Connect one computer to two routers

[rosy0123]

Hi,
I have a question which hopefully you can answer.

Router/Modem one is attached to the internet and transmits a wireless signal. My computer is connected to the internet via a wireless adapter, when I want to connect to my network TV HDD, printer , and home server (possibly a windows home server in the future) I just disconnect from Router one and connect to Router two. I want to know if it is possible to run a wired Ethernet cable in-between my computer and router two so I can connect to both networks. Wired to router two with the HDD and printer, and wireless to router one for internet.
Now here are the rules!!!

-I can NOT run a wire in-between router one and router two (by order of wife!)
-I can disable the wireless and/or DHCP on router two or even replace it with a switch.

If you have any good answers I would really appreciate them.
Thanks a lot,

[jermaghs07]

that is a very good question... i will have to look into that a little and get back to you.

[jermaghs07]

can you connect router 1 and router 2 together? and why do you have 2 routers why don't you just run all of your stuff through router1?

[Iridium]

Is router 2 connected to the internet as well? If it is, then you can't do it with what you have.

What you're trying to do if in case router 2 is also online is called multi-homing. This normally used for fail-over solutions like when one connection is down, while the other isn't, you'd still be online. These require special ethernet adapters.

With what you have, you can opt to do the following (only if router 2 is not connected to the internet and is just being used for networking:

You need 2 IP addresses on your computer which can be done if you connect wirelessly to router 1, and use router 2 as a switch while sharing the internet connection on the wireless computer to your ethernet adapter. This way, your wireless adapter gets the IP address given by router 1, for example 192.168.1.2; and your ethernet gives out an IP address of 192.168.0.x to the computers /devices connected to router 2. You'll have to turn off DHCP on router 2.
By doing this, you'll have internet access wirelessly to router 2 and share files or what not to devices on router 2. The only caveat is that when you disconnect your computer from router 2, they lose the that your computer assigned them.

Just playing around with the idea. It's tough but possible. Ideal? definitely not but at least it answers your question with the rules you need to follow.

THE BETTER OPTION: Get a wireless access point and configure it to be a wirelss repeater connecting to the wireless router. Connect it to AP's ethernet to the regular ports on router 2, disable DHCP and you're all set. This is a form of wireless bridging. While some router allow this others don't and would require you to buy 2 wireless to wired bridges. One connected to the router 1 and another connected to router 2. You dont need a switch since router 2 can be converted to act like one by simply turning off DHCP.

Hope this helps.

If you need clarification, step-by-step set-up, troubleshooting until everything works the way you want it, call 1-877-787-8749. here's a promo code for a free call "supportcall". Just tell the tech guy who answer what the code is and get a free call.

Thanks for the support as well.

[Karthi_5]

If I am getting your question right: you have one computer, connected to two routers. One of the routers connects to internet, another to inside your home. Now, you want to connect to router-2 without disconnecting to router-1.

I had a similar issue. I had two routers; one connected to the internet and the other to a server (Linux box) I had at home. The other computer (Mac) was also inside my home. My Mac and my Linux box were connected to router-2 by ethernet cables. I wanted to connect to the internet from my Mac, and to the Linux server through LAN (simultaneously).

Here is what I did.
1. Connect to router-1 through wifi.
2. Connect to router-2 through ethernet.

Get both IP addresses by ifconfig. For me they are
en0: 192.168.1.x for WAN
eth1: 192.168.2.x for LAN

Get IP address for Linux server connected to router-2. For me it was
192.168.2.y

now I simply had to do the following:

ssh -b 192.168.2.x user@192.168.2.y

works like a charm. Hope this helps.

k

[mike_2000_17]

I have done this several times with different computers in labs and stuff. It is purely a matter of configuring the routers to assign reserved IP addresses to your computer and then configure your subnet masks to make sure that packets going to the internet are routed through your internet connection and packets going to the local network are sent to the other router. Most routers can be configured to have a list of "reserved" IP addresses that it will give out to particular computers when they do a DHCP request. This is the most reliable way to give a computer a "fixed" IP address. The other option is to disable DHCP on your router and configure a fixed (manual) IP address on your computer, but that can lead to some issues, so, the first option is preferrable.

When you select your IP addresses, make sure they are different enough. Typically, routers give out addresses in the range 192.168.0.x (which corresponds to the default subnet mask of 255.255.255.0). You can usually configure them to use another range of addresses, like 192.168.1.x or some other number in the second-last position (you should keep the first two numbers as they are, those are the reserved numbers for local networks). If you can, you should configure your two routers to use different second-last numbers in their addresses. If you can do that, then you can keep the default 255.255.255.0 subnet mask. A few times, with some old routers, I was unable to change the range of IP addresses and I had two routers stuck to using 192.168.0.x. I solved that problem by having reserved addresses on one router with x = 0..127 and having x = 128..255 on the other router. Then, I could just change the subnet masks to 255.255.255.128, and it worked like a charm.

The fact that one router faces the internet and the other doesn't means that your internet traffic has to be routed only through the one that is connected to the internet and not the other (packets will get lost there). For that purpose, you need to make sure that the default gateway is set to the internet-router's IP address. And that's it. With that setup, any traffic destined for your local network will be routed correctly (through the subnet mask test), and anything else (other local network or internet) will be routed to the other router which is connected to the internet.

I've done much more complicated setups than this before, and this is really all there is to it. Once you understand how those basic routing logic works, it's simple to setup anyway you want.

[sevitsil]

Virtually all routers come with a build-in hardware firewall. The router’s firewall is designed to block traffic coming in from the Internet that has not been requested by a machine on the LAN. Wireless routers also come with the ability to encrypt traffic on the LAN to prevent eavesdropping by nosy neighbors or passersby.