WiFi Access Point Thingymabobs

[Marv]

Where's Beany to dish out the IT advice these days? He normally posts useful shit so the rest of us can just sit back

Things I'd try, if you haven't already...

> Log into your Virgin router (username and password should be on the sticker on the back) if it's not in the front page of the web interface for your router, there should be somewhere in the web interface where it shows what devices are connected. If the switch you put in your picture is managed, then it should be listed as a connected device with a name (Netgear in the name) and and IP address.

> If there is an IP address for the Netgear switch, copy and paste this into another tab in your browser. I'm guessing the switch will also have a username and password, which will also be printed onto the back of the switch. So find that, get into the web interface on the switch and in there, you again should see somewhere where you can see the connected devices to the switch. Is there anything in there? If they are connected, the Wireless Access Points should be listed with names and IP addresses too.

> If your Netgear switch isn't listed as a connected device on your router, then you need to verify the cabling. From your picture, I'm guessing you can't tell which one runs from the router to the switch? If you can tell which one comes across from the router, I'd get a laptop, disable the wifi and plug the cable in. Once plugged in, if the cable is working well then you should be able to connect to the internet, despite your wifi being disconnected.

I'm not familiar with the brand of Wireless Access Points you have, but I'm guessing they have some sort of web management interface? I'd also investigate on how to connect to that.

The switch should have loads of little lights flashing lights on it, where the cables plug in, or possibly smaller lights relating to each port in another area of the switch. If there's no lights, then it's not connecting to the devices.

None of the above will solve your problems, but may highlight if there's something not connected or help you get to the bottom of why it's not working.

[Jimexpl]

The recent other thread on IT related matters reminded me that the forum hivemind may be able to help me with an issue I have...

As you know we've recently moved in to the new place and Virgin media fibre broadband is all hooked up... in the study. This doesn't really reach all that far - not bad on the ground floor but the kitchen is L/G with absolutely no reception and upstairs barely much better.

Happily the previous owner installed a switch and ethernet routing to unifi access points on the walls in various rooms. I have plugged in the Ethernet cable to the switch which should in theory distribute the feed to the access points but despite downloading the Unifi app I haven't had any success in getting them to show as visible / connect to them.

Any ideas or do I have to get "a man" to come and help?

You need a unifi access point manager / cloud key when there's more than one unifi point - is there one?

I can do an OV9 special rate to send "a man" round, but we need to know if an additional bit of kit needs buying.

Hmmm I'm not sure about that - I've put a picture of the switch living in the cupboard in the lounge below. Could it be incorporated as part of this or something separate?

The seller said he used "broadband buyer to manage the system" and that I may want to download the unifi app but that was it!

I think broadbandbuyer offer their own cloud services for a monthly fee to manage the access points, which will be with the previous owner.

What I expect needs doing is a purchase of one of these - https://uk.store.ui.com/uk/en/category/ ... ateway-max
Factory reset each access point, plug in the cloud gateway, then set it up as a new system.
It's not difficult, just time consuming, and occasionally the access points can get stuck after a factory resent and need a bit of TLC to get on the network.
Send me a PM with your number if you want someone to come round. Next week is a bit mad with installs and an engineer away in Belgium on training, but we might have time on Friday afternoon.

[Ascender]

I'm still not sure why he needed to have "broadband buyer" doing anything for him, but I guess its a managed cloud service.

Like others have said, I'd be doing a full hardware reset on all devices and then setting them up from scratch via the Unifi network app/manager/gui. Is it not something you can just download and run on a PC if you don't have a dedicated unified controller box? I don't think you necessarily need a cloud gateway do you?

I'm pretty sure these APs will keep working if you take away the management element, but your router is probably using a different DHCP range. If that's a managed switch it might also be doing network-type things, so get into the management link for that.

Like Marv says, you can then see what's connected, but I"d be wiping everything and starting again because you'll be fighting a losing battle of trying to untangle the previous setup.

Back to basics, reset switch, reset the APs, download the unifi network app, leave the router dishing out the DHCP range, with the switch being "dumb" and you should get an AP up and be sorted.

[Beany]

I'm not weighing in because the state of home networking has changed a lot since I did it professionally, and even I had to take some time out to get my head around mesh networking when I set up my little mesh to make my WiFi doorbell work so for once, I'm not comfy giving advice as I suspect I'd be about ten years behind at best

I will say don't pay over the odds for WiFi 7 - most hardware doesn't even meet the full WiFi 7 standard, and use alternate verification to claim it does. It's a fucking joke.

[Jimexpl]

This this is a typical house network/AV and lighting panel that we deal with. Our junior engineer was organising them ready to terminate earlier this week. Just 32 pairs of speaker cables to go at this point...

[GG.]

Ok so we seem to be cooking on gas. Broadband buyer seem to host the unifi controller function in the cloud and I've re-set all the access points and they've now been adopted onto a new controller as it were. Now have fast wifi all round the house which is great.

Only one of the access points threw a wobbly and gave me an error when trying to adopt it so just troubleshooting that one now.

ETA: they provided an alternative prompt for that one so looks like we're all done. They charged £70 set up fee for this but to be honest I'm very happy to have had them walk me through the process and vastly cheaper than starting again.

I now just wonder if I can merge my Ethernet based CCTV based system with the current switch...

[Marv]

I now just wonder if I can merge my Ethernet based CCTV based system with the current switch...

When I ran a Ethernet cable to my garage into a relatively cheap switch and plugged in my CCTV cameras in to the switch everything auto-negotiated and the cameras appeared on my NVR like magic. Hopefully you find it similarly easy!