EETV Not working With New Asus Router RT-BE88U

[djayyy]

Basically Asus tech support have told me to enable IGMP snooping, absolute waste of about 4 days to be fair. They have said to set the asus router up as an ap for the WiFi ! 

I’ll send it back for a refund, I’ll stick with the **bleep** EE WiFi for now. 

[naylor2006]

I’m not really onboard with these all singing and dancing routers, same as when marketing stick ‘Gaming’ on something just to charge more. £300 on an all in one is crazy. However, don’t get me wrong I support anyone who wants to use their own gear and learn a little and I really wanted it to work, it’s satisfying but that unit is so overkill.

This Asus router is packed full of features, looks pretty sick but can’t even do the basics well, or at least offer the ability to enter the CLI and create a working config yourself. 

For £300 you can get yourself a proper configurable router like an ER-X then a WIFI 7 AP to go with it and still have change. Also some very clever (not me) support over at Uniquiti’s forums. Other devices are available.

Sorry it didn’t work out, you don’t have the use the EE/BT WiFi, just get an AP and switch off the stock routers stuff.

[Crimliar]

I'm somewhat concerned that for the inlaws I setup an EE TV Box Pro on an Asus RT-AX86, and it was just a case of plugging in the cables and going through the setup on the TV box - I didn't have to touch the router IPTV or IGMP settings!

[naylor2006]

I looked at the Asus forums in an attempt to try and find answers and what I could see was varying models with varying results and varying firmwares breaking or fixing things. It was quite a mess.

Even more bizarre what you’ve just said, that you didn’t even need to set anything up to pass Multicast packets through, well that just doesn’t make any sense.

[Crimliar]

You only need to setup IGMP snooping if you have a multicast server within your own network or do a lot of mirroring.  Regular multicast data works fine without changing any settings!

[djayyy]

@naylor2006 

In all honesty I just wanted a plug and play solution, I have never heard of Ubiquiti but then that's because I am not really into networking, however it's time like this where we can be educated! As you say there are alot of people using various Asus routers all with different settings which seem to work. Unfortunatley this thing just does not want to work, what is odd though is no matter what settings I change the error stays the same IPC6023. As soon as I plug that EE Box in BAM - It's perfect. 

I had another go this morning, completely reset the router to factory defaults and just plugged it in changing nothing, still the same. I have now reset it and boxed it up and arranged a return. I feel pretty bad about this as it works amazingly but without the TV it's pointless. I did try and go through Asus and as they have washeed their hands of it now, so will I. 

Whilst having a few beers last night I started a search for the Ubiquiti gear and have now ordered the following 😃

ER-X 6 Port 

U7 Pro Unifi Triband AP (Didn't realise they had a wall mountable one, so may switch to that at some point).

So, don't go anywhere, I may well need help to set this up!

@Crimliar  I honestly wanted the experience you had with the AX86 but it just didn't happen unfortunately. 

Anyways, thanks all for your help, I honestly think this will be fixed with a firmware upgrade, It's just like Multicast is blocked but I don't know to be honest. 

[naylor2006]

I’ll post in full later on with some stuff that will hopefully help.

Which router did you get? ER-X 6 Port? Is that the SFP one?

[djayyy]

@naylor2006 

Ubiquiti Networks 6 Port EdgeRouter X SFP Gigabit Router with PoE

[brookheather]

Hi - why did you order an EdgeRouter model rather than one of the newer Cloud Gateway products (e.g. Ultra or Max) - I don't think you can manage that router in the Unifi network application and you will need to run a network controller to manage some of the settings on the U7 Pro.  Also note that the PoE on the EdgeRouter is older 24V passive type so not suitable for the U7 Pro if you were going to power it from the router via PoE.

[naylor2006]

@brookheather same reason he dropped 300 quid on an Asus router I expect.

@djayyy we do indeed need to take a step back and access what you actually need and then want, if it is just WIFI performance you dont need to change the ISP Router, you just need to plumb in an access point, Unifi or otherwise which can do what you need it to.

IPTV of course is a requirement for you, I would generally not recommend ever using this over WIFI let alone on a third party device, even though you can do this in Unifi devices I would never use it, so my recommendation would be to keep the EETV Box connected to the BT router or 3rd party one if you do change.

The thing with Unifi devices, its handy to have a 'Controller' which allows you to centrally manage them, now this controller comes baked in to some of Ubiquiti's devices but not their Edge Range, also the Edge range cant be adopted by the Unifi controller, not that that matters really...

Point is, if you went for a Unifi Router/Gateway it comes with the controller so you will already have the tool to be able to configure Unifi AP's etc, but we cannot also forget you only have 1 AP so far, by the way you can mount pretty much all the Unifi range either on a ceiling or wall, I have one on a wall myself.

Options to get a controller are not limiting, you can install the software on a PC if you want and only use it when you need to change the config on a given AP or adopt one, in fact you can run without a controller all together, but I tend to advise to get one. You can also buy a specific device Unifi Cloud Key Gen2 which is small device that runs all the time and is effectively a mini server, this is what I use as my controller. I had my ER-X long before I went Unifi WIFI and I saw no reason to swap out my router as well, especially as I have two of them, one is spare for testing.

You can visit this link to read about what comes with a controller:

UniFi Controller - What are the Best Options? — LazyAdmin

@brookheather has pointed to Cloud Gateway, the Ultra is a great option and probably what I would get but for my existing setup, I am quite used to Edge OS at this point also.

Also pointed out by @brookheather Unifi AP's need to be powered by POE, the U7 you bought is a POE+ (the plus is important) device so the ER-X will not power this but no bother just pick up a U-POE-at which is an injector, you plumb your ethernet in one end and out the other comes powered ethernet, I have a couple AP's at home from injectors and some from a POE switch, just depends on location.

To address what I said:

For £300 you can get yourself a proper configurable router like an ER-X then a WIFI 7 AP to go with it and still have change. Also some very clever (not me) support over at Uniquiti’s forums. Other devices are available.

My point was, for far less than the price of the Asus thing you could get far better and more powerful gear, I wasnt specifically mentioning get what I have, as much as it seems fitting as the ER-X works well with IPTV so does a bunch of other Unifi Gateways which I think make it easier to just switch on and of via a GUI rather than CLI.

With all that said lets check out what you would need to do with an Edge Router SFP and U7Pro.....assuming you figure out an alternate controller method and you get a POE+ injector to power the U7Pro.

First you are going to need to get the EdgeRouter connected to the internet, I would also recommend getting the latest firmware for it too, my working config is on the August 2023 release: Software Downloads - Ubiquiti

To setup the ER-X there is a nice wizard and I would recommend watching this video:

Edgerouter X First Time Setup - YouTube

In the guide he sets up his internet as DHCP, you will need to select PPPOE in that part and enter the BT credentials which you already know. Make sure you setup the DHCP server for the LAN also, I would recommend against using 192.168.0.0/24 or 192.168.1.0/24, use something less common incase you ever get into running a VPN, I use 192.168.84.0/24.....84 being the year I was born so my DHCP settings there would be 192.168.84.1 - 255.255.255.0

In the same wizard you can choose to have one or two LANs, might be best you just stick with one LAN first of all, you might remember me saying I run my IPTV on a separate LAN, but maybe keep it simple and stick with one first of all. The part around 7m40secs is really important, make sure you enable that hardware offloading.

Your router should be online now.....

Now you need to enter the CLI and set the IGMP proxy, part of which will be giving your WAN interface (eth0) an IP address, the IGMP proxy wont work without it, but it is just a place holder so dont worry, just set it up as an address you will never use, so enter the CLI and commit this:

configure

set interfaces ethernet eth0 address 192.168.255.1/24

commit
save
exit

Now you can configure the IGMP proxy:

configure

set protocols igmp-proxy interface eth0 role upstream
set protocols igmp-proxy interface switch0 role downstream

set protocols igmp-proxy interface eth0 threshold 1
set protocols igmp-proxy interface eth0 alt-subnet 0.0.0.0/0

set protocols igmp-proxy interface switch0 threshold 1
set protocols igmp-proxy interface switch0 alt-subnet 0.0.0.0/0

commmit
save
exit

So above we are using 'switch0' because you are using one LAN, this means you should be able to connect the IPTV to any port on the ER-X now. The good thing now about the CLI is you can now run some commands to see if any packets are coming in, so hopefully it should look like this:

show ip multicast interfaces 

Intf BytesIn PktsIn BytesOut PktsOut Local eth0 322.55MB 31923239 0.00b 0 192.168.255.1 switch0 0.00b 0 320.97MB 31922696 [IP of EETV Box]

show ip multicast mfc 

Group Origin In Out Pkts Bytes Wrong 234.xx.xxx.xxx 109.xxx.xxx.xxx eth0 switch0 469825 607.57MB 0 

It will be a more obvious test I guess if you just turn the TV on 🙂

Now if this part hasnt worked then you perhaps you configure an additional LAN just for the IPTV, then when creating the IGMP proxy, instead of directing all the packets to 'switch0' you will to the specific interface you have the IPTV connected to.

If all is well, you can now start to hook up the U7Pro but maybe after addressing how you wish to control the AP, you could just install the software on a PC, even run it in a docker on a Pi etc or chuck away all my advice above and just get the a Unifi Gateway like the ultra.

Anyway, hope this helps.