Vera giving out 192.168.81.x IP addresses to various devices

Community Playground General Discussions
1

This has taken me quite some time to figure out. Please bear with me.

I’ve had Vera for well over a year now. I’ve never experienced any troubles with how it interoperates with the many other devices on my home network. Recently - in the last month - I’ve been observing certain devices reboot (through me doing it) and then come back up, connecting to my SSID, but getting an IP address of the form 192.168.81.x.

And then they cannot connect to the Internet.

To get around it I had to set them up with a static IP address. That worked, but it’s not a proper solution. The devices said they were connected to my SSID. They’d obviously used the correct security credentials. They just had an IP address with 81 in it. They did not appear in my Router’s Client List either.

It happened to a Canon printer, an Android tablet, an Android phone and 3 Windows laptops. The 3rd one was today and I nearly lost it. I decided to go on a crusade and find out what it might be.

I first thought I’d rule out there being a rogue DHCP Server on my network. I ran RogueChecker and lo-and-behold it found 2 DHCP Servers. I was flabbergasted, but I guess it all makes sense. The second DHCP Server was at 192.168.81.1 and it had offered an IP address of 192.168.81.235 - not what I wanted at all.

I ran ping a few times on that 192.168.81.1 address and then arp -a to get a physical MAC address - which turned out to be 94:4a:0c:08:4f:5e - I ran that through a MAC checking website and it told it was manufactured by Sercomm - I was still none the wiser.

But when I looked for 94:4a:0c:08:4f:5e in my router - I found it was the Vera Edge!

I went into the Vera Edge admin. console - sure enough, under Net & WiFi there’s a DHCP Server enabled with IP address of 192.168.81.1 and a start address of 192.168.81.100 and an end address of 192.168.1.150.

So, I’m about to turn this off! I never even knew it was on! Am I OK to assume that nothing in my home automation will now suddenly stop working?

But none of this explains to me why this has started to happen only in recent weeks - I don’t get it. ???

I recall turning WiFi off on the Vera around a month ago… maybe that coincides… it’s hard to recall. I just know things have been ‘odd’ for a few weeks and I think I’ve found the ‘culprit’.

2

You are good switching off the Vera DHCP server unless you have devices wired or wirelessly connected to Vera. As those will no longer get DHCP addresses. I’ve done this on all my Vera’s and also switched it’s WiFi off as I have nothing connected to it and I don’t want it to interfere with my main DHCP server or my main WiFi network.

3

Agreed.
Switch off the DHCP server on your Vera if you already have a DHCP server on your network.

On my Vera Plus, it only has the one port so DHCP was switched off by default since it won’t typically be used as a router.
I have a Ubiquity wireless access point so I also switch off the WiFi. For security and to prevent interference.

4

Another reason I don’t want Vera to do any TCP/IP network related tasks is that such takes resources away from the HA side. I noticed a major improvement in my Vera 3 responsiveness when I moves all the WiFi IP cameras from Vera’s WiFi to a dedicated WiFi router.