Comfast wireless ceiling AP

Beesting

Beesting

Beesting

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Hi,

Long time reader, first time poster! Completely lost on something that seems relatively simple...

My electrician installed a Comfast 300MBPS wireless ceiling AP... problem is he installed it above the ceiling, so i cannot get to it!

He had wired cat6 cable back to my virgin router, i plugged it in and it works well, i get great signal and can connect and browse fine. My issue is, it seems to have created its own, unprotected network. Anyone can access this network and it isn't password protected. I have googled and they suggested i typed 192.168.0.1 into the browser to set it up. I have entered that and nothing happens it just times out... I know that a login was possible as i saw the electrician on the comcast landing page. I am worried he has set it up incorrectly and I need to go in to correct it so it boosts my current network rather than create its own unprotected one.

I looked into system preferences to look at the comcast settings and it states its IPv4 Address is 192.168.0.18. I (naively) thought if i entered that into my browser that would allow me to login, but that didn't work either!

Electrician isn't being very helpful and won't come back to look at it (as it isn't his expertise, wish he'd mentioned that when he said he would install the unit!), so i hope someone on here can help! All help appreciated :-)
 
What router do you have? I have a standard ISP one (plusnet). When I look on the default page, it lists all the IP's of the connected equipment. You could use that to find the IP to access the AP - it might even have an obvious device name so its easy to spot.
 
thanks for the response. I'm on virgin media, I have logged into my router, all the connected devices have an IP with them. It wasn't clear which was which but i tried ever single one and none of them brought anything up :rolleyes:

odd thing that might be relevant now is I connected my laptop to the comcast wifi connection and now my virgin media router seems to think my laptop is conned via ethernet? Showing as a listed device...

Any other ideas of how i could log in to it, or reset it so i could log in via 192.168.0.1 (i assume the standard login?)
 
this must be relevant... I am connected to the comfast, i tried typing in 192.168.0.1 and it found the virgin media router (not connected to that network) and i could log in and edit as per normal. Surely I shouldn't be able to find it if I'm connected to the Comfast?

Urgh...
 
If you couldn't access the Virgin router while connected to the access point you wouldn't be able to access the internet either.

Download an IP address scanner or use ARP from the command-line to try and identify the access point.

It's possible that it has a management IP on a different subnet. That wouldn't stop it from working but would make it difficult to find and access.

You could try connecting the AP to your computer directly using its Ethernet cable. You'd need to assign the computer with a static IPv4 address (e.g. 192.168.0.100). You can they try accessing the AP on 192.168.0.1 if you think that's where it's supposed to be.

Do you have a model number or link to the support pages for the AP you have?
 
Thanks for the post, unfortunately the electrician put it above the ceiling so i can't physically get to it! I downloaded an IP address scanner, it won't let me upload the image (probably too new to post) but the data is:

Ip Ping Hostname ports
192.168.0.18 0ms As-Macbook-Pro.local n/a
192.168.0.24 3ms n/a 80
192.168.0.25 3ms n/a n/a
192.168.0.1 4ms n/a 80,443
192.168.0.17 4ms n/a n/a
192.168.0.10 8ms n/a n/a
192.168.0.19 23ms n/a n/a
192.168.0.15 53ms n/a n/a
192.168.0.12 156ms iPhone local n/a

The model is a Comcast CF-E320N V2. I know it worked as i saw him messing around with it as per my previous post, just want to put it right!

Thanks for your help
 
Having had a Google it looks like the default IP address is likely to be 192.168.10.1.

You'd need to assign your PC with a static IPv4 address in the same range (e.g. 192.168.10.100) before you could access it. Once you're done change it back to automatic

While you're in there you should be able to change the management IP to use a 192.168.0.n address. Avoid anything you're already using, especially the 192.168.0.1 router address.

It doesn't look to be great AP. Low-end specifications and a poor level of manufacturer documentation and support.
 
Brilliant it looks like you've got to the bottom of it. Understood its not great, but hopefully be better than what I have.

I'll be totally honest, I have no idea how to action the points you raised, are you able to help? Or are there stickies I should be looking at?

Thanks again, your help is much appreciated
 
so... this worked very well. I managed to log in to the Comfast, logged into the unit, added a password, connected my devices to it.

All worked perfectly... for 24 hours! Suddenly none of my devices could connect to it. It still had full signal and I could connect to it by logging into the IP I had assigned. I try entering the password and it says connection failed. I know the password is correct as I used the same one as i use for my router.

I turned it off overnight. Turned it back on and reconnected my devices (using the same password, so its definitely right) all worked fine. A few hours later my devices disconnected (I have a nest camera connected to it so get an alert straight away).

Any ideas? Hoping something simple as the device is clearing working correctly, could it have something to do with me using the same password for this as I do for my virgin router? Or something I may have done wrong in the IP addresses?

Help appreciated as always
 
to be more precise, when i click to connect to it i get a message that states:

the wifi network "Comfast _C788_2G" requires a WPA2 password.

When i enter the password it says connection failed.

Oddly, this is on my MacBook and when someone normally tries to connect to my network it allows me to "share" the password with them (if an apple device). I normally get a prompt (which i did when i first entered it and it was working fine) I am not getting that prompt when I try now - just in case that's relevant!
 
Do you have it configured to still support WPA rather than just supporting WPA2? WPA isn't secure and I've seen Apple devices issue warnings and block connections when WPA is supported.

The real answer here is to install a good access point from a manufacturer that'll provide a properly supported device. Buying a cheap UniFi knockoff isn't the way to get a good wireless connection.
 
I'd give up on this to be honest, it's a device with poor specs from an unknown manufacturer that is now installed in a position where it can never be accessed.

As a last ditch effort you could try a firmware update - http://en.comfast.com.cn/index.php?m=content&c=index&a=show&catid=31&id=275 assuming I have the model correct.

For future reference, don't ask electricians to do data, they are different disciplines and just because they both involve cables doesn't count for anything.
 
Because I've seen then make all of the same mistakes you see with many electricians.

I also wouldn't ask an aerial installer to do networking either if it wasn't something they were used to dealing with.

There's obviously a bit more to network cabling that just running a cable from A to B. The additional bit isn't rocket science, but some people just don't seem to get it.
 
bremen1874 said:
Because I've seen then make all of the same mistakes you see with many electricians.

I also wouldn't ask an aerial installer to do networking either if it wasn't something they were used to dealing with.

There's obviously a bit more to network cabling that just running a cable from A to B. The additional bit isn't rocket science, but some people just don't seem to get it.
Click to expand...

To be a Paxton authorised installer you have to be able to terminate, test and certify CAT5e and CAT6 network cabling. That last requirement to certify means a lot of people can't afford to do Paxton because they can't afford the equipment or accreditation required to certify cable runs. Paxton also require you to be able to select the correct enclosures to run cables in to ensure no possibility of crosstalk or communications with other cables and configure their switches and routers and that means you need to know far more than the average bear about VLANs and network security practices. And Paxton aren't alone in having extremely high standards for their authorised installers. I'm sure there are people stringing PIR sensors together with bell wire, but a proper alarm installer probably knows as much or even more than many so-called 'professional' companies about running and terminating cables.
 
I would never claim that there aren't electricians, alarm installers, aerial installers, etc. that are perfectly capable of installing network cabling to a very high standard. I've worked with some of them.

If they've passed an accreditation that qualifies them to install network cabling then they're obviously going to be okay with it. At that point, they're a network installer and not just a jobbing electrician pulling an occasional cable and not really knowing what they're doing. I have firsthand experience, as well as what you often see on here, to know how bad it can be.

Don't just assume that because they're used to working with wires they'll also be the right person to install network cabling. I don't think there's anything controversial about that.
 
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