Setup Guide: Mesh Routers

We absolutely love the newer generations of meshed routers.  We use them at home and at our office.  However, we have noticed some strange things happening when Firewalla connects the mesh network, such as not able to access internet or loading of a site is very slow. This is mainly due to the conflict between satellite boxes and Firewalla.  Some vendor mesh router may need additional configuration.  This only happens when Firewalla is operating in Simple mode, DHCP mode is not affected.  Our recommendation of the solution is, disable monitoring of satellite mesh devices in Firewalla app.  By doing this, it won't affect Firewalla's capability of monitoring your mobile devices that are connecting the satellite boxes.  

Google Wifi:

• We have recently heard one issue with Google Wifi + Guest Wifi.  If you running into issues, please turn Guest Wifi off.
• If you are encountering connectivity issues, please turn on the family mode by tapping on the family mode button.  We have found recently google wifi built-in DNS may crash due to some reason, the family mode will force bypass this.  We are working on a better solution, and already send a note to google wifi forums. (manually setting DNS server on the device will also work)
• We also working with one customer on issue related to slower DNS problem; if you encounter this, please do not use Automatic mode in DNS;  use the option to manually give the DNS address.  According to reddit, this is a possible google Wifi Bug. 
• Google port forwarding is going to be a bit tricky, see below. 
• If the problem persists, we also have an expeirmental method to work with DHCP Mode.  See this article.

Firewalla simple mode is compatible with Google Wifi.

(Note: There is quite a lot of confusion when talking about Google Wifi.  Here we are referring to the latest router from Google as Google Wifi: https://store.google.com/us/product/google_wifi?hl=en-US.  Not the older router from Google also called Google Onhub:  https://on.google.com/hub/  Currently, Google Onhub is not compatible with Firewalla.)

Steps to disable monitoring of satellite devices:

1. Tap on "Devices" icon
2. Find the satellite devices from the list, usually, devices name is like "Google"
3. Tap on device name, scroll down to the bottom of the page, swipe the "Monitoring" button to turn it off

When these devices monitoring are turned off, in the device list UI, you should see a blue icon next to the device name

Other tricks on using Google Wifi.  

To make Google wifi work with Firewalla VPN feature, we recommend to turn off its port mapping capability, turn on UPNP feature instead.  Detail instructions are as follows:

1. Turn off Firewalla monitoring globally in Firewalla App
2. Open Google Wifi App, Settings => Network & General => Advanced networking, remove all DHCP IP reservations and Port forwarding, turn on UPNP feature
3. Turn OFF and ON VPN feature in Firewalla App. In this step,  Firewalla will automatically create a upnp port mapping on Google WiFI port 1194. (Ignore "Need Manual Step" info in the app if you see it in the vpn settings page, it's a bug. Optionally you can reset the profile and password to clear the "Need Manual Step" flag.)
   
4. Test if OpenVPN works.
5. Turn Firewalla monitoring back on
6. Test if OpenVPN still works.

Linksys Velop:

Firewalla simple mode is compatible with Linksys Velop.

Steps to disable monitoring of satellite devices:

1. Tap on "Devices" icon
2. Find the satellite devices from the list, usually, devices name is like "Linksys"
3. Tap on device name, scroll down to the bottom of the page, swipe the "Monitoring" button to turn it off
4. 

If you encounter issues with slowdowns, please turn off express forwarding via Connectivity Configuration.  De-select Express forwarding

Orbi / Orbi Pro:

Firewalla simple mode is compatible with Orbi / Orbi Pro.

Steps to disable monitoring of satellite devices:

1. Tap on "Devices" icon
2. Find the satellite devices from the list, usually devices name is like "Orbi or Netgear"
3. Tap on device name, scroll down to the bottom of the page, swipe the "Monitoring" button to turn it off.  In this example, satellite boxes are: 192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.3

TP-Link Deco (M5)

Customer rumor: says it will work with Firewalla's Simple Mode.

Eero:

Firewalla simple mode is NOT compatible with Eero v1, please use Firewalla DHCP mode instead.

Eero V2 should be compatible 

Wifi Extenders in General:

These are strange beasts.   We have seen these extenders remap device MAC addresses.  If you have seen your device keep on changing mac or have strange devices.  Then it is these extenders dynamically remapping device MAC addresses.  Also, it is a good practice to turn off monitoring on the extenders.