Member Avatar for david.godistei

Hello Forum,

I am glad to be on your forum for the first time. Greetings to all from Ghana.

I am the Database Administrator for the company I work for. For two year now I have been researching on how to centralize our database system so that other offices can access the database in other regions on the internet.

When I consulted our ISP it was explained that we can only do that on Static IP Address. We are given a range of numbers that five computers can use. With one assigned to the database server, the database can be accessed on the internet. However, the head office alone uses more than 20 computers. We use HG532e (Home Gateway) as the Router and a Switch for our networking system.

We have been advised to configure one of the Static IP addresses for another modem so that it can serve the rest of the computers to access the internet on Dynamic. Now, I do not know how to do the configuration. We have another available router HG556a (all products of Huawei Technologies). The Static is working, but the rest of the computers cannot be connected to the internet. Does anyone has idea to help me?

I shall be glad for a positive solution

Regards,

Godis

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Short answer: a single public static IP on the office gateway plus NAT/DHCP for the LAN is the simplest and most reliable way to give 20+ PCs internet access. The database can keep its public reachability via port-forwarding (or, better, via a VPN) while the rest of the machines use private RFC1918 addresses and DHCP behind the gateway.

Practical checklist and common pitfalls

  • Confirm how the ISP delivered the block (routed subnet like a /29 vs. IPs only usable by the ISP modem). If the block is not routed to the LAN, additional public IPs won’t work until the ISP either routes them or puts the HG532e into bridge/pass‑through.
  • Ensure the device carrying a public IP is actually using that IP on its WAN interface. A lot of failures come from plugging a second router’s WAN/LAN into the office LAN behind the first gateway – that second router then sits behind NAT and its public address won’t be reachable.
  • Typical working setup: one router (HG532e or HG556a) gets a static public IP on WAN, LAN is private (eg. 192.168.1.0/24), DHCP serves the 20 PCs, the DB server gets a fixed internal IP and the gateway port-forwards the needed ports to it.

Quick diagnostic commands (from an internal PC)

Windows: ipconfig /all   &&   ping <LAN-gateway>   &&   ping 8.8.8.8   &&   tracert 8.8.8.8
Linux:   ip addr show    &&   ping -c4 8.8.8.8   &&   traceroute 8.8.8.8

If the goal is to assign a second router a public IP (197.251.225.125), the WAN port of that router must be connected to the ISP feed or the primary gateway must explicitly route/1:1‑NAT that address to the second router. Consumer Huawei firmwares sometimes lack advanced routing/bridge features, so confirm firmware capabilities or ask the ISP to advise. Agreeing with and : use NAT + DHCP for the LAN, lock down any exposed DB ports, and prefer a site‑to‑site VPN for secure cross‑office database access rather than opening DB ports directly to the Internet.

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Member Avatar for rubberman

You really only need one external static IP that is assigned to your office router-gateway. Then you configure the router to forward the appropriate ports for the database to the machine that is your database server. That machine you want to assign a static IP within your unrouted internal subnet.

This is called "tunneling", or sometimes "pinholing". You do want to make sure that your database server is hardened and running iptables to only allow connections from your remote offices, which should also have static IP addresses assigned to their routers so that you can create the appropriate iptables rules.

Member Avatar for david.godistei

Hi rubberman,

Thanks so much for your reply. Now, the homepage of a sample database can be accessed at when the database server is on. Currently it is on so anyone may try and confirm.
Now, we have configured 197.251.225.125 to another router as a gateway and connected to a Switch to distribute internet connection to about 20 computer in the office but it is not working for the 20 computers. Where have we missed the track?

I still need a help

Regards,

Godis

Member Avatar for JorgeM

Have you validated that those IPs are indeed online? I am not able to ping either of those public IPs, at least not from the network where i'm at.

Now, we have configured 197.251.225.125 to another router as a gateway and connected to a Switch to distribute internet connection to about 20 computer in the office but it is not working for the 20 computers

For this type of setup that only requires outbound access to the internet, your perimiter router needs the WAN interface to be setup with the public IP address, NAT enabled, and the internal IP address space would be configured with private IPs reserved for private networks as published in RFC 1918. For example... 192.168.1.x/24 range...

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