Ubiquiti USG with FTTP using the Smart Hub 2 (because of Digital Voice)

[iapainter · Accepted solution]

@licquorice Thank you so much for you help today. 8 hours later and I've just fixed it.

It was a simple setting in the Smart Hub2. Basically both the WAN and the LAN were on the same sub net. All I had to do on the Super Hub2 was change the Server Address Range in Advanced setting > My network to 172 range and that stopped the WAN clashing with the default Ubiquiti USD range of 192. After than I had to reboot everything (including the Super Hub) as well as any machines connected via wired connection to the switch. For anyone, who gets the same problem, here are my settings. ..

[licquorice]

It would have been much simpler to have used a different subnet for the USG I would have thought, but hey ho, glad you got it working.

[jamesemartin]

Hi iapainter 

Ive have the same issue.

Are you able to give me a quick breakdown as to what I need to do? 

My SH2 is the latest unit that doesn't have a separate red WAN connection.

It has the 4 yellow ports only,  BT configure port 4 to run on PPPOE and plug this port directly to the ONT.

What do I need to do that will allow me to get digital voice working with the USG and the SH2? 

Many thanks for any help-advise you can give. 

Jimmy 

[martindutton]

Good evening @iapainter,

I'm trying to achieve the same end as you, and it was in fact your solution that had me proceed with the Full Fibre upgrade, but I just cannot seem to get it to work in the way that you described.

I wonder whether we had slightly different starting points, or whether some change you made during your 8 hours of tinkering that is what's knocking things off for me.

I have a USG, POE Switch and other devices which have all been working with by BT connection for a couple of years now. I didn't use the old Smart Hub and instead used my own Zyxel modem, and then configured Default (WAN1) on the USG to be PPPoE using the default BT settings and everything has been fine.

However, like you I have upgraded to Full Fibre and want to use Digital Voice, so I can't cut the Smart Hub 2 out of the mix this time round, but I just cant see/understand how to get internet with my USG in the mix.

It feels like it should be something to do with the Internet settings in my Cloud Controller (DHCPv4 or Static IP rather than PPPoE), but I don't know what settings I should be using if that is indeed the issue.

I've also noticed that my Smart Hub 2 doesn't seem to be showing the USG as an attached device under My Devices - should it be? Is that anything to do with the USG being set to 192.168.1.1, but the default DHCP range in the Smart Hub 2 being 192.168.1.64 - 192.168.1.253?

I've tried your suggested solution of switching the IP 172.16.0.2 - 172.16.255.254 range, but that doesn't seem to have impacted anything for me.

Any help or guidance would be much appreciated.

[gg30340]

@martindutton

Just so that you are aware @iapainter has not been on the forum since 30th August 2021 so you may not get a reply to your post.

[martindutton]

@gg30340 Thank you, that's good to know.

Now, I think that I may have figured it out - I seem to have made it work, but right now I'm not quite sure how... still getting my head around it, but once I'm clear on what I did then I'll edit this post with an explanation so that others can follow.

[aawan]

Hi, I am in similar situation, can you share what made it work for you?

[martindutton]

I can try; the truth is that I don't really know for sure and haven't invested the time into figuring it out, but I'll do my best to remember the steps I took as I type my response.

Important note: There may be something here that I could/should have done differently, or that others who are more knowledgeable would advise against, so please go easy on me; I'm no networking whiz, just a tinkerer and I spent a long time reading over forum threads and sifting through snarky "well duh" posts and having to parse passive aggressive and gatekeeping comments from seeming man babies with chips on their shoulders. Sigh.

So, it wasn't truly working when I made my last post and there were some strange things happening. I think that the issue was that I was retaining a lot of the manual configuration I had in place in my USG for for the WAN connection to my old DrayTek modem, and that I hadn't placed the USG into the DMZ on my Smart Hub. More on that later.

I should also add that not long after (and for entirely unrelated reasons) I upgraded to a UDM SE and allowed that to set itself up rather than porting over settings from my USG.

So anyway, I think that these are the steps I followed:

ONT Lan -> BT Smart Hub (Wan)

That's it. No Ubiquity gear in play for now.

I then connected to the BT WiFi, logged into the admin interface and went to Advanced Settings -> IPv4 configuration and in there selected Server Address Range and changed this to the 172 range (172.16.0.2 - 172.16.255.254).

I found that I had to leave DHCP enabled otherwise the USG/UDM wouldn't show up when connected, and this is needed later.

Once the Smart Hub reboots, you can then access it via 172.16.0.1 to carry out any further admin.

The next step was to connect my USG/UDM and start it up so that my network now looks like this:

ONT Lan -> BT Smart Hub (Wan) -> BT Smart Hub (Lan Port 1) -> Ubiquiti USG/UDM (Wan Port 1)

Over WiFi I then logged back into my Smart Hub and in Advanced Settings -> My Devices I now see the USG/UDM with a 172. IP Address assigned via DHCP; if it's not labelled USG/UDM then you can click on it to set a label (Device Name).

Next stop is Advanced Settings -> Firewall -> Configuration where I disabled the Firewall (because I'm using the USG/UDM one - I forget whether this is required, recommended, or just something I thought I should do), and then down in DMZ I click on device and select USG/UDM and apply my changes. I found this part on another forum and I'm pretty sure that the DMZ is key to getting this to work well.

Now I connect to the USG/UDM so that my network now looks like this:

ONT Lan -> BT Smart Hub (Wan) -> BT Smart Hub (Lan Port 1) -> Ubiquiti USG/UDM (Wan Port 1) -> Ubiquiti USG/UDM (Lan Port 1) -> My PC (this could be through a switch, or direct cable).

And at this point I have an internet connection... at least I think I did with the USG, with the UDM I had to go through the setup process.

My PC has an IP address in the 192 range (so has been assigned it via DHCP from the USG/UDM), I'm connected to the internet through the Smart Hub, and I can get to my Smart Hub login via 172.16.0.1 (I verified this was over a wired connection by disabling WiFi).

By default the USG/UDM assigns itself the IP address 192.168.0.1, so I can now type this in and get to the login/configuration. I can also access it via the IP address assigned to it via the Smart Hub; 172.16.147.50 in my case, or via 'unifi' in the address bar.

What happens next depends on where your network controller is; when I had my USG I was using a Ubiquiti Cloud Key Gen2 Plus, so that needs connecting to the network downstream of the USG, so into a switch that's connected to Ubiquiti USG/UDM (Lan Port 1). Once that has started up you will then have an IP address on its screen that you can browse to and log into your controller.

If you have a Gen 1 Cloud Key, then I can't remember how you would find out what IP address it has been assigned... it might show up when you log into your USG, but I forget as it's been a long time since I had one. 

I don't have the first idea how it works with a cloud hosted controller.

For me, as I'm now using a UDM SE I just go to 'unifi' (could also go to 192.168.0.1) and log in and go through the setup steps.

Once in the UniFi Network admin I go to Settings -> Internet and that's set to Auto.

It works. I don't know what settings I would need to enter in Manual mode, nor have I gotten around to fiddling in there to find out. I can't guarantee that the options I see selected in the 'disabled' manual view are what are being applied, but for what it's worth they are:

DNS Server: Auto
IPv4 Connection: DHCPv4
IPv6 Connection: Disabled

Everything else there us unchecked/not set.

In UniFi Network -> Settings -> Networks I have let this Auto Scale Network and that's all behaving fine. What I can see here though is what settings have been applied which are:

Host Address: 192.168.0.1
Netmask: 24 (249 usable IPs)
Gateway IP: 192.168.0.1
Broadcast IP: 168.168.0.255
Usable IPs: 249
IP Range: 192.168.0.6 - 192.168.0.254
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0

Then under DHCP the DHCP server IP is 192.168.0.1

That's it, everything works fine; all my network devices are assigned their IP addresses from the USG/UDM and are in the 192.168.0.6 - 192.168.0.254 range, and the only device showing as connected to the Smart Hub is the USG/UDM with the IP address 172.16.147.50.

Some observations/recollections:

During my tinkering to get this working, I remember two key challenges:

1. Getting DHCP clashes; devices seeming to get allocated the same IP address
2. Only being able to connect to the Smart Hub over WiFi, not via a wired connection

In my efforts to troubleshoot the DHCP clash I changed the IP range on the Smart Hub DHCP to the 172 range. The default 192.168.1.X range was visually too close to 192.168.0.X and was making it hard to be confident in what I was seeing at a glance (I don't fully understand how subnet masks work in this context and wasn't in the mood for learning), whereas it'd be super obvious if any device thought it was on 172... that was my thinking anyway.

I don't know now whether it really made a difference, or if it even can work that way.

I think that the DMZ is key to getting this to all play nicely. I saw it come up in a bunch of other posts with people saying it's important (though I forget now why), and although I cannot remember for sure, I really to seem to remember there being 'issues'. One thing I'm sure it fixed was being able to connect to the Smart Hub at 172.16.0.1 over the wired connection, rather than only WiFi.

I have contemplated putting the Smart Hub back on its default range to see what happens, and separately to take the USG/UDM out of the DMZ just to see what happens... but with everything working nicely now, and with life to get along with I'm not sure I can be arsed.

One thing I've not gotten around to is disabling WiFi on the Smart Hub. As far as I'm aware it's not needed for Digital Voice, and it's likely adding unnecessary RF interference to my UniFi WiFi, but I'll deal with that another day.

So, I hope that helps someone, and if anyone more knowledgeable fancies chipping in with either:

• Confirmation that this is how it should be done
• Explanation of what might have been happening and why these settings seem to work
• Recommendations of things to change with an explanation as to why

Then please do. I certainly would like to know more about this side of things.

Kind regards,

Martin

[licquorice]

Couple of points.

You are correct that WiFi isn't required for DV and can be disabled on the Hub.

It shouldn't be necessary to put the USG in the DMZ of the hub unless you want to avoid double port forwarding. Would be interesting to know the outcome of taking it out of the DMZ.

[aawan]

Thanks for the reply Martin, my USG internet had manual settings stored from previous modem setup, switched it to auto along with changing IP range, restarted everything and all of sudden everything had to internet.