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Trying to connect two routers (self.networking)

submitted 11 months ago by WhyAUsername_1 to c/[email protected]

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Hi all!

I have 2 ISPs with their own routers.

Router A: 192.168.0.1/24

Router B: 192.168.20.1/24

I have my servers plugged into Router A and all my endpoint and users' devices connected to Router B.

I want users connected to Router B (192.168.20.1/24) to have access to server 192.168.0.90

I thought plugging a LAN cable and connecting Router A and Router B and then defining static routes in both routers would solve the issue.

However, at the first step itself I have an issue. When connecting the routers via a LAN cable, both routers dont get any IP.

I was also referring to this post on superuser. Though Router B is capable of creating subnet and static route, I am not sure if Router A (Archer XR500v) is capable of creating a subnet and/or a static route.

https://superuser.com/questions/1667068/connect-two-routers-with-different-subnet

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[–] supernicepojo 16 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You are going down a road of headaches here. Do you absolutely have to use this hardware to complete this setup? If not please consider getting a dual-wan load-balancing router. Cisco makes a nice one, tp-link has a fairly cheap version too. You can use the provided routers behind a firewall as better wireless AP nodes.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Yeah, this looks like consumer grade crap. I'm a simple home user, and I've found a lot of value in entry level enterprise gear (Mikrotik router, Ubiquiti AP).

OP, if your org is big enough to need two ISPs, you're big enough to buy enterprise hardware. It doesn't need to be expensive, for example this TP-link router can do up to 3 WANs (~$60 on Amazon) and I use the Mikrotik Hex S (~$70; it can do at least two). Separate your router and AP and you can upgrade each independently as needed. That said, configuration will be more complicated (esp for my Mikrotik, not sure amor TP-Link) since they're designed for power users, but there are lots of good guides online.

[–] I_Miss_Daniel 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Wouldn't it be easier just to put both routers on the same IP range and just set the gateway on the clients to be whichever router you wanted to provide internet access?

You might want to disable DHCP on the non-favoured one.

[–] WhyAUsername_1 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is the way I ended up doing it.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. :)

[–] I_Miss_Daniel 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You're welcome!

Happy 2024, and thanks for letting me know.

[–] WhyAUsername_1 1 points 10 months ago

Happy 2024!

[–] olosta 3 points 11 months ago

I'm not sure about the point of your setup but let's ignore that :

Create a vlan "servers" on router B, assign a port (WITHOUT vlan tagging) to this vlan, patch a cable between this port and any port on rouer A
Put a static IP address 0.x on router B in this vlan
Enable routing between the default vlan and vlan "servers" on router B .
Configure router A to not distribute this IP address (by setting up a permanent DHCP lease for example)
On all your servers put a static route that says : "192.168.20.0/24 via 192.168.0.x"
If you can setup this route on A, things connected to A will work whether they have the route or not (it's not a big deal but the routing would be assymetrical)

If you can create a VLAN and a route on A, you can create a distinct "interconnect" VLAN and make all of that nice and clean without the extra static routes on the servers.