Installation Observations and Suggestions

Hi Everyone -

So I finally had time to set-up my Firewalla Gold this morning and it was quite an adventure. I wanted to share my experiences and make some suggestions for the Firewalla team.

Connecting the Firewalla to the Internet
In performing the initial setup, I encountered multiple instances of the Firewalla not being able to connect to the Internet. This was very frustrating until I realized that I needed to "reset" my Cable Modem (Spectrum) to recognize the device (my network was previously set-up on a series of eero Pros).

I solved the issue by (1) disconnecting everything from the Cable Modem, (2) shutting down the Cable Modem, (3) powering-on the Cable Modem without connecting anything to it, (4) waiting for the modem to "sync" to Spectrum's network, and (5) once the Cable Modem was synch'd, then and only then did I reconnect the Firewalla to the Cable Modem.

It would be very helpful to suggest this in the startup guide. I did not see it there so apologies if I missed it.

Length of Time for Setup
Most of the set-up process went fairly smoothly and quickly. The part that took a very long time (10-15 mins) was the step labeled Verifying app access. I don't know why this step took so long. Perhaps someone can tell me why.

Working with the Eero
When switching the eero from normal mode (DHCP & NAT) to Bridge mode, I had to do the process twice since the first time it didn't take. Getting the eero and the Firewalla to talk to one another took a bit of patience and a bit of finagling.

Missing from the Setup Process
I noticed when I set-up my Firewalla that it automatically assigned my network a subnet (192.168.x.x). While I don't have any objection to how it did this, perhaps it would be nice for the more geeky folks (like myself) if I was given the choice to choose the subnet during the set-up process.

DHCP Oddities
I noticed that the DHCP range for my network configured by the set-up routine starts at 192.168.xx.50 rather than at 192.168.xx.2. This is more my curiosity than anything else; anyone know why it does this?

I also noticed that after connecting my Gigabit Switch to the Firewalla it took at least 5 minutes to recognize the devices connected to the switch. Why so long? Is it checking out the devices as it's assigning them IPs?

That's all I have for now. So far, now that it's up and working I'm happy.

Thanks,
--
Michael Frankel
Wizard Consulting Group, Inc.

Firewalla

August 08, 2020 16:53

Thank you so much for this! We will stress the rebooting modem part more in the guide. It is actually there, on STEP 4, bullet 3. I will move it up to bullet 1 now.

The duration of setup should be 10 min, are you using the iOS app or Android app? We just released both recently, which may make this process faster.

The reason for IP starting at .50 is, leaving 2 to 50 so you can statically assign IP's.

The last point, what kind of switch do you have? is it one of the managed switch or unmanaged switch?

Michael Frankel

August 08, 2020 17:15

Thanks for your quick response!

I appreciate the heads-up on the modem rebooting.

Regarding the setup duration, I just this morning installed the updated app, so perhaps other functions will now work faster.

And thanks for the note about the DHCP config - that makes perfect sense to me.

My switch is a fairly recent (purchased within the last 12 months) Netgear 8-port Gigabit Switch. It's an unmanaged switch.

August 08, 2020 17:32

One more thing of note, and I don't honestly know if this is related to the switch or not.

I noticed that two of my computers (one Mac and one PC) were offline, so I simply moved the cables on the switch from one port to another and then they immediately came back on-line.

August 08, 2020 17:39

You should get the ports that are not working checked out. Also the ethernet cables you are using as well;

Installation Observations and Suggestions

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