Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2018 18:38 Post subject: Getting TV through WRT54GL's switch
Hello,
I'm new to the forums and I'm sorry if the answer is posted somewhere around here but I've been researching this for two weeks now and I just can't seem to fully understand this.
I have a network set up like shown in this photo.
The main router is the optical fiber modem. It has 5 LAN ports that can be set to data or trunk mode. Data mode works for internet only and if you want to plug in a TV box you need to set it to trunk. When plugged in to a data port the TV box connects to the LAN and detects an internet connection but the TV doesn't work. When you set the port to trunk mode the TV box connects to LAN the same way but it also shows a connection to VLAN 3999. I don't know much about VLANs and I was hoping that I could just connect the WRT54GL's switch to a trunk port in order to get 4 more trunk ports. This way I could get another TV box in the second floor without running an additional ethernet cable.
Of course it's not that simple and the setup doesn't work. So I would like to know, has anyone succeeded in doing something like this? Does the WRT54GL even support this? If yes then what settings do I have to adjust, and if not can I buy some cheap third router to use for this, what would I have to look for to pick one that supports it?
Joined: 18 Mar 2014 Posts: 12923 Location: Netherlands
Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2018 13:50 Post subject:
I am not a VLAN expert, but your Router the WRT54GL has only 4 MB flash Ram so it will not support K3 builds and thus will not support VLAN's above 16 (The latestK3 and K4 build as of yesterday should have a patch to support VLAN's up to 4096)
So you should research in an ethernet splitter which divides the cable coming from your Internet attached router in two and then attach one to the TV and the other to the router.
Thanks for the reply! I was also thinking about using an ethernet splitter,
but I was hoping I could do it in a bit less of a "hacky" way.
I had a D-Link DIR-600 router laying around which has a Ralink RT3050. It's not useful because it overheats in like half an hour and shuts down but I have managed to get dd-wrt on it and surprisingly the TV worked through its switch. So I guess I'll try to find this router used online or maybe buy something with similar hardware.
Thanks for the reply eibgrad! I can see why this would be a problem given that it's a hardware limitation and any fixes are just bodges that may or may not be reliable. I will follow your suggestion and try the Tomato firmware and if that doesn't work I will just buy a new router. I have a VIP membership in an online store that allows me to try the router out and return it without question if it doesn't work for this
