not getting an IP adres.

So to test the workaround, I added a new VLAN entry. I used the 3rd entry to configure a dummy VLAN 3 (tagged at CPU, off everywhere else) and used the fourth entry to configure VLAN4 as I did in the previous test. This resulted in a successful connection and an IP in the earlier mentioned 192.168.2.x range again.

I also tried the master branch to see if I could get it to work there without a workaround (VLAN 4 as a third entry, without a dummy VLAN), but I was unsuccessful. However, I could not use LUCI because I do not have a working WAN connection to install it, so I could not use LUCI to double check my settings and I am not that good with UCI. However, I think the settings should have been good, since I configured it on 17.01.0 in LUCI, and then flashed the latest snapshot while keeping the settings.

Summary: Port numbers on the back of the router are in reversed order compared to the port numbers in the LEDE switch GUI. VLAN IDs needs to be identical to their entry position for them to work (starting at an index of 1).

Bartvz · March 18, 2017, 12:45pm

If you want to test master with LuCI you can flash my test build, since it has it built in

Mushoz · March 18, 2017, 2:24pm

Thank you very much for the link I just tested, and unfortunately it shows the same behavior as on 17.01.0: it requires the workaround for VLAN functionality to work. I will look into getting this bug reported. Hopefully it is an easy fix.

aufhaxer · March 18, 2017, 11:01pm

That's unfortunate. I thought it was fixed in the snapshot and master. I try to test the setup again the next days. Until then you can roll with the workaround. Glad that at least this works.

aufhaxer · March 18, 2017, 11:49pm

Ok. I just tested the same setup you described before and i can confirm your results. The VLAN functionality seems still broken in the latest snapshot.

I don't know why it worked in the meantime, but after resetting everything to basic and creating some VLANs the bug occured again.

Hopefully one of the more experienced maintainers can give further advice to debug this issue.

P.S: If possible could you test the workaround and the testsetups as well, yathavan101? Although in your case it would be more suitable to use a TL-WR841N as Middleware between the 860L and your ISP, since you have to tag the VLAN621, which could result in quite excessive work with the workaround.