I’ve relocated my ISP modem/router to the attic/loft so it can form a key part of my ‘NodeCentral’ set up.
However due to any potential poor performance of my home broadband service/equipment I want to be able to remotely control the power supply used by that router should i need to cycle the power.
However if I were to turn it off I would lose my only DHCP/NAT service for when I want to turn it back on again. So to get round this I’m considering creating another internal network (say a 10.x.x.x) so Vera remains reachable - but I’ve never done that before and I assume if i do do it will require a lot of port forwarding for it to work correctly?
The other network could also potential host another connection to the Internet too to provide resiliency/back up etc.
Does anyone have this sort of set up?
Is this a good set up to have?
To clarify; you wish to turn off the modem/router but still have internet access? How might that work? Do you have a secondary internet connection?
You could create a scene to reboot the modem/router where, assuming you can get to Vera from the outside world, you trigger the scene to cut the power with a delay that turns the power back on. This way your modem would theoretically be down only for a minute or two and the lack of DHCP and NAT during that time is inconsequential. You could also schedule the scene to run each day at a particular time.
To answer your question about two different networks, you would use VLANs with a VLAN capable switch/router or a router with two or more routed interfaces (unusual in consumer grade routers). You could accomplish the dual network with something like openWRT or DD-WRT on the consumer level.
If you hook your Vera wired to your Router, her external address will be assigned by your DHCP server both her internal address range can be on a completely different subnet and be assigned by Vera’s DHCP server. I’ve done exactly that in my setup to keep my HA network separate from my normal LAN.
Once I get my firebox set up, I’ll probably create a computer LAN, a VOIP LAN and a HA LAN on the Firebox (it has the ports) with the computer LAN having a second firewall through my Unix server.
Apologies, Just to be clear the main goal is only to trigger the power recycle when I’m at home on the network, which is why I would still need Vera to be accessible via an IP.
I have the router URL to do a remote reboot of the current router, but sometime it can prove unresponsive hence I need the option to carry out the hard reset.
A VLAN sounds good, plus the idea of an alternate Internet connection, something as simple as a 3/4G one. The key is to understand how this works, as I understood accessing Vera when it is behind 2 NAT layers could be problematic.
Provided that your network devices are connected to a switch, rather than directly to the router being rebooted, you don’t need to do anything. Using a switch your internal network and devices will continue to hold onto and use their assigned addresses and they will function as as normal, sans internet access. See below.
/-- Vera
Internet – Modem – Switch |-- PC
-- Cool stuff
-- Optional WiFi Access point
But, even if everything was plugged into the modem and everything including Vera suffered a disconnection while the modem was down, a Vera scene would still be able to restore power and everything would work again within a minute or two.
Back to VLANs. Used properly, VLANs can be used for interesting things and can add a layer of security. However, they can get complicated quickly and are rarely needed for home use. Double NAT should not be an issue for Vera’s normal outbound SSH tunnels. I’ve seen it work on several occasions without issue. It could be an issue if you are trying to establish VPN connections or some such.
Redundant internet connections are great, from a reliability stand point, but they usually increase(double?) your costs as well. And you don’t get any real value day-to-day from the redundant connection except in the, presumably rare, case of an outage.
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