[Discuss] Flummoxed by behavior: openwrt on AC1750

[johnhall2.0 at gmail.com (John Hall)]

It all started when I started taking apart my network to move. I've now
moved and keep the same router settings in both routers.
I have a netgear running tomato that is working fine. It never switched
places as the lead router for the network.
I have an ac-1750 to improve wireless access. It's running openwrt.
It's currently connected to the netgear from a regular port ( not wan) to
another regular port. The wan connection of the netgear is attached to the
cable modem. I can see that over the wlan or over the lan if i directly
connect to the netgear.

The mystery is that I have not been able to get to my admin pannel or
connect via ssh to the AC-1750. I also can not get wired access through the
AC-1750 to the netgear, but i can connect to it with my iPad and get an
internet connection.
I can also ping the broadcast address in linux and get pings back from the
ipad!  But I can not ping the netgear or the address i believe the AC-1750
is using.... I will try to ping 255.255.255.255 and 0.0.0.0. .. hum. so
255.255.255.255. also gives pings back from ipad.

I can not connect via http to the IP i believe the ac-1750 is using from
any place.
I can connect to the netgear admin pannel from the ipad ( wireless
interface)... using wired network connection to netgear.

It's possible there is some second route through secondary wireless radios
or WDS if someone else set thing up but I really believe all that is turned
off.


I had it set up as 2 separate networks with a separate lan for the ac-1750
but changed it so that the netgear was the only dhcp server and the ac-1750
bridged it's wired and wireless networks and got it's own address from the
netgear. I set up a static dhcp entry for the ac-1750 in the netgear.
It's on x.x.x.2 on the lan. ... supposedly.

I have windows running on my laptop with ubuntu linux running in vmware
bridged. I also have docker installed in linux and virtualbox in windows so
there are many virtual network connections but the ranges are all very
different from my lan.

How can i find my ac-1750?
I have started to try wireshark. I should look up the mac on the router
itself later.