[getack]

Hello Friends..

This is my first post!

I have a rather interesting conundrum to solve as the title suggests...
Here is a little diagram to help me explain myself: (solid lines = LAN connection and dashed lines = wireless connection)

I have two networks at home, one for the office, and one for the the residential area. The problem is all the printers are located on the office network. I want to have access to these printers from the other network, but not necessarily the office network's internet...

How do I do this?

I was thinking something along the lines of connecting the two routers together and then giving them the IP's 192.168.0.1 and 192.168.0.2, then I simply define the default gateway for each machine so that it connects through the right router to the internet?

If this is possible I want to know how to connect the two routers together so that they broadcast the same WiFi network i.e. the same SSID. I do not want to connect the routers with a UTP cable, as they are about 30m from eachother on different storeys of the house, and a long cable acts as a nice lightning inductor :/ so it has to be wireless...

Any suggestions?

Much appreciated!

 

[hoyin007]

I am interest to see any answer here as well.

1. On demand VPN over Internet connection of both router like branch office connection.

2. Publish the network printer to Internet in office router and limit access by Home router external IP address.

3. Depends the network printer model, add a JetDirect WiFi to printer, so 2 NIC and connect to both network.

I might be wrong, but just suggestion.

 

[getack]

Your suggested solutions might work, but they seem a bit overkill for the little network I have. And publishing resources to the Internet makes me uneasy...

I failed to mention that I do not want to just share the printers. But file sharing, remote desktop, uPnP and so on, would also make things better. I would really like to have one single network, with the internet access kept separate for each, but with the option if one connection fails, the other network can fall back to the remaining connection (something that happens a lot here in South Africa).

I can, if I must, connect the two routers with a cable, if it will make things easier. It's just not the ideal, as long wiring tends to act as an inductor during lightning storms, frying everything on the network.

Thanks for the input so far!

 

[hoyin007]

Then that's different story if you want to join them to single network. It's far easier too.

Use the Huawei router as extend access point from office router, make sure turn off DHCP Server on Huawe router as well. If you have problem with signal, can buy a new wireless access point sit in between 2 networks, it only require power.

All the device are on same subnet can get IP from netgear router and that's the default internet connection. You can manually change default gateway to Hauwei router for Home device

Make sure both router Lan and all device are on same subnet.

 

[Wand3r3r]

Unfortunately that answer doesn't address having two internet connections.
It is the answer if only one internet connection.

The solution is fairly straight forward.

1. You connect the two routers with a crossover cable lan port to lan port [not required if mdi/mdix is available]
2. You set both routers to the same subnet. For example: router1 192.168.1.1 and router2 192.168.1.2.
3. you set each routers dhcp scope to be a different segment of ips. For example: router1 x.x.x.50-55 router2 x.x.x.60-65 Each routers dhcp lists it as gateway.

Now you have all in the same subnet which allows sharing.

The only drawback to this setup is you can have devices on router1 getting ip from router2. You fix that by doing ip reservations which is where in the router you associate the mac address of the device with a ip address.

 

[hoyin007]

The solution works but depends which router answer the DHCP request, you still get an IP from either router. One is reserved, the other is not.

The static IP/gatewway would works best in this case.

 

[Wand3r3r]

I would do reservations for each and every device and leave some available ips in the dhcp scope for guest devices.

Reserved ips is what will set the gateway as static.

 

[getack]

Connecting the two routers with a cable and setting the DHCP up works, thanks!

I am still unable to combine the two wlans into one. If I make the SSID's the same, I get only one name in the available connections window, but inSSIDer shows two networks with the same ssid on two different channels. Also depends on what wlan I connect to (depending on the password I insert), it then says I am connected to 'networkname' (fictional name ) or 'networkname 2', even when both routers are set to 'networkname'...

Should I make all the wlan settings on both routers exactly the same, as in password, channel, etc? Will this not cause some serious confusion?

 

[Wand3r3r]

Your routers may not be able to do WDS

What is wireless distribution system (WDS)? - Definition from Whatis.com

This is where you would do the ip reservations per mac address so device A would connect only to router 1 and device B would only connect to router 2 for example.

 

[getack]

Okay... At this, stage, the two routers are connected with ethernet. The office's router has an IP of 192.168.0.1 and the home's router's IP is 192.168.0.2.

Both routers' DHCP is set within the 192.168.0.2/24 range, with each DHCP server giving out separate ranges: .10 to .20 for the office (only a few machines) and .50 to .100 for the home.

Both routers have separate wlans. 'networkOffice' for the office, and 'networkHome' for the rest of the house.

Both routers support WDS in some way or the other. The problem is however when I activate the WDS option, the modem part is disabled. Both routers still need to be able to have internet connectivity. And if I manage to find a solution and both routers are transmitting the same wlan, how do I know what gateway am I getting on my machine without setting up IP reservations AND MAC filtering on both routers? Meaning the netgear ONLY accepts the office machines' MAC addresses, and the Huawei accepts all the rest?

I am quite happy with this setup. I think the separate wlans are better anyway, as it keeps things nice and separate. I you however can think of a better solution, please let me know - I'm all ears!

Thanks for all the input! I really appreciate your help.
Have a great day