Need advice with Wireless Broadband

[habib]

@dave27

If not, then your only option for a VPN connection to the cabin for like remote admin would be a VPN client running on the cabin network that initiates a connection outbound to a VPN server somewhere, such as on your home router.

The above is above my pay grade. My knowledge of VPN is NordVPN installed on my iPhone, Macs, iPad and AppleTV. The reason I chose Eeros is that they are remotely managed through the app, unlike some other routers that the app needs to be on a local network.

@dave27

If you look at the WAN IP on the Nokia, I bet it is also private - probably in the Carrier NAT range of 100.64.0.0 to 100.127.255.255 which isn’t internet routable.

All I see is IPV4 Address 192.168.1.1

@dave27

Actually here is a thread where it appears that’s exactly what they’re doing (these people are complaining the ethernet ports seem to be capped but maybe they’re all trying with routers connected? - sounds like you get full speed with a laptop connected to the ethernet ports?) Nokia Fastmile 5G Gateway 3.2 with slow ethernet p… - Rogers Community

Thanks for sharing that link, not sure how I missed it as that Is how I found out that the Nokia can’t be bridged. One person mentioned that he connected his laptop directly. I’m guessing because I am using a Mac and somehow Nokia or the Mac are treating the connection differently . To eliminate that the issue is my Eero, I connected two different routers that I have in my closet and I got same results. If I remember correctly, when I first set it up I was getting consistent speeds of 100/10 through the Eero, Then I had to step away for couple of hours, and maybe then the firmware upgrade got pushed .

@dave27

If you disconnect the eero WAN, clone the MAC address of a client device to it (phone, laptop, etc), then reconnect it, see if the speed improves.

Again, above my pay grade.

@dave27

Depending on the features the eero supports, it may be possible to disable NAT and DHCP on it and have it act purely as a router/firewall, forwarding DHCP requests to the Nokia.

There are three options in the Eero for DHCP & NAT: Automatic, Manual IP and Bridge. However that again is above my pay grade.

@dave27

But you’d need to be able to add static routes in the Nokia to make that work

I tried to do that but I was getting “Oops, something went wrong”. Either they’ve blocked the feature or I was doing something wrong.

@dave27

There is the “option 3” you were considering where you leave the nokia wireless and firewall enabled with different SSID (maybe only the 5ghz radio, disable 2.4) for devices where you want a lot of speed,

I think I am going to leave it as is in DMZ mode and connect my Mac to the second port on the Nokia for the full speed. I don’t have any high speed devices, two iPads two iPhones, four Wyze cams, some smart plugs and lights. Also I have a Smart TV and an Android box, but those won’t matter as Rogers is throttling streaming services such as Netflix and Prime to 3Mbs (yes 3Mbs is correct) and 720dpi only. It doesn’t matter to me as I don’t use those services at the cottage. I use Plex and I doubt that they’ll throttle that as it comes from my own Plex server at home.

What is weird is that when I run the Speed Test on the Eero app it gives me higher download speeds vs the Speed Test app by Ookla on my Mac and iPhone.

@dave27

I would still try and check both the eero and nokia to see if you can find a screen telling you the status of the ethernet ports.

I looked everywhere, even under the bed , I can’t find that info on either one.

@dave27

I’m not sure if the eero supports wireless WAN (pretty uncommon on most routers) but if it does, you could try connecting the eero to the nokia wirelessly and see if that changes anything too.

Unfortunately, not.

@dave27

If you have a spare router that supports wifi to ethernet bridge mode, you can use that to create a wireless WAN off the eero.

I have a WiFi 6 Mesh Huawei that I retired for security reasons, somewhere in the garage. It might support wifi to ethernet. I’ll go and look for it in the garage later and see what it can do.

@dave27

Another thing I thought of, when you wired your Mac directly to the Nokia to test, it could have still been using wifi.

Not a chance. My Mac is desktop and even though it has WiFi I keep it off. I am very picky when it comes to some devices, if they have wired Ethernet, I always use that, even for my TVs.

@dave27

I am Canadian (well, 2 generations removed) so we speak the same language.

@dave27

Except I never learned French, so not literally.

I don’t speak French either. Just so we are clear, I am naturalized Canadian, I was born and raised in North Macedonia, former republic of Yugoslavia.

Thanks for all the advice. Probably we could’ve done all this via DM but I thought it might be useful to someone else as you my friend, are wealth of information!