DrayTek Vigor2920N Router

highly recommend Draytek routers. I have been using one (and an extension router) for last few years. Super pieces of kit, and well respected in the IT industry

thanks Ian. i will wait to see how this settles down and consider static IP addresses -- will only do that if that becomes necessary.

enjoy

ken

what NAS and uPnP server are you using Cbr600?

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ken

My NAS is an Iomega 12TB 6 bay unit running on Raid 5, and i have my beloved HDX 1Tb, but i have all my music on the NAS drive (plus a stored back up, off line)

wow! serious storage there -- mostly for music? my NAS is only 2 x 2TB in warm standby. i also have seperate unconnected backup.

did you reserve static IP address for your NAS? are you using a Dratek 2920 as well by the way?

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ken

Ken,

    The NAS drive is 12 Tb, but because of the nature of the Raid, i only actually have 6Tb of available storage, as the data is spread across the drives, and the drives are then mirrored and there is a full hot swap facility, so any one drive can be rebuilt if it fails, from the other drives in the system.

Of the 6Tb available i have around 3Tb used, and yes the NAS is solely for music. I think there are around 3500 albums on the system.

The NAS is static IP address. The model of draytek i will check later and let you know, but i think its the same as yours, and there is a second extension draytek, to improve the networ capabilities around the house.

will post details in a couple of hours

i have similar Raid config, so only 2TB available for storage. of course nowhere near as many albums ripped as you have !!! 3500 alums? serious music collection there!!!

enjoy

ken

Hello Ken

The only problem is that you will only know things have changed when it fails to connect.

I am with the others and would set reserved addresses in the router for each item. I prefer to set in the router as I can then take an item to another site and just plug it in and let the DHCP server issue an IP address of its choice, but when I return it to my network it automatically picks up it’s reserved address again.

The Draytek routers have (or used to have) a method of reserving IP addresses rather different than any others I have used, they don’t refer to it as reserving but I can’t recall now what they do call it; but it is possible to do.

Nice bit of kit that should serve you well, good luck with it.

Peter

Ken

Just got home and checked the hardware. I am running a Draytek vigor 2820n and the network extender is a Draytek vigor AP800

Paul

Cbr600, many thanks...

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ken

Thanks Peter.

i also havent found how to do it even after reading the manual and looking at the menus when i log on to the router. Tha manual is not very well written as i said before.

This is one of the reasons i have left things as they are for now till i undertstand a bit more.

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ken

I was fortunate that my local naim dealer was very helpful and came round and set the whole thing up, even though it's not Naim kit!

My recollection is that Phil Harris recommends that you set the NAS drive to have a fixed IP address.

Regards,
Frank.
All opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinion of any organisations I work for, except where this is stated explicitly.

Ken

Log on to the router and click on Lan to expand out the options, Click on Bind IP to Mac, in here you can add in the address you need.  You need to click on the enable radio button as well, don't choose Strict Bind

Richard

Richard, many thanks. I will give this a try very soon...

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ken

at this point, i have no idea Nick, but hopefully this latent capability will come of use? anyone else know?

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ken

Dual WAN allows you to have 2 internet connections, the router then load balances between the 2 connections or you can set up rules to allow certain types of traffic over one connection or another.  

This works well, we have ADSL and Virgin Cable working through our Draytek, running a business all the mail traffic and boring stuff is prioritised through ADSL as it has a fixed IP address and we use Virgin Media for surfing and the fun stuff

Richard

Richard, i have this functionality on my router now, and i can see that my u/s and NAS drive (and other devices) have been allocated sequential IP addressed automatically. Wat i am not lcear about at this stage is how i decide what static IP address to allocate -- i cannot see an appropriate range mentioned anywhere? So how does one decide on this? or do i just make the curretly allocated IP address static?

many thanks again, sorry this may be a noddy question...

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ken

Ken

It's not a Noddy question, the Draytek is a powerful and more professional product and doesn't always make the simple things, well simple!

In practice you can choose any address within the scope of your DHCP server.  

In the DHCP configuration (Lan > General Setup) you have a defined start address and an IP Pool Counts figure, the later determines how many addresses the DHCP server will allocate.  So if you have a start address of 192.168.0.1 and an IP Pools Count of 99 the server will dish out any address from 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.100.  You can therefore choose any address in that range for your static assignment.

I tend to be tidy and start at an orderly figure but it doesn't matter as the DHCP server will manage this.

Richard

Ken, it is usual to set-up your static or reserved IP addresses outside of the range that the DHCP server will use.

So if your DHCP server pool is set to 50, I think that is default on Draytek, but can be confirmed by looking at the DHCP set-up page. Therefore, again if you are using IP addressing in the range beginning: 192.168.1.0 that means the server will allocate addresses up to. 192.168.1.50 (your address range may very well be different in which case just apply the principles to your range – do not change your address range.

You can use addresses therefore between 192.168.1.51 to 192.168.1.254 for your reserved addresses. I would choose something simple to remember to start at, say 192.168.1.100.

There is no need to use sequential numbering, so you could for example assign 192.168.1.100 to your NAS and say 192.168.1.110 for your streamer, this way a second NAS should you need one can be slotted in at say 192.168.1.101, and so on.

This works well for me, hope it is of use to you.

Peter

Edit: OK, Richard has answered whilst I was typing. I would only say that reserved addresses are usually assigned outside of the range of the DHCP server, perhaps the Draytek is unusual in this respect?

I meant to add that when you change the IP addresses you will need to reboot NAS etc for the new addresses to be assigned.

I'm using an older DrayTek 2800, but it's rock solid. A great professional product, that whilst not 'easy' to configure is flexible enough for all my needs - firewall, VPN in, DHCP Etc. I reserve 192.168.0.1-29 and let the DHCP allocate above this. I'm also running BIND as a DNS server on a separate box and let each device update it's DNS entry, so I can look up anything by name rather than remembering all the IP addresses.

Trickie, I'd be weary of the so called WAN loadbalancing. I see the router is rather limited (as a router) and only supports RIPv2 routing protocol and so this will be very limited and most likely be limited to crude policy based routing to acheive load balancing - ie this data type go out through this path and that through the other.

The two WAN connections have far more use as a primary and backup - so if primary link fails then all traffic goes over suriving link

Thanks Richard. Turns out that from LAN > General Setup, i also have to ask for details for the LAN connection i am using. i can see my pool count is 50. now i thnk i have all the information i need.

I am using my U/S now controlled by nserve on an iPad and this is the longest it has stayed up without dropping the library, and i have not allocated IP's yet.

enjoy

ken