Adding a Second Router to my Broadband Connection

[Old Raft]

I have a fibre to the cabinet connection,(fttc)  so twisted pair from cabinet to house.

This has the unexpected advantage of having a separate "modem" (do I hate that term as it's not a modem) and router.

As I don't want to mess with my existing setup (SSID and passwords already set up on lots of devices) but do want to investigate the config of an additional router, I want to add a second quite separate router.  I don't want a range extender or other form of signal booster, or a Ethernet over mains connection etc. etc. this is not the object of the exercise.

I can see a possible problem if both routers have the same IP address range, but I expect to be able to change one or the others IP configuration so that I have a second class C subnet. 

The existing "modem"  has a LAN (LAN1)  port which connects to the existing router.  Checking on the name of the connection I also found that it has a LAN2 port  (with a "Not in Use" sticker over it). 

What I would like to do is connect a second router to the existing router.

I can see this may have a problem, possibly with what it thinks is a DNS server, and possibly if it has to see the the Internet facing IP address that the existing router can see (maybe the point of the "LAN"  port of the modem)  as it will not see that but an IP address assigned to it  by DHCP on the original router. 

I will separately look into the second port (LAN2)  on the modem to see if it is live already or can be made so.   There is an advanced config available via a web page but this may be just for the router not the modem.   In general I don't want to hack either modem or router as I depend on them for my connection and getting a hacked or bricked setup replaced would be slightly embarrassing and possibly expensive. 

[Ryan .]

Why do you want another router?

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[Eric Rowen]

So I can play with it without disturbing my existing router and all the devices that depend on it. 

[Dennis Smith]

Have you thought about saving your current settings and then restoring them when you have played about? Far better than having to swap you router to about and waiting a day for it to reregister with your ISP'S equipment. (When I first had fibre installed we had to wait 24+ hours for a replacement router to  (the first router was sent a bad firmware update by my ISP who bricked it).

Dennis Smith
M1DLG

[Ryan .]

Don't bother with that other port. Put your second router after the first, it'll dhcp client on wan port and serve on land ports/wifi

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[Brian Gregory]

The LAN 2 port on the modem, if it is  enabled in the firmware, is normally used to monitor the modem, or it's used instead of LAN 1 if you want the modem to do your NAT and just use a switch rather than a NAT router to connect your devices.

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Brian Gregory.
bdgr...@gmail.com
www.Brian-Gregory.me.uk

[Brian Gregory]

Perhaps he wants to flash
custom firmware which might be difficult to undo afterwards.

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Brian Gregory.
bdgr...@gmail.com
www.Brian-Gregory.me.uk

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[G Albatross]

Wouldn't the easiest way be to just have the second router attached to an address on the first?

Essentially, you could then have your second router NATing it's own network, and if you knock it over, the main router continues normally.
It would just be seen by the first router as another device on the network.
So, main router on 192.168.1.1/24, second router connecting to the first on 192.168.1.2(reserved), then the internal network for the second router on 10.100.1.1/24, or whatever.

Plus, if you really want to, you can set up stuff on the second router to talk to devices on the first.

[Paul Lawrence]

Sounds like your talking about the Openreach branded box that BT used  to install between your BT Home/Business Hub and the phone line. 

About 4" x 3" x 1". In which case it would be more correct to refer to it as a media converter as it only converted the high frequency signal sent down the telephone line to a digital ethernet connection yet still required the router connected to it to dial the ADSL connection. 

I had one a few years ago and wish I had not thrown it out when I went to over to Virgin. 

[Eric Rowen]

yes

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[Eric Rowen]

Yes to G Albatross that is.

[Eric Rowen]

Hi Paul,   Yes it's the Openreach branded (Huawei) box.  Unfortunately the router is a SageMcom  2704N  with limited management capability.

BUT a little searching finds a way to get at the detailed config via a web link............ if only I could find it again 

http://192.168.1.254/expert_user.html   gets you in with the regular admin password 

[Paul Lawrence]

As somebody suggested earlier your best off putting a second router inside the local network, ie connected to the LAN. It would be unlikely that you could use the second port, as the router connected now should also provide the PPPoE functionality. So your point of access into the internet is actually inside your existing router. 

I have a similar setup because the current BT Hub, which interfaces directly to the copper twisted pair (FTTC connection) is not able to provide a OpenVPN server, so I have IPCOP running on a budget x86 board and my pc's connected inside the second lan. Works like a dream.

yes

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[Eric Rowen]

Interestingly on my setup, Openreach (Huawei) FTTC  Echolife HG612  connected to Sagemcom 2704N, if you access the 2704N  you have access to a VPN setup which is not listed at all on the regular admin page.  i.e.  http://192.168.1.254  

Unfortunately the firewall also found via  "http://192.168.1.254/expert_user.html"  just refers you back to the very basic firewall admin page.

So I have yet to find a way to reconfigure the firewall, however the expert user admin does allow you to change things like the IP address and DHCP in a little more detail. 

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[Eric Rowen]

Tried connecting the second router to a LAN connection on the first.

This gives the second router an IP address on the first (nobrainer)  and gives Internet access via a WiFi connection on my Laptop to the second router. 

Both routers are set for the same subnet  (192.169.1. )   the second router having it's other settings such as DHCP off.  I could have DHCP on as there is a switch to ignore or not other DHCP servers i.e.  in this case the first router.

Although I could work like this with DHCP on both routers configured for the same subnet, just different ranges, it would be more interesting to change the address of the second router which I have to  192.168.11.   as expected Internet access is lost as there is no route from the  11.  network to the 1. network of the first router.

Here is where I'm in uncharted territory... and need some help on how to setup this route. 

[David Zilberberg]

gonna fight traffic and make my way over for a bit.

grab me if you need help.

dz

[Ryan .]

I'm so confused, where are you trying to do this ? How many users? What topology? What kind of use?

R

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[Norro]

You have 2 choices. Put the 2nd router on a different subnet with dhcp on. (the 2nd router will be NATing between the networks) It effectively becomes a network within a network and easiest to setup cos this is how these routers are used by default. Alterntively as it seems you have half done put the routers on the same subnet and turn off dhcp on one. For this to work you also need to set the 2nd router to 'routing' or 'bridging' mode in order to pass traffic from one network to the other.

[Eric Rowen]

"Put the 2nd router on a different subnet with dhcp on. (the 2nd router will be NATing between the networks) It effectively becomes a network within a network and easiest to setup cos this is how these routers are used by default."

Done the above............ this does not work with everything in dd-wrt  as default

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" Alterntively as it seems you have half done put the routers on the same subnet and turn off dhcp on one. For this to work you also need to set the 2nd router to 'routing' or 'bridging' mode in order to pass traffic from one network to the other."

This works through to the internet without changing anything.

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[Mark Robson]

Ok,

The two routers, have different IP addresses on the same private ipv4 network (192.168.1.*) or something?

The problem is that the other nodes can only use a single default route, so they will usually route all their traffic through one or another.

You can of course assign different default routes to different devices on your LAN.

Under Linux you might be able to do something very funky and set up some magic routing (policy-based routing, maybe use an iptables connection-mark) which arbitrarily chooses a route based on things like destination, port number. The trick will be, however, that the same route needs to always be used for a tcp or udp session, otherwise the other party will become very confused, as the two routers will NAT the same private IP to different public IPs. "Masquerading" NAT only works if it does the same NAT to each successive packet to the same destination.

But that still won't load-balance things for a single connection, because your two networks effectively don't know about each other, and are not able to balance at the packet-level.

You can't balance two connections if they are using typical home broadband connections (that would need the upstream routing to be aware of the configuration).

[Eric Rowen]

Ryan,

Why do I want another router...

The first router is provided by the ISP, it has some configurability, but even the hidden expert mode provides more information rather than providing more opportunity to hack it.  It does not for example have the ability to turn off "IP Flood Detection"   this is a fix not a solution but would mean our Chromebook didn't lose its WiFi connection and simply refuse to connect again (see about six million posts {or was it seven? }on the Acer C720)

As other devices need wireless connectivity I don't want to...

A.   Have an intermittent or broken router for any length of time

I do want to...

B.   Play with a dd-wrt router as it has a multitude of configuration options and using it as the main router would put me back in "A"  (and I would have to make my own tea tonight and from now onwards  :-(   )   A specific example is having done all my MCSE stuff, I didn't follow it up with CCNA which would have been really useful, so now doing a little comms catch up. 

C.  It gives me a platform to test other configurations at home before testing/installing on a working LAN that I don't want to break.

D.   Numerous posts sidetrack on to other  interesting topics I would never have come across before

etc.

On Sat, Aug 6, 2016 at 3:44 PM, Ryan . <ry.w...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Ryan .]

Sorry, I get the Chromebook fix but it seems that there's a lot of networking complexity in place reading through your other post, and adding more probably won't help generally.

I'm definitely not an expert in these matters, so not going to give specific advice as many others already have, other than: its rare that adding complexity to systems like this makes them more reliable.

R

[Stuart Livings]

What Ryan said: Keep it simple, especially if you have to work on the network.  No-one will thank you for increasing the complexity of the network without good reason.

Regarding the original question: I presume you already have other routers joining W to X, X to Y and Y to Z?  What are these devices?  Or are they dd-wrt?

Stuart

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[Norro]

When you have them both in the same subnet and one of them in bridging mode the whole network acts as one network with the 1st router as the only gateway.