Tgdc Posted May 23, 2016 Share Posted May 23, 2016 Hi. I moved into a house that had an installed C4 system. However, in trying to have some changes made the networking design seems to be wreaking havoc. The system has a set of segregated VLANs enforced by a preconfigured Pakedge 24 port switch. For example 192.168.4.X has all the Control4 devices, 192.168.5.X is the wifi network for PCs/phones/etc... The annoying thing is that this makes it hard to use things like Shairbridge since the iphone you want to Airplay from is on a differenct network from the controller. The installer helping me with the changes (the one that actually installed it went our of business, I think) believes it is also the reason he is having trouble seeing the Zigbee network from ComposerPro -- it just shows up blank for him but we're wonder if that is because the PC with Composer Pro was on the 192.168.5.X subnet while the zigbee devices are probably on the 4.X with the HC800 controller. (There seems to be a firewall hole open to the controllers so ComposerPro can see that fine). I'm thinking I'd like to just collapse all the VLANs and get rid of that complexity but am nervous I might break something that is currently working. Has anyone done this with one of the preconfigured Pakedges? What is the easiest way? Is there a setting to just turn off the VLAN enforcement and leave everything else the same? Or can I perhaps convert everything to one VLAN/Subnet with a 255.255.248.0 mask instead of 255.255.255.0 since then I think 192.168.0.X through 192.168.7.X should all be part of the same larger subnet? But do I think still need to remove all the VLAN config info. Any guidance would be appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SMHarman Posted May 23, 2016 Share Posted May 23, 2016 The dealer you are working with should be able to work through this with control4 as they own pakedge now. Have them escalate to dealer support. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Lowe Posted May 23, 2016 Share Posted May 23, 2016 Lots of things can happen if the networking is not properly. unless you have a extremely large system the vlans may not really be doing anything for you. I have a fairly complex system myself and only use vlan for my guest network and that is all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tgdc Posted May 23, 2016 Author Share Posted May 23, 2016 Thanks. Yes, it is my sense I'm not getting much out of all the VLANs with the way I'm using them. I was hoping to be able to do this myself to manage costs since I inherited this system and don't have a lot of budget to spend to just clean up the networking. Obviously if I was going from simple to complex I'd absolutely need them to do it but I was hoping that just turning it all off and unifying on a single subnet would be doable. But ideally if someone with experience with those units could point me in the right direction that would be great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SMHarman Posted May 23, 2016 Share Posted May 23, 2016 Thanks. Yes, it is my sense I'm not getting much out of all the VLANs with the way I'm using them. I was hoping to be able to do this myself to manage costs since I inherited this system and don't have a lot of budget to spend to just clean up the networking. Obviously if I was going from simple to complex I'd absolutely need them to do it but I was hoping that just turning it all off and unifying on a single subnet would be doable. But ideally if someone with experience with those units could point me in the right direction that would be great. That should be the case but you would need to understand what is dhcp reserved, what is fixed ip etc. Also the controller would need updated ip addresses for devices like AVRs and Roku etc that it can't automatically figure out. It should sort out its own ip addresses for C4 hardware. What does factory reset on the switch configure it as. Likely a good start. From there you need to fix what is looking to where on the network. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Viperman Posted May 23, 2016 Share Posted May 23, 2016 Back up your switch config and then reset it. You can always go back to what you have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
christophers Posted May 24, 2016 Share Posted May 24, 2016 fwiw, aruba APs have a feature that allows you to bridge upnp packets (shairbridge) across multiple vlans. however, this generally requires that you trunk all of your required vlans to the AP and then assign vlans to each SSID as needed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AMG1199 Posted May 28, 2016 Share Posted May 28, 2016 Are you using a Pakedge router as well? Do you see an option for zone bonding? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eddy.trochez Posted May 28, 2016 Share Posted May 28, 2016 Yes, zone bonding will fix your problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AK1 Posted June 2, 2016 Share Posted June 2, 2016 It may "fix" the OP's problem, but the issue is really that the multiple VLAN's add an an unnecessary layer of network complexity that will only cause him headaches going forward. As @Viperman said, do a backup and factory reset, but before doing so I would make a note of the DHCP reservations in place. I would thenmake the new, single Class C network the same netmask as the VLAN with the Control4 devices. Then all OP should need to do is recreate the DHCP reservations, if any, on the new single Class C network and OP should not need Control4 dealer intervention to update any IP addresses in the project. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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