New router and got some problems

ShaunIOW

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My setup at home is the Vodaphone ISP router being used just to get the broadband (Wireless turned off), and my own router for wireless and with everything else connected to it by cable normally through an unmanaged gigabit switch if thats an option, ie wireless is only used for tablets, phones, Kindle, IP camera.

I was using an Asus RT-AC3200 router and everything was fine, but I replaced it with an Asus RT-AX58U router as I wanted to set up an AIMesh to get decent wireless upstairs (it's a large old house) which the 3200 didn't support. nearly everything is connected by a Cat5e/6/7 cable though gigabitswitches to the router and all show up in the newtork list and are working, except now for some reason my HP Microserver isn't showing in the Network Map list even though it is on and plugged in to the router direct ) not via a switch, and my Buffalo NAS drive and a USB3 hard-drive connected to the router aren't showing in Windows Explorer but are showing in the router network list (smb1.0 is enabled in Windows 10).

Any ideas?
 
Routers sit at the "edge" of a network providing a gateway to other network (ie the Internet in the SOHO use case,) router's don't sit in the "middle" of the network "bossing" it.

Routers don't have any requirement to "know" about what's on the network where, they just process the traffic packet by packet (and even then, only the packets they receive - they don't necessarily see all of them,) like the posties working in a real world sorting office.

Some router's aimed at SOHO users try to be helpful to lay people by creating various types of network "map," but this is purely a dog and pony show for human beings, it has no bearing on how the network functions. Thusly it doesn't "matter" if some device or other isn't in the map/list. I suspect a lot of these maps are drawn up be examining the DHCP Lease tables and the switching tables. If you statically assigned you IP addresses on anything, then by definition they wouldn't appear in the DHCP Lease tables.

If, for example, you had a device that is connected beyond your router, and that device has never had cause to send any traffic that reached your router, it's quite possible the router simply doesn't know anything about it. But that's OK, it doesn't need to.

So, if you can "ping" your microserver and NAS from something else and it's otherwise working fine, then it's no problem that your router doesn't know about it.

Windows browsing the network is another matter, (though I haven't much idea why it's not working.) But the first step it to try ping your servers and see if they answer - if they do, you can be confident the basic network connectivity (at least at the datalink and IP levels) is working.
 
As above, is the microserver using DHCP ? If not then you can add it as a manually assigned IP in your router and it should then show up on the list of devices when its active.
 
Routers sit at the "edge" of a network providing a gateway to other network (ie the Internet in the SOHO use case,) router's don't sit in the "middle" of the network "bossing" it.

Routers don't have any requirement to "know" about what's on the network where, they just process the traffic packet by packet (and even then, only the packets they receive - they don't necessarily see all of them,) like the posties working in a real world sorting office.

Some router's aimed at SOHO users try to be helpful to lay people by creating various types of network "map," but this is purely a dog and pony show for human beings, it has no bearing on how the network functions. Thusly it doesn't "matter" if some device or other isn't in the map/list. I suspect a lot of these maps are drawn up be examining the DHCP Lease tables and the switching tables. If you statically assigned you IP addresses on anything, then by definition they wouldn't appear in the DHCP Lease tables.

If, for example, you had a device that is connected beyond your router, and that device has never had cause to send any traffic that reached your router, it's quite possible the router simply doesn't know anything about it. But that's OK, it doesn't need to.

So, if you can "ping" your microserver and NAS from something else and it's otherwise working fine, then it's no problem that your router doesn't know about it.

Windows browsing the network is another matter, (though I haven't much idea why it's not working.) But the first step it to try ping your servers and see if they answer - if they do, you can be confident the basic network connectivity (at least at the datalink and IP levels) is working.

Cheers for the reply.

I've tried pinging the Microserver which has a static IP of 192.168.2.130 and the Plex Server thats on it which has the static IP 192.168.2.124 and I get back destination host unreachable on both, but from IP 192.168.2.57 which is my laptop. I tried pinging other devices that are on the router list as a test and they all reported back fine, as did the NAS which shows in the list but not in Windows. I unplugged the microserver from the router and plugged it into a switch connected to the router but it made no difference, but the light on the switch shows it's connected. I can't access the microserver through the web interface either so no way to change settings on it.

What puzzles me is the new router is the same make with the same interface and IP range (192.168.2.xxx) and it should just have been a case of plugging in the same cables as I did with everything else (the microserver is running TrueNAS as the O/S) as I made all the settings the same including my wireless SSIDs and passwords.
 
As above, is the microserver using DHCP ? If not then you can add it as a manually assigned IP in your router and it should then show up on the list of devices when its active.

Cheers for the reply.

It has static IP's assigned, and there is no way to access it to change anything.
 
As above, is the microserver using DHCP ? If not then you can add it as a manually assigned IP in your router and it should then show up on the list of devices when its active.
Cheers for the reply.

It has static IP's assigned, and there is no way to access it to change anything.
In the router DHCP page you can assign static IP, it doesn't mean the server has to request it, it just means that the router knows what is that IP address.
 
As above, is the microserver using DHCP ? If not then you can add it as a manually assigned IP in your router and it should then show up on the list of devices when its active.

In the router DHCP page you can assign static IP, it doesn't mean the server has to request it, it just means that the router knows what is that IP address.

I had a look but the only opions are for those devices in a dropdown box or if I know the MAC address of the server which I don't, just entering an IP didn't work.
 
What puzzles me is the new router is the same make with the same interface and IP range (192.168.2.xxx) and it should just have been a case of plugging in the same cables as I did with everything else (the microserver is running TrueNAS as the O/S) as I made all the settings the same including my wireless SSIDs and passwords.

I'm afraid it's not that simple. When you change DHCP Servers, even if you keep the same IP address range, there's a period of time where the old leases time out and are replaced by new ones from the new DHCP Server. The new DHCP Server will have no knowledge of any leases issued by the old one. Typically if you wait 24 hours and/or restart everything it sorts itself out automatically. You may find the IP addresses of the hosts change, but some DHCP Servers will honour a request from a host for a particular IP address if they have not already issued it and thus the host IP address is maintained across DHCP Server changes - but it's not guaranteed.

If you are using statically assigned IP address, you should ensure those IP addresses are outside the range of IP addresses being managed by DHCP to prevent the chance that the DHCP Server will issue the statically assigned IP address to something else and cause an IP address conflict. Or do one @oneman suggest, though that's not best practice.

"Destination host unreachable" means pretty much what it says. The pinging device (your laptop) could not resolve the MAC address of the target host so couldn't even send a ping to it.

Typically this either means the target is physically disconnected or you are using the wrong IP address.

You could verify this using arp (the protocol that resolves IP address to MAC Addresses.) You have to be a bit quick though: On a Windows host, ping your target host again then run an "ARP -a" That will list all the IP address to MAC address mappings your laptop currently knows about and has cached (you need to do so within a few minutes of pinging as the arp cache usually cycles in a only a few minutes.) If you cannot see your target device listed with it's MAC address, then it's a pretty good bet you either using the wrong IP address or it's physically not connected to the network.

If so, it would seem there's no option but to hook up a monitor, screen and keyboard to your HP and see what's going on. There are methods we could use with packet scanners (like wireshark) to try and find the MAC address of an unknown device, but unless it's a complete ball ache to do so, it's simpler to just hook up to a monitor and keyboard temporarily.
 
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The way I normally assign static addresses is to switch the device to DHCP. It will then appear in the list of devices on the router DHCP table and you can then assign it a static IP outside the DHCP range. that will give it a reservation. You can then either switch the device back to static or let the router keep giving it a reserved address.

I keep my server in the loft with remote desktop (and teamviewer) enabled. All it has is a power cable and network cables connected, no keyboard, video or mouse.

But if you can't connect to it right now then sorry but it looks like you will need to hook up a KVM.
 
A couple of things spring to mind (though some more unlikely than others). If your micro server has more than one ethernet port, you may simply be plugged into the wrong one. I think the Gen8's have 3 by default 1, 2, and ILO, so I would check that first. I have lost count of the number of times I've made this mistake (though fortunately it's probably not more than 10 otherwise it would really be a worrying long term prospect for dementia)

The only other thing I can think of is your subnet mask (putting aside the DHCP stuff) since you've said it is a statically assigned address, if you gave it a 255.255.255.192 SM then this would put your addresses of 192.168.2.124 and 130 on different networks to your pc (57) though this would only fail if you have no router configured too... which as I said is unlikely... but it would give you a ping failure. However if I'm not mistaken the failure would say 'General Failure' rather than 'Host unreachable"

ANyway give it a look, you never know
 
A couple of things spring to mind (though some more unlikely than others). If your micro server has more than one ethernet port, you may simply be plugged into the wrong one. I think the Gen8's have 3 by default 1, 2, and ILO, so I would check that first. I have lost count of the number of times I've made this mistake (though fortunately it's probably not more than 10 otherwise it would really be a worrying long term prospect for dementia)

The only other thing I can think of is your subnet mask (putting aside the DHCP stuff) since you've said it is a statically assigned address, if you gave it a 255.255.255.192 SM then this would put your addresses of 192.168.2.124 and 130 on different networks to your pc (57) though this would only fail if you have no router configured too... which as I said is unlikely... but it would give you a ping failure. However if I'm not mistaken the failure would say 'General Failure' rather than 'Host unreachable"

ANyway give it a look, you never know

Cheers for the reply, I think you were right, as I got it working last night after switching the network cable to a different port on the server (although strangely it was the one originally used and I changed it a few days ago trying to get it to work, I also switched cables at the same time) then turned everything off then on at the mains switch, and it showed up in the router and in Windows Explorer and works fine.

I now just need to figure out why the Buffalo NAS and the Hard-drive connected to the router USB don't show up in Windows Explorer, when the server folders do. I can acccess both devices on the network to play back files that are on there in a media player, but obviously cannot add or delete from them.
 
I'm assuming you've done the obvious things like checked the network discovery options and the sharing options on your laptop?
 
I'm assuming you've done the obvious things like checked the network discovery options and the sharing options on your laptop?

Yes, as I said the TruNAS and it's folders are showing and accessible, I also made sure the SMBv1 was enabled in Windows features.
 
Problem (nearly) solved. After checking the settings in Windows were correct and the truNAS was appearing in Windows Explorer, I thought it must be something other than a Windows setting and remembered a problem i had a while ago with access to some websites meaning I couldn't order anything being caused by Kaspersky, so i disabled Kaspersky and low and behold both drives appeared in Windows Explorer and I can access the h/d connected to the router USB, but for some reason Windows says the network path to the NAS can't be found even though I can ping it succesfully from a CMD prompt and can access it using the Buffalo desktop app, and access it by entering the ip address in a web broswer (but try the ip in the Windows run box it also says the network path cannot be found.
 
I don't think it has ever been the case you could do it like that. I think if you want to access the share via the Windows run box you have to use the \\IP_Address format. ie \\192.168.2.xx Which is the same as using explorer really.
 
I don't think it has ever been the case you could do it like that. I think if you want to access the share via the Windows run box you have to use the \\IP_Address format. ie \\192.168.2.xx Which is the same as using explorer really.

That is what I did, \\192.168.2.86 which is the IP address of the NAS, but in both Windows Explorer and using the RUN command it says Network path cannot be found, but I can acces it via the app and web browser on that ip address.
 
Web browsing and Windows network mapping use different protocols, though both sit on top of IP. Web browsing (basically) uses HTTP on top of TCP on top of IP. Windows Explorer et al use CIFS/SMB on top of TCP on top of IP. (And a few asociated protocols such as name resolution if you aren't using IP addresses.)

Some Anit-Virus solutions with web browser integration create a proxy server on your PC that sits between the browser and the network and blocks/allows access to certain sites and/or sniffs the data as it passes by. This can cause issues. Shutting it off AV browser integration "fixes" (as in avoids) the problem, but opens you up to a few attack vectors.

CIFS/SMB drive mapping uses a different process that doesn't hit this. However, a lot of OS/AV products now include a "personal firewall" which can also get in the way if the rules aren't set correctly. You might take a look at that.
 

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