Configuring RV130W inside LAN

[lijoel]

Hi there

I just bought a used RV130W.
My goal is to use it as a Switch/AP if possible.
So far however this has proven difficult, this might be because it's not possible, or because the only
knowledge I have of networking is mostly theoretical.

Why do I want this?

In the dorms I live there is a single shared LAN between all flats/rooms with around 400Mb/s downlink.
What I have in my room is a single RJ45 Socket.
What I would like to do is
1. multiplex this so I can have my desktop and a Raspberry Pi attached to it
2. add a WLAN AP for netflix on my phone

What I got sofar

My thinking was to use a router and disable all NAT and firewall.
Hence I got myself a used RV130W. The setup as described above works when plugging the socket into the WAN
port of the router and running it in gateway mode.

I would like to disable NAT however because to my knowledge NAT is a bit of a hack, and "stacking" two
NAT routers behind eachother might  produce difficulties  when using P2P networks such as torrents or games.
Hence ideally I would like the router to behave like a switch combined with an AP.

From the manual I assumed changing the device mode to "Router" instead of "Gateway" might achieve what I want.
When I do this however I cannot access the internet from within my own LAN anymore.

The question

Is it possible to configure the RV130W to behave approximately like a switch with an attached AP?
If so, how?
If not, what's the closest I can get?

Thanks a lot for any input,
Joel

[Georg Pauwen · Accepted solution]

Hello,

in theory, if you connect any of the layer 2 ports on your ISP modem to any of the layer 2 ports (1/2/3/4) of the RV130W, you should be able to circumvent the layer 3 functionalities of the RV130W. You probably need a crossover cable to connect the two devices. Give that a try and check if the devices connected to the RV130W get an IP address from the ISP modem...

In any case, leave the RV130W in 'Router' mode, as this indeed disables NAT...

[lijoel]

Hi

Thanks, this was almost the entire solution!

For reference if someone needs this in  the future:

1) Connect preexisting LAN from the Modem to a LAN port on your Router. NOT the WAN!

2) LAN -> LAN Configuration change:

  2.1) subnet mask to whatever the Modem uses, e.g. 255.0.0.0 for 10.x.x.x IPs or 255.255.255.0 for 192.168.0.x

  2.2) Local IP address of the router to some free IP in the Range used by the modem

  2.3) DHCP Server mode to Relay

  2.4) Remote DHCP Server to the DHCP Server of the Modem (for me this happened to be the IP of the modem gateway)

3) Networking -> Routing -> Operating Mode to Router instead of Gateway

Thanks for the help,

Joel

[Georg Pauwen]

Hello,

that's good and valuable reference information ! Glad you got it working...