WIFI and LAN for C8

🛎️ Get Help
1

So I have 2 C8 hubs. One in a LAN (192.168.220.19) and one was wifi (192.168.101.76), both had access to the internet. So, I thought, I would mesh them.

I added the wifi (101.77) to one of the hubs and LAN (10.2.2.70) to the other. There is a route between 220.19 and 10.2.2.70.

Mesh failed (why not just allow me to add an IP), but the hubs worked well, both wifi (there are wifi devices on the wifi) and through LAN (where Maker API dumps data into an SQL sever).

Overnight, however, both hubs went offline. No LAN, no wifi, no remote admin, no dashboards ("no response from hub"). Weird. Removed cable, reinserted cable (LAN), nothing. Only a removal of power cable worked.

They worked for a while, however, overnight, fail. Next night, fail.

I traced one problem to a setting where wifi would be powered off overnight, explaining why wifi was iffy (I expected it to just reconnect once it was available) but that doesn't explain the LAN connection dying.

I also have a third C8 with just LAN and it's reliable as a stone.

So, questions:
a) Was C8 designed to work with both wifi and LAN? Reliably?
b) If I have a wifi and a LAN, can Hubitat use whatever it has at hand, or does one become "primary" and if that goes away it goes offline?
c) does it have some sort of watchdog that would reset the network if it fails?
d) Is there a setting that would make the power LED blink if it's still working? I can't tell the difference between a dead network and a dead device

I will remove the wifi from one of them today and see if it fails with the other one. If the wifi going away is what is making it go insane, what options do I have?

2

I may be wrong on this but I don't think you can have both Ethernet and wifi setup at the same time. If I was understanding correctly that was what you were trying to to do.

2 Likes
3

As LearningHubitat says, an individual hub should not have both the ethernet and wifi option tee'd up-- it should just be one or the other (or wonkiness can result). Unfortunately, the one option cannot serve as a hot-spare / failover for the other -- the failover will not happen.

But AFAIK, there should be no problem hub-meshing a hub on wifi with another one on ethernet. But I only have one hub, so I'm a long way from being a Hub Mesh expert!

4 Likes
4

It is amy understanding that for hub mesh to work, both hubs need to be on the same LAN subnet. It should not matter whether they are Ethernet or WiFI, but Ethernet is preferred. Wired is almost always better.

You have on of your hubs at (192.168.220.19) and one at (192.168.101.76), Thus, they are on two different subnets (220 vs 101). They need to be on the same LAN subnet, not just connected to the Internet.

3 Likes
5

Yeah, thanks -- I was going to bring that subnet issue up too, but I feared I'd be straying out of my lane (I'm also not smart about networking stuff -- I'm not sure what I'm good for around here :sweat_smile:).

I'm glad that issue (whether potential or actual) was raised :+1:

5 Likes
6

Unless @Ndi has a single class B home network (192.168.0.0/16).

4 Likes
7

Thank you all for the replies.

a) Was C8 designed to work with both wifi and LAN? Reliably?
No.
b) If I have a wifi and a LAN, can Hubitat use whatever it has at hand, or does one become "primary" and if that goes away it goes offline?
No.
c) does it have some sort of watchdog that would reset the network if it fails?
No.
d) Is there a setting that would make the power LED blink if it's still working? I can't tell the difference between a dead network and a dead device
Not as of yet.

Mesh doesn't work (I could mesh them through wifi which are both 192.168.101) because it requires MDNS (I hope I remember it correctly) and that requires me to enable it on a wifi that is kinda secured and as a result it has as few services as possible on it. I am not 100% certain why you can't just enter the IP of the other hub, since they can ping each other and they could theoretically link via Maker API. I have a better chance on LAN anyway.

As for the wifi devices, my best bet thus far is to bridge the wifi (101) into the outside DMZ (10.*). That should allow me to simply take the wifi down and address wifi devices via wire. This is the solution I have at home.

I have killed one of the hubs' wifi link and left it on LAN only, the other has LAN and wifi. I'll check to see how that evolves. If just one explodes, we'll have a definitive answer. It would be nice if there was some warning for this, and even nicer if one could switch from the internals.

By the way, following a reset and an investigation, hub logs just stop. So it's not likely to be just a network issue, but rather the hub itself sort of ... dies.

Another update is that the wifi doesn't get cut overnight, I was thinking of another wifi mesh. So, just having 2 networks makes it Sudoku.

I'll update this in a day or two.

8

You could try HubConnect instead of HubMesh. It may fit your requirement better and is ment to be more network agnostic.

2 Likes
9

@aaiyar
It is not a home network, my home network is simple (ish). You do not want to see the monster I have at work

Suffice to say that most of what you saw listed above is running on the same cluster of hardware, so, despite them being all weird, they can be bridged at will with a simple route or separated.

10, 101, 220 are just various BSSIDs or wires into the same octopus.

@mavrrick58 I shall look into it, thank you.

1 Like
10

It is my understanding that networks beginning with 192.168 are private, non-routable addresses. They are class C only.

1 Like
11

There are a few Private ip ranges that are reserved for Home/Internal corporate networks. Here is what google lists

IPv4 Private Ranges:

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) reserves three IPv4 address ranges for private networks:

  • 10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255 (10/8 prefix)
  • 172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255 (172.16/12 prefix)
  • 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255 (192.168/16 prefix)

They are just reserved for private use and should not be put on the internet. That doesn't mean they can't be routed internally. Most common we see 192.168.x.x used at home with home routers, I have seen a few use 172.16.x.x. My office has used 10.x.x.x allot over the years though, and i would expect many others do as well.

The link for HubConnect is here:

4 Likes
12

I stand corrected. I did not realize that addresses using 192.168. x.x were routable locally, but not on the Internet. You taught me something. Thanks.

1 Like
13

Update.

After several attempts, the results are consistent: The hub with LAN only is still working fine, the one with LAN and Wifi is constantly and randomly hard stuck, anywhere from 1-2 days. Sometimes a little longer.

Switching setups eliminated the possibility of a hardware error, which ever hub has dual networking hangs.

This might be an issue for people working with wifi devices, unless the wifi devices are piped through to the local wired network.

I'm leaving this here for future reference.