X2 VLAN devices not visible to LAN computers

[ronshi]

I have recently installed a pcWRT newifi D2 router. It is connected to my ISP’s (Shaw, Canada) Technicolor CGM4140COM cable modem which has a 1 gigabit connection. After some difficulties I got it working with the modem in bridge mode. I set up three of the Vlans, LAN, X2, and X3. The intent was to have my main desktop computer connected via a wired connection to Port 1 on LAN, as well as to wifi on the 5 Ghz band on LAN. My phone and tablet would also be on the Lan 5Ghz vlan.

I wanted to have some home music player devices, printer,etc., connected to X2 and be visible to the X2 and LAN devices. One of the stereo devices is a wired connection. The other two are wifi on the 2.4Ghz band. After many false starts this partially worked. Partially in that I see the X2 devices in the pcWRT setup and configuration webpages when I login into it. If I connect to the same X2 wifi band on my desktop, phone, or tablet, the stereo streaming software sees all the music devices and I can control them and the printer works. However if the controlling device, say tablet, is connected to the LAN SSID it cannot see the music player or printer.

X3 has a Nest smoke alarm and other devices on it but those seem to be visible to their apps on the phone and tablet.

Any suggestions as to what I may have done wrong that won’t let the top level devices (LAN) see the X2 Vlan devices? I am hoping that it will be a simple fix. I couldn’t find anyone in the forums with similar problems and solutions.

I do have all vlans, GUEST, X1, X2 and X3 checked in the first row for the LAN vlan. So I thought that should make those all visible/accessible.

Thank you in advance for any and all help you might be able to provide.

Regards,
Ron

[support]

You can try to ping the music player, printer etc from your PC. Suppose the IP address for the printer is 10.159.158.12, can you ping the IP address from a computer connected to the LAN?

If you can successfully ping the devices, then the connectivity from LAN to the devices is good. The next question is how your software discovers the devices. You may want to enable mDNS on the Network Settings page to see if that helps.

[ronshi]

Thank you for the quick reply. I had already confirmed I can ping all devices on the VLANs (X2 and X3). I will try turning on mDNS and update later if that works or not.
Ron

[ronshi]

As I said I can ping the devices successfully from my notebook computer. Turning on mDNS made no change to being able to reach the devices on the Vlans.

Would the Vlan tagging or some other settings option have a bearing?

Thanks for your help on this.
Ron

[support]

VLAN tagging is used when the router is connected to an Access Point or another router that sends and receives packets tagged with VLAN ids. It won’t help in this scenario (actually might break communication between the router and your device).

Maybe your music software uses broadcasting to find the music players. If that’s the case, it only works when both are on the same subnet (VLAN).

For the printer, if you manually set up printing devices using the printer’s IP address, it can reside on a different VLAN.

BTW, what’s your music streaming software?

[ronshi]

Thanks for the reply.
I use Bluesound music streaming software and players, three of them in different rooms. I find they are very high sound quality and true Hi-Resolution audio signals come through without downgrading the audio quality.

When on the same subnet as the controlling device (iPad, iPhone, Mac, etc) it works fine. I have been researching this with them too. It appears they use Apples’ Bonjour for connecting and they say it is a problem if a device is on a different subnet.

It does look like they may have a workaround, but it may be more trouble than it is worth.

As for the printer I will look into it to see if it works, and is worth the effort.

Thanks for the help.
Ron

[support]

Since Bluesound uses Apple Bonjour, in theory it should work with the router with mDNS enabled. Please wait for our next firmware update and give it another try then.

[Author]

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