Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 4:29 Post subject: Problem with reaching the internet through gateway
Okay so I have 3 different routers running 3 different versions of dd-wrt I believe. The Netgear one is set up as my gateway, the WAN is set to DHCP through my schools ethernet port. The LAN is 192.168.1.1, with DHCP on. If I connect a computer to it everything connects and works fine. I have this router set up to my other two, one linksys one rosewill. They will be on the same subnet of 192.168.2.0/24. On the netgear I have static routes to 192.168.2.0/24 with gateways of 192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.3. I have everything connected and if I plug in a computer to either the rosewill or the linksys I can access 192.168.1.1 but nothing beyond that. Any ideas what's wrong?
Not enough information regarding the second and third routers. Are these connected over their respective WANs to LAN ports on the primary router? And are their WANs configured as “router” or “gateway”? Because if it’s “gateway” (which is the default), you’re using NAT, and static routing from the primary back to the second and third routers is unnecessary. NAT is essentially implied routing. But if those routers are configured as “router” over the WAN, then yes, you’d need static routing on the primary router, but you never want BOTH the second and third routers to share the same network (192.168.2.x), because now you’re only able to configure routing to one or the other, not both. IOW, every router should have a different network.
As far as the firewalls on the second and third routers, whether you even need firewall depends on what you’re using them for. Presumably any router located in the same home/office can probably be considered “friendly”, but then again, I don’t know your true situation there.
And finally, router or gateway, you don’t need static routing EVER on the second and third routers. You only need static routing on the primary router, and as I said before, only if the second and third routers are configured as “router” on their respective WANs. In that case, the primary router doesn’t know anything about the private networks that lie behind those other routers, so you need to tell the primary router how to locate them via static routing within its own configuration.
First off thanks for the detailed reply! This is for a project me and my group are doing so security isn't an issue, it's all going to be disassembled in a week or less. The second and third routers ARE set as routers not gateways. Their WAN ports are connected to the primary routers LAN ports. The reason I set have them set to "router" is so that I can do the static routes from the primary. One route with gateway of 192.168.1.2 and one with a gateway of 192.168.1.3. Shouldn't the primary then load balance?
There's no load balancing performed by the primary router just because you've decided to daisy chain one or more routers behind it. The primary router handles requests from the second and third routers as needed.
The only time any router would load balance is on the WAN side. And only then if it had multiple connections on the WAN and was configured specifically for this purpose.
