1gbs router on a 2.5gbs network?

MartinInAyrshire · Sunday at 13:07

Meddling-Monk said:
Would it be possible for you to try one thing? Disable the WiFi on your Router. And then tell us if your wired network still works? Because I suspect that it won't work without the WiFi on the Router, or the Extenders powered on.

I can’t do that today. Too much use going on. I’d be beaten to death by my family.

Disabling Wi-Fi on the main router though doesn’t just disable WiFi, it can also break the management/control path between the EE hub and the satellites, even if they’re wired for data. The test wouldn’t prove anything about the physical topology — it would just intentionally break the mesh system.

The facts remain:

• All downstream devices pull DHCP from the router.

• They receive 192.168.x.x private IPs.

• NAT and firewall clearly occur at the router.

• Traffic flows at >1Gbps through the switch before hitting the router — proving the switch is not acting as a router or broadcast boundary.

So logically, the switch is still L2 fabric, and the router is still the L3 boundary. The physical order doesn’t change that.”

Caged · Sunday at 13:07

Turn all the Wi-Fi extenders off and you will lose wired connectivity

ChrisD. · Sunday at 13:11

It's working by some weird fluke or likely as suggested via the EE APs, but it shouldn't be cabled like that which is the entire point. The switch should be on the LAN side of the router.

Meddling-Monk · Sunday at 13:16

MartinInAyrshire said:
Disabling Wi-Fi on the main router though doesn’t just disable WiFi, it can also break the management/control path between the EE hub and the satellites, even if they’re wired for data.

Then it is as I suspected, your network is reliant on the Extenders to make this network happen via the wirelss Mesh network backhaul over 6Ghz that this EE Smart Hub Pro creates. It's functional in your situation, but not everyone utilises WiFi Extenders and if you do not have WiFi Extenders then putting the Switch before the Router will not actually do any good for anyone else. So your advice to place it before there is not 100% complete, as without this key piece of information (needing a wireless Mesh network going via WiFi backhaul) then this will only create a non functional network as you have described, because the Router is not performing it's duties correctly by routing traffic to the other devices.

The typical advice of placing the Router first would still apply, even here, else there would be no network.

MartinInAyrshire · Sunday at 13:16

Caged said:
Turn all the Wi-Fi extenders off and you will lose wired connectivity

Disco_P · Sunday at 13:25

I really hope @vian_siu got everything sorted and has bounced from this thread or broken it so badly he's not got internet anymore and can't see this thread

Caged · Sunday at 13:30

That's a very weird undocumented feature of the EE Smart Hub Pro if the WAN port is just a LAN port, I actually have one so can try this out.

Meddling-Monk · Sunday at 13:30

MartinInAyrshire said:

That is most interesting. My network knowledge is not as good as others, but I suspect that the Switch is maintaining some level of routing data map from being powered on and the network formed after the Router got everything going. And so long as the Router is keeping the Internet connection alive and all devices are still on the wired network (not lost the mapping to them and), then this would work as you are showing.

But if I'm not mistaken, then this again would have been 100% reliant on the Router being able to form that network in the first place. And without the Wireless Mesh capability it has, and your Extenders (and not all devices do have this ability), then this network you have created would not work. So the advice to users to place a network switch before the Router itself, is only partially valid; in most cases it will do nothing, or has no major advantage over placing the Router first and the Switch after (if needed). But if you do then yes, it would provide what you are presenting here.

Most interesting.

Meddling-Monk · Sunday at 13:31

Caged said:
That's a very weird undocumented feature of the EE Smart Hub Pro if the WAN port is just a LAN port, I actually have one so can try this out.

That would be most interesting to see.

ChrisD. · Sunday at 13:42

Meddling-Monk said:
That is most interesting. My network knowledge is not as good as others, but I suspect that the Switch is maintaining some level of routing data map from being powered on and the network formed after the Router got everything going. And so long as the Router is keeping the Internet connection alive and all devices are still on the wired network (not lost the mapping to them and), then this would work as you are showing.

But if I'm not mistaken, then this again would have been 100% reliant on the Router being able to form that network in the first place. And without the Wireless Mesh capability it has, and your Extenders (and not all devices do have this ability), then this network you have created would not work. So the advice to users to place a network switch before the Router itself, is only partially valid; in most cases it will do nothing, or has no major advantage over placing the Router first and the Switch after (if needed). But if you do then yes, it would provide what you are presenting here.

Most interesting.

The LAN clients will need to be able to talk to their default gateway which would be the EE hub. If they can't talk to the gateway, they can't talk to the internet because the GW would also SNAT the traffic to its WAN side.

The only logical explanation is that as Caged mentioned, the EE Hub's WAN port also acts as a LAN port which is incredibly odd for a consumer device.

The switch operates at L2 only so it just forwards traffic according to its CAM table (or does a broadcast if it has no record), it doesn't care about what L3 network is passing through it.

The point still stands that this is not recommended or optimal configuration for many reasons, the switch should hang off a LAN port to ensure correct WAN/LAN separation.

Meddling-Monk · Sunday at 13:48

ChrisD. said:
The point still stands that this is not recommended or optimal configuration for many reasons, the switch should hang off a LAN port to ensure correct WAN/LAN separation.

Oh I'm not disputing this bit at all. Just theorising from my limited knowledge on what might have been happening as it's clearly happening for them.

PS. Thanks for the info prior (that I removed), it's outside my knowledge base so interesting to read.

ChrisD. · Sunday at 13:51

Meddling-Monk said:
Oh I'm not disputing this bit at all. Just theorising from my limited knowledge on what might have been happening as it's clearly happening for them.

PS. Thanks for the info prior (that I removed), it's outside my knowledge base so interesting to read.

Sorry, it wasn't aimed at you. I was just saying in general.

In networking, like many other fields in IT, you can do things and they work perfectly fine. But that doesn't mean that you should.

Caged · Sunday at 13:54

Regardless of whether the EE device actually does operate like this, it's not good advice to put a switch in between the ONT and router as a standard deployment because I've never seen another router that acts like this, and it won't work on a provider that doesn't use PPPoE.

MartinInAyrshire · Sunday at 13:57

Caged said:
Regardless of whether the EE device actually does operate like this, it's not good advice to put a switch in between the ONT and router as a standard deployment because I've never seen another router that acts like this, and it won't work on a provider that doesn't use PPPoE.

Yes it is, in my case. It improved my network.

ChrisD. · Sunday at 14:01

MartinInAyrshire said:
Yes it is, in my case. It improved my network.

Honestly, I think you could start an argument in an empty room.

It is not good advice whatsoever, and it doesn't matter if it helped or not in your use case.

As I often say to my customers in enterprise, just because you can doesn't mean you should.

MartinInAyrshire · Sunday at 14:07

The

ChrisD. said:
Honestly, I think you could start an argument in an empty room.

It is not good advice whatsoever, and it doesn't matter if it helped or not in your use case.

As I often say to my customers in enterprise, just because you can doesn't mean you should.

chris, you’ve been the argumentative one here. From “that’s dangerous” to “that’s impossible” to “ask ChatGPT” to “ah well, ChatGPT only tells you what you want to hear” to “you’re wrong. Also dissembling about data centres etc.

I’ve explained it. I’ve provided photos. I’ve demonstrated everything that’s been asked of me, and it’s clear that IP addresses on devices are what they should be. And the network is running better than it was before.

It’s actually very common in business networks to have the core switch sitting before the router/firewall physically, with the firewall mapping one interface to WAN and another to LAN/VLANs.

So even though it looks backwards compared to typical consumer “router-first” layouts, it maintains proper separation and, in this case, gives better performance and cleaner topology.

So it is good advice and contradicting you doesn’t equal starting an argument in an empty room.

Armageus · Sunday at 14:19

MartinInAyrshire said:
If anything it has improved my network. PS5 ping is now 14 when it was 17-20. iPhone 16 is recording 1600 on WiFi more regularly rather than 1200-1300.

I'm not sure a couple of random tests are indicative of anything. And in the real world neither of those improvements will be noticeable anyway.

Your network is wrong - end of.

Caged · Sunday at 14:20

It's common in large networks to not do router on a stick, but your logical topology is exactly that, it's just the physical one that is different.

ChrisD. · Sunday at 14:35

MartinInAyrshire said:
The

chris, you’ve been the argumentative one here. From “that’s dangerous” to “that’s impossible” to “ask ChatGPT” to “ah well, ChatGPT only tells you what you want to hear” to “you’re wrong. Also dissembling about data centres etc.

I’ve explained it. I’ve provided photos. I’ve demonstrated everything that’s been asked of me, and it’s clear that IP addresses on devices are what they should be. And the network is running better than it was before.

It’s actually very common in business networks to have the core switch sitting before the router/firewall physically, with the firewall mapping one interface to WAN and another to LAN/VLANs.

So even though it looks backwards compared to typical consumer “router-first” layouts, it maintains proper separation and, in this case, gives better performance and cleaner topology.

So it is good advice and contradicting you doesn’t equal starting an argument in an empty room.

What I've been saying all along is that you should not put an unmanaged LAN switch between an ONT and a router. Other people are now saying the same thing and yet you are still disagreeing with the fact that it is not good advice to do so, and you still think it gives you proper separation and it's good advice. The mind boggles.

MartinInAyrshire · Sunday at 14:36

ChrisD. said:
What I've been saying all along is that you should not put an unmanaged LAN switch between an ONT and a router. Other people are now saying the same thing and yet you are still disagreeing with the fact that it is not good advice to do so, and you still think it gives you proper separation and it's good advice. The mind boggles.

Like I said before, we’ll agree to disagree.