The Efficient Home Forum

Hi

I have just installed a new evohome WiFi controller. The installation went fine and the system is up and running. I then installed a "server" that I am going to use for multiple purposes, one of those is to manage DHCP and DNS on my local network. As soon as I switched DHCP off on the router and enabled on my server the EVOHome controller would no longer connect to the network (I suspect it could not get an IP address). I could see other devices move across successfully without issue.

The "server" I am using is a synology NAS device, I am using one of these is another location that has evohome and it works fine but that location has the older controller and the gateway.

Has anyone else come across this? Any ideas would be much appreciated.

I assume other wireless devices can acquire an IP address OK ?

Are there any debug logs you can check on the DHCP server to see if any DHCP requests are being received from the Evohome ?

Hi, yes other devices are getting address leases ok. From what I could see no requests were received from evohome. If only it had a log to look at!

Synology NAS's run Linux and I'm pretty sure you can log in to a command line with SSH, in that case it should be possible to find and view the system log files which would include the DHCP server.

I'd check the Synology support forums to find exactly how to do that.

It should work.

My home network has 2 broadband services which are load balanced using different gateway addresses for servers and for personal devices. The Evohome hub obtains a local IP address from the DHCP server which also serves the default gateway address of my Virgin Home Hub.

Is your DHCP server serving an IP address AND a default gateway address (not the DHCP server address) and DNS etc etc?

Are there any other DHCP servers on the network?

In my experience most DHCP issues are problems with the local network and/or the DHCP servers.

I assume you have tried powering off the Evohome controller, waiting for a couple of minutes, then powering on again? If the lease granted by your original DHCP server is a long one, or it is using a different subnet, then this could cause problems. If this doesn't work, try running 'nmap' to find out whether the controller is visible on the network.

This is a likely scenario with DHCP servers. If you are using the same IP address range you might well get a clash in the IP lease - the IP the economy controller has is now used elsewhere so the evohome might well disconnect itself. A restart might fix this, or you might simply have to wait for the lease to run out and the Evohome requests a new one. Depending on the underlying DHCP client on the Evohome this normally happens half way through the lease. Most leases are 24 hours so 12 hour delay might be likely.

You haven't reconfigured anything else have you? Such as Internal routing NAT so the IP addressis now on an entirely different range and the Evohome simply can't route out of your network?