Hello all,

I've accumulated too many boxes, so I've had to add a second router to my LAN, forming a WAN. The second router basically is a client on the first router and connects four boxes to it. My difficulty is that I need to be able to ssh into the other boxes on the second router, but I can't reach them (I can only reach the second router). Is there a better configuration than this that will allow me to communicate with all of my boxes from any point on the WAN?

Thanks in advance.

Let me see if I can help you out. First of all a WAN stands for Wide Area Network, and implies devices connected with phone lines, not a LAN with two routers. This isn't a big deal, but it helps to understand the terminology.

How many machines are you trying to connect? What routers are you using, and what models do you have?

Routers have two sides, ( or more ). The ones sold for home use are designed to connect one side to your ISP, and the other side to your machines at home. I have never tried to connect two of these types of routers and I'm not sure it would work. That is the reason for my above questions.

My router has four hard wired ports for the home side, and will support 254 devices. The rest can be connected via wireless, or you can add a hub to each port to expand the number of wired ports.

Hubs are available with various numbers of ports. Just need to buy one with enough ports for the machines you want to connect.

Let me know on the above, and some more network details, and we can probably sort it out.

It'll work just fine connecting one router to another. After all, that is how the internet is made. :-P lol A LAN can be made with however many routers you want, too, and is all relative just like time and speed. Compared to the internet, a campus's network can be a LAN. Compared to a campus MAN, your network in your office building is a LAN. But, generally the accepted definition is anything behind a leased line:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAN

The routers one behind another will work just fine, too. The only caveat is to make sure they're not on the same address space. For example, if your second router is grabbing DHCP from the first router and receiving a 192.168.1.x address, and it gives out the same space (192.168.1.x), the router can't really route too well considering everything it's seeing is an inside address.

Anywho, make sure your second second router uses a different network address than your first. Make sure the ports are open on it, too. A lot of home routers have ports closed by default for security reasons, and if you don't pop them open. . .well, obviously you won't be able to get through them too easily.

ARC1450,

There was a very good reason the routers may not work. I'm quite aware the internet is made up of routers. I spent 32 years in a career teaching this stuff. It all depends on the features on the connected routers. Some of the newer routers have a USB connection on the ISP side. You would need a router with an ethernet connection on the ISP side. I call it the ISP side to distinguish between that and the lan ( home side ). Other things to consider, you need to be able to configure the ISP side in order to connect it to another router, whether it uses DHCP or fixed IP etc. Most of these things do NAT and provide a firewall by default. This may cause other issues.

I have looked at a lot of router issues, and some can be configured, and some can not be set up this way. So, it all depends on the features on the two routers. This is why I asked pda_h4x0r to tell us about the hardware he has.

I wasn't addressing you.

But thanks for that quick refresher on networking technology. I'll keep it in mind when I have to fix the routers, switches, and VoIP system at work.

Thank you for all the replies!

The main router is a NetGear WGR614v5. It runs firmware version V1.0.3_1.0.3. I'm not really sure of its capabilities...what should I be looking for? The second router is a Belkin F5D5231-4, and I don't know much about it either (just got it off eBay). I foolishly assumed that, somehow, the routers would just work with one another. I think I can assign the Belkin a 192.168.2.x IP address from the NetGear--and this will allow me to access the boxes connected to it?

Basically, I'm building a parallel computer using commodity, off-the-shelf hardware. One of the boxes connected to the NetGear will be the master node, and the boxes connected to the Belkin will be the slave nodes. Obviously communication with the master and slaves is essential to its construction , and this obstacle needs to be overcome before I can even install the OS.

Not to belay the answer to your question any as I think the posts above have addressed it, but unless there is some reason for those boxes to be segmented from each other why not use a switch?

I downloaded the install manual from Belkin. It looks to me as if this will work. The ISP side of the Belkin is an ethernet port, and appears to be configurable. I would suggest you do the configuring through your web browser. Let me know if you don't know how to access the router for configuration. The manual describes it well enough.

From what I understand, the NetGear router is connected to your ISP now. I'm going to assume you have DHCP enabled on the lan side of the NetGear. This will dish out IP addresses to any device connected ( a host system, or a router ) the lan side. For example, the lan could be set for network 192.168.0.x and a mask of 255.255.255.0 and usually DHCP can be set to distribute as many ( up to 254 addresses ) as you need. Say you set it to distribute 16 addresses. If the NetGear is a 4 hard wired lan router, then 16 addresses is enough.

Plug the Belkin into one port, and it shouldn't matter which port. You will have to go into the setup for the Bekin, and configure the ISP/WAN side. It can be configure for Static IP as well as DHCP. Your choice here. If you pick static, pick an IP address outside the range of IP addresses but within the lan, dished out by the DHCP server on the NetGear. That should allow you to ping the Belkin form any PC on the NetGear. Test it to verify. If you pick DHCP, then the NetGear will give it an address to use, in the range of the DHCP server on the NetGear. That should work also.

You will need to configure the lan side of the Belkin to an address range such as 192.168.2.x and a mask of 255.255.255.0. Note is is important to make the lan on the Belkin different than the lan on the NetGear.

It a system plugged into the Belkin, try pinging from one lan to the other. It should work in both directions. If not, post what you have tried, and the results, and we'll see if we can help you out.

Note, port 4 on your Belkin can be an "Up Link". There is a switch that is out for a system to connect, and In for a hub or a switch to connect.

I have not looked up the doc on the NetGear, since it is the one connected to your ISP, my guess was you would leave it that way.

Let me know if I have made any wrong assumptions.

Thank you very much! I'll try that out.

Okay, here's what's working:

1. The Belkin's ISP/WAN IP address is 192.168.1.50, inside the NetGear's DHCP address range, but reserved for it exclusively.
2. I can ping the Belkin at 192.168.1.50 from a box connected to the NetGear
3. The Belkin's LAN IP address is 192.168.2.1.
4. The Belkin's DHCP service is turned off
5. The boxes connected to the Belkin have static IP addresses (all different from one another)
6. the boxes connected to the Belkin can ping 192.168.2.1
7. RIP_1 is enabled both ways on the NetGear (have tried RIP_2B)

What's not working:

1. Boxes on the NetGear cannot ping any 192.168.2.x (no packets get through)
2. Boxes on the Belkin cannot ping any 192.168.1.x (ping returns "Network is unreachable")

Any suggestions?

PS Thank you for being so patient. I'm a complete newbie when it comes to networking

There are several things to try now. I had another look at the setup manual, and I'm going to include the page references.

First of all the firewall is enabled by default. Firewall settings start on p-36. You probably have a firewall on the NetGear running to protect your network for the outside world. No need ( in my opinion to run another between the two network segments. Try turning it off for mow. You can always turn in back on later on.

I suspect the main problem is NAT. The NAT function translates all IP addresses on the lan side to the one IP address on the ISP/WAN side. This is not where you want NAT to work, so turn this off. See p-57 in the system settings area.

Also check the setting for ICMP ping, see p-43. In order to ping from one side to the other, this needs to be enabled on the Belkin, otherwise the pings get blocked.

Try pinging now from one side to the other and see what happens. Turning off NAT should allow the Belkin to do the routing. If it still doesn't work, a static route in the Belkin may be necessary, and one in the NetGear also. Try the other items first, and let me know.

Okay, I disabled the firewall on the Belkin, I disabled its NAT function, and I enabled ICMP pinging. Still nothing gets through. How would I go about creating a static route?

Thank you again for your patience.

Did you restart the router after you made the changes? The changes do not take effect until the router is restarted.

I can not find a way in the Belkin to do this. My router has a page for static routing table.

Did you set up a default gateway in the system you connected to the Belkin on the lan side? It shoudl point to the IP address of the lan post on the Belkin.

I'm going to see if I can find a docuemnt for the NetGear, and see if you can define a static route in it.

I finally found the manual for your NetGear router on the NetGear site. The good news is the NetGear does have a way to configure static routes. See p7-15 and p7-15 for directions, and an example. Define a route to the lan side of the Belkin. You need to restart the NetGear before the static route will work.

Try the ping again. Let me know.

Gaah!...still not working.

Is this configuration correct?

Netgear:
LAN IP: 192.168.1.1
LAN Subnet: 255.255.0.0
DCHP reserved IP address: 192.168.1.50
Static route to 192.168.0.0 subnet mask 255.255.0.0 gateway 192.168.1.1
(have tried static route to 192.168.2.0 subnet mask 255.255.255.0)
(it won't let me do 192.168.2.1 subnet mask 255.255.255.255)

Belkin:
WAN IP: 192.168.1.50
LAN IP: 192.168.2.1
LAN Subnet: 255.255.255.0 (somehow, it won't let me change it)
DHCP, NAT, and Firewall are off
ICMP ping is on

Any ideas?