Good morning everyone

Litle question this morning for you super experts out there.

At home ive got 2 seperate networks that are used by different peeps from the houshold for various reasons. They work fine.

Here is quick setup:

1st network:
cable modem connected to router connected to 2 other computers. Used for Bittorent, internet.

2n network:
DSL modem connected to router connected to 2 other comps. Used for gaming and the internet.

I reside in the second network and i would like to be able to SEE network 1 from my DESktop.

My comp setup:
-network card as 2 inputs, 1 is used right now to connect to router. the other is free.
-I use win XP home edition

and i dont know alot about networks, just the basics.

Can i get my computer located inside 2nd network to see the 1st network, or at least 1 machine inside that network?

Thx for any hlp guys, its appreciated.

chuckhole

Just back from a wonderful week of vacation.........no computers.

So.... to answer your question.....Yes you can.

Please supply some basic information from a computer on each network:
IP Address
Subnet Mask
Gateway Address

The way that a router works is this:
When your computer tries to contact another computer within the same network, the request is sent directly inside your network. When you attempt to contact a computer outside of your network, the router handles the request. It knows that the request needs to be passed on to your ISP. In your case, you want the router to pass the request on to the other router if it is in the other household network, otherwise pass the request on to the Internet.

There are two issues that you must overcome:

1) Either the two routers must be made aware of each other with routing tables or the PC's must have their own route tables added for the other household network.

2) To perform name resolution (DNS) for the other household network, you must have your own DNS (or WINS) server running in your household networks or you must use a HOST file on each PC that will perform the name resolution on each network. If you use host files, then each PC must be assigned a static IP address so that they will not change.

patpai

Ok thank you so very much for your reply, let me get the info out to you soon.
Im at work right now, so i can't get to it... hehe

Scleros

If the OP simply connected the 1st network to the unused nic port and assigned addressing, wouldn't a route get added to the local route table for that network and any traffic for that network automatically get sent out the correct nic port? That single computer would be a member of both networks. In fact, I think you can even bridge the two subnets if desired if using Windows XP (not positive if Home version supports this).

How are you going to connect the 1st network's router to the 2nd network's router since most home routers don't have multiple interfaces?

chuckhole

As long as the routers are connected to the same physical network infrastructure, then if the router supports a configurable network address translation table, that would do the trick. Name resolution would still have to be performed on the local network. The easiest way for this to be done without having more expensive gear would be to use host files, static addressing and individaul route tables on each computer. Once the setup is determined, it can be duplicated to each computer.

Scleros

That's the part I'm not envisioning. I'm betting each router has a builtin 4 port switch and the computers are connected to each switch. How are the two routers going to connect?

chuckhole

If they are single LAN port routers, connect them both to the same switch. If they have multiport switches built in, then connect the two switches together. In a small network, I would also assume the same type of configuration you mentioned. And with that being said, these routers probably would not support NAT and multiple addresses on the same port.

KeepItSimpleStupid

Related issue:

I've got a network whose gateway is 10.10.0.1 and all of the networked stuff is on that network. The LAN port of that router is connected to a DSL modem (Westel) in bridge mode.

I know, for a fact, if I disconnect the Westell to WAN(router) port and use a crossover cable with the proper network configuration to access 192.168.1.1, the DSL modem, I can access it's configuration page.

I haven't tested, connecting a hub to the DSL modem and having a stand-alone internet radio playing if I can access the DSL modem's configuration page, nor have I placed the WAN and LAN ports of the router on the same physical segment using a hub/switch. I think I did try making the DSL's modem address to reside on the network with no success.

The RFC for Bridge protocol doesn't seem to offer any useful info either.

I suppose I can add a permanent routing entry into Window's routing tables to make it work. This would become more useful with DynDNS, but for now, I'd like to be able to access the status pages.

Any thoughts?

KeepItSimpleStupid

Patpai:

I might have a solution for you. Suppose everyone is connected to the same switch. The DSL modem and the Cable modem both set to bridge mode with different gateway addresses. Each router would also provide it's own set of DHCP and NAT.

If there is wireless connections, then have one for each router.

The switch will compartmentalize traffic.

Configuration would basically be easy with just the gateway address changing for the connection. If you wanted to use the other network wirelessly, then connect to that particular access point.

Not sure if you can restrict wired connections by MAC address, but if you could that would be a security method. With wireless you can restrict in that fashion and by password.

chuckhole

As a test to all above:
I just connected one of our SAN switches to the same physical network as the LAN. The LAN is on 172.16.x.x and the SAN is on 10.x.x.x. I then changed my NIC on my laptop docking station to a physical address in the LAN. I then added a second IP address to the same NIC with a 10.x.x.x address.

Note: Our routers are not configured for and are not aware of ANY 10.x.x.x network. All of the ports on the SAN switch are on the same VLAN and all of the ports on the LAN switch are on the same VLAN so you will know that we are also not performing VLAN routing.

I am now able to open the web based SAN configuration. I can open the iSCSI Intiator on my laptop and connect to a volume on the SAN through the 10.x.x.x. network (good place for the MP3's.....bwaahhahaha). And my Internet connection via our ISA Firewall is still running and I can still ping another server in the WAN.

If I want to perform any type of routing through the 10.x.x.x network, a Static Route will have to be added on my PC. I also added an entry to my HOSTS file so that I could open the SAN configuration by name.