Mesh Network with VR1600V router

[PJS]

I am so confused right now from reading these boards, and so i am hoping that somebody can help me out and un-confuse me.  

We have just had NBN installed here.  It seems pretty usual, but the NBN connection was not installed in the best place in our house.  Due to their rules it had to be in one end of the house that we don't much use, and it had to be downstairs.  Can't do much about that.  Anyway, with the standard TP-Link router that TPG sent us we can only get WiFi coverage to about 1/3 of the house.  Not great.  I have bought a Google Wifi set to extend the network out and make it useful.  I cannot make it work at all.  From reading on these boards it souds as if I can only make it work by plugging the Google wifi unit into the VR1600v, and then turn the router into bridge mode.  The problem is that bridge mode disables the VOIP input, and we use that for out landline phone.  I thought about just plugging the Google wifi into the NBN modem and plugging the VR1600v into it to use the phone still.  I read somewhere on here that doesn't work though and the VR1600 needs to be the device plugged directly into the NBN box to work for the phone.  I thought about ditching the VR1600 completely and plugging a VOIP box into the Google unit, but I read here as well that the VR1600 is the only unit that will work with YPG VOIP phones and no other unit will work.  

It is sounding to me as if the only options that I have are to either not have the landline that we are paying for, or only have 1/3 of the house with useable wifi.  Surely though that cannot be the case?  There must be enough people like us who need landline and also need to extend the wifi network.  There must be a decent solution.  I already have the Google wifi system so I would rather use that if possible rather than buy expensive alternatives, but if we need to buy some new gear then we can if it's not too expensive.  I am just confused by it all and want somebody to give me a starting point to get mesh networking and VOIP landline working at the same time.

Thank you

[BasilDV]

Hi @PJS 

Welcome to TPG Community!

You are correct, the TPG NBN VoIP feature will only work on the TPG supplied modem since the settings is embedded in its firmware.

If you have the Google WiFi mesh system, you may check the previous conversation here.

If you are still not able to set up your Google WiFi mesh system, you may also contact Google support for further guidance.

Kind regards,

BasilDV

[PJS]

Thanks for the reply.  I have spent over an hour on the phone to Google helpdesk tonight and still have not got it working.  It was already set to DHCP.  The final thing they suggested was to run the VR1600V in DMZ mode, rather that bridge.  I see that the DMZ setting requires an ip address to be put in, but I am not sure which ip address?  Is it the default ip address that the Google wifi uses?  If so then that is 192.168.86.1 from what I can see.  Is that what I put in there or is it something different?

Thank you

[PJS]

OK, that is obviously not the ip address to use as I got an error from the router saying that the ip address must be on the same subnet as the LAN

[Anonymous]

Hi @PJS,

I see that the DMZ setting requires an ip address to be put in, but I am not sure which ip address?  Is it the default ip address that the Google wifi uses?

Yes, The IP address google should be the same with the DMZ settings.

Let us know how it will go.

Cheers!

[PJS]

Hi Shane, as I said above I tried the ip address that is the default for the Google Wifi system and the VR1600 would not accept that and gave me an error.

[BasilDV]

Hi @PJS,

Try to reset the Google Mesh then provide us the screenshot of the configuration in order for us to look into it.

Also, post a photo of the physical connection of your network (Google mesh connected to the TP-Link) for us to check.

Let's start the configuration from the start to make sure that we are not skipping any steps.

Please shoot me a PM with your TPG username or customer ID number as well.

How to send a PM? Click here.

Regards,

BasilDV

[PJS]

Hi. I will hopefully add a photo of the physical connection here. I will follow up with configuration screens.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, @PJS. We'll wait for the additional references. Cheers!

[PJS]

I am not sure what configuration you are wanting to see.  Here is the main status from the VR1600V

The behaviour that I see is this:

First I turn off the VR1600V wifi using the button on top.

Next I start up the Google Wifi as plugged into the VR1600V (the main unit)

If it starts up OK then it will establish a wifi broadcast and I will go and try and set up the secong Google Wifi point.

During the set up of the second point the system tries to add it into the mesh.  At the point the main unit will reboot, and will continue to reboot in a continuous cycle.

Turning off the main unit and then back on will see it continue to reboot continuously

If I turn everything off, turn the VR1600V back on and wait for it to boot, and then turn on the Google Wifi main unit and wait for it to boot, then it will once again be OK until I try and add a second google unit onto it.

I have done "factory reset" of all the Google units several times and the result is the same.