Home Network issues 4G-router and Airport Express

[Banan911]

After getting lots of HomeKit devices running over wifi I'm getting lots of connectivity issues. Often the connection becomes insanely slow or drops completely, but only for a single device or a few devices, while the others continue at full speed.

I have a 4G Huawei router with lousy wifi strength, so I have disabled the wifi in it, and connected an Airport Express via LAN to the Huawei router to run my wifi (bridge mode). I have a feeling that the problem is some kind of mismatch in the settings between the Huawei router and the Airport Express, but I don't know how to solve it.

I've attached my current settings as thumbnails and hope that some of you can guide me in the right direction?

 

[dotme]

IPv4 Private Address Space and Filtering

A list of IPv4 address ranges that have been reserved by the IANA for private internets, and are not publicly routable on the global Internet.

www.arin.net

See link above - Assuming the Huawei is doing NAT, you should try using a LAN address pool in one of the above ranges and not a public IP range. That alone might explain the performance problems you're experiencing.

In screenshot 1, edit all those IPs (LAN Host and DHCP Settings) and change the 44.128.1 portion in each entry to 10.0.0 so you end up with IP address = 10.0.0.1, Subnet mask unchanged at 255.255.255.0 and DHCP lease range of 10.0.0.2 to 10.0.0.200

Restart the router and the computer/device you're using to manage it, then reconnect to the management interface using its new LAN IP of 10.0.0.1

Once you've re-established the connection, reboot your Airport Express and it should pick up a 10.0.0.xxx IP via DCHP too.

All your other screenshots look good, but it's important to not use public IPs on a LAN with a router doing NAT. If you can make those changes first, then after that you can see if there are still other issues that exist.

 

[Banan911]

IPv4 Private Address Space and Filtering

A list of IPv4 address ranges that have been reserved by the IANA for private internets, and are not publicly routable on the global Internet.

www.arin.net

See link above - Assuming the Huawei is doing NAT, you should try using a LAN address pool in one of the above ranges and not a public IP range. That alone might explain the performance problems you're experiencing.

In screenshot 1, edit all those IPs (LAN Host and DHCP Settings) and change the 44.128.1 portion in each entry to 10.0.0 so you end up with IP address = 10.0.0.1, Subnet mask unchanged at 255.255.255.0 and DHCP lease range of 10.0.0.2 to 10.0.0.200

Restart the router and the computer/device you're using to manage it, then reconnect to the management interface using its new LAN IP of 10.0.0.1

Once you've re-established the connection, reboot your Airport Express and it should pick up a 10.0.0.xxx IP via DCHP too.

All your other screenshots look good, but it's important to not use public IPs on a LAN with a router doing NAT. If you can make those changes first, then after that you can see if there are still other issues that exist.

Thank you for your long response

The 4G router is doing NAT as far as I know. That’s a catch with all cellular based routers I’ve heard.

Before I do anything. Your link is about IPv4 and both the router and AirPort Express is set to IPv6. Should I set both to IPv4.

I changed the IP range from the default 192.168.1.xxx to the 44.128.1.x to se if it did anything, because the problem was there before as well.

Some people keep telling me I should do DMZ?

 

[dotme]

Understood. I would either change back to the 192.168.1.xxx or use the 10.0.0.xxx - Either is fine, but a public routable shouldn't be used. And yes, IP4 should be fine internally. If your Huawei has a public IPv6 address, let it worry about that.

No on the DMZ - That bypasses the built-in Firewall on the Huawei and unless you have a good reason to bypass that, I wouldn't do it.

Keep in mind that while you can hand out 200 IP addresses internally using your current settings, that Airport Express - assuming it's the newest model - will start to struggle a little after 35 concurrent WiFi devices are connected. And I think it maxes out at 50 or so.

After you've restored a good private IP range to the Huawei, run some tests and maybe post back with some specifics on the performance issues you're seeing. Then people here can offer specific remedies for those perhaps.

 

[Banan911]

Understood. I would either change back to the 192.168.1.xxx or use the 10.0.0.xxx - Either is fine, but a public routable shouldn't be used. And yes, IP4 should be fine internally. If your Huawei has a public IPv6 address, let it worry about that.

No on the DMZ - That bypasses the built-in Firewall on the Huawei and unless you have a good reason to bypass that, I wouldn't do it.

Keep in mind that while you can hand out 200 IP addresses internally using your current settings, that Airport Express - assuming it's the newest model - will start to struggle a little after 35 concurrent WiFi devices are connected. And I think it maxes out at 50 or so.

After you've restored a good private IP range to the Huawei, run some tests and maybe post back with some specifics on the performance issues you're seeing. Then people here can offer specific remedies for those perhaps.

My HomePod just informed me that “it has problems connecting to the internet”, so yeah not really working as hoped. Sometimes it helps by restarting the Huawei, but this time it didn’t. So it didn’t work before I restarted the AirPort Express.

 

[srl7741]

I don't think anything is wrong with either of your devices (Huawei or AE) you simply have to many devices for the AE to handle reliably. I had the same problems in the past and it turns out Apple Airport or AE just can't handle all the traffic. Mine ran great as long as I kept less than 15 smart devices connected. If I added any more it would throw up just like yours is and it was a mess trying to keep everything working. I added a mesh wifi system and removed the Airport. Now it never misses a thing and (knock on wood) works great. I think I have around 75 devices running on it currently.

In short it's the airport express causing all your problems in my opinion. Try cutting that device out and see what happens?

 

[Banan911]

I don't think anything is wrong with either of your devices (Huawei or AE) you simply have to many devices for the AE to handle reliably. I had the same problems in the past and it turns out Apple Airport or AE just can't handle all the traffic. Mine ran great as long as I kept less than 15 smart devices connected. If I added any more it would throw up just like yours is and it was a mess trying to keep everything working. I added a mesh wifi system and removed the Airport. Now it never misses a thing and (knock on wood) works great. I think I have around 75 devices running on it currently.

In short it's the airport express causing all your problems in my opinion. Try cutting that device out and see what happens?

You might be right. The wireless signal from the Huawei is just so so so bad, so that was the reason why I added the AirPort Express.