Home Networking Help

[LayMeister]

Hi,

Here is one for a networking guru out there.

I have two networks going at home. One for personal use and one for my business.

The personal one uses a RV042 VPN router connected to a cable modem. The local subnet is 192.168.0.0 (netmask 255.255.255.0). I have a couple of laptops, my desktop, my printer, network storage (movies/music), and a couple of PS3's(used as HD media players) on this.

The business one also uses an RV042 router but is connected to a pair of DSL modems and does load balancing between the two connections. The local subnet is 192.168.1.0 (netmask 255.255.255.0). There are 12 UNIX servers on this subnet.

It all works well, but to access my business from my desktop I have a VPN tunnel out through the personal router and back in through the business router. This bothers me as not being very efficient use of the bandwidth and adds some latency since the two networks have about 10 hops between the two routers.

How can I connect these two subnets in simply and cheaply so that I don't need to go out and back in the VPN tunnels? Please tell me all I need is a network cable and some routing settings changed.

Paul

 

[JesseRC]

does the business network have a wireless router? Also, you can have more than one nic on each computer. I think you can be connected to more than one network. There are some security issues, you probably dont want to bridge the networks. Maybe some network folks will chime in.

 

[LayMeister]

No wireless on the business. The two nic idea might work for my desktop. I guess I could add one. I think you can get a USB nic for about $20.

Lets see what other ideas people have.

Cheers,
Paul

does the business network have a wireless router? Also, you can have more than one nic on each computer. I think you can be connected to more than one network. There are some security issues, you probably dont want to bridge the networks. Maybe some network folks will chime in.

 

[JesseRC]

At work we have our corp network (email, corp intranet) and a Production network where we do maint on systems. We just switch out cables on the rj45 jack cuz we dont want the two networks connected for security reasons. Ipconfig /release and /renew gets us connected on the new network. But I dont know if that's too much hass for you.

 

[pen25]

Hi,

Here is one for a networking guru out there.

I have two networks going at home. One for personal use and one for my business.

The personal one uses a RV042 VPN router connected to a cable modem. The local subnet is 192.168.0.0 (netmask 255.255.255.0). I have a couple of laptops, my desktop, my printer, network storage (movies/music), and a couple of PS3's(used as HD media players) on this.

The business one also uses an RV042 router but is connected to a pair of DSL modems and does load balancing between the two connections. The local subnet is 192.168.1.0 (netmask 255.255.255.0). There are 12 UNIX servers on this subnet.

It all works well, but to access my business from my desktop I have a VPN tunnel out through the personal router and back in through the business router. This bothers me as not being very efficient use of the bandwidth and adds some latency since the two networks have about 10 hops between the two routers.

How can I connect these two subnets in simply and cheaply so that I don't need to go out and back in the VPN tunnels? Please tell me all I need is a network cable and some routing settings changed.

Paul

easiest way is to put them all in the same subnet. so you only need a cable and routing changes. you could also go in and build routing tables to allow the two networks to communicate with eachother. speak with your vendor and ask them for setup help. if all else ill talk to a couple friends here and pose this same question to them. they are the one's with certs not me.

 

[pen25]

one way i was just looking at would allow you to use rip 2 to pass the routing tables between the routers. without having access to the routers and not ever using one i really do not know how to configure them. i have a bunch of 2600's at home that would work for you but what sounds like is you really need a networking guy to help you out. i sent an email to one of the managers for our ip install group and another guy both are ccna certified to pick their brains. the routers does support rip 1 and 2 which like i said allows the routing tables to be passed. but i do know that there can be some issues with doing this and do not know if you can lock it down to where you wont try to pass the information on the pvt network out to the general internet. i should hear something back tomarrow and ill post what they say. i know they dont mess with these routers either or didnt while i was in the group but things do change. maybe someone else can help out that has messed with the RV042

 

[pen25]

ok looking some more and this is what i came up with. you can do static routing. in effect you take a port from each router and tie them together and assign them neighbor addresses. say 192.168.2.1 255.255.255.253 and the other router you assign 192.168.2.2 255.255.255.253. then in the configuration of the router you would build a static route for all traffic of the subnet in that router say the pvt network of 192.168.0.x/255.255.255.0 pointed at the ip address of 192.168.2.1 and then the business one do the same but point it to 192.168.2.2. when a computer trys to access the other subnet it will know where to route it then the other router will take over and route to the correct destination.. when i get home ill try to draw this out and post it up.

 

[pen25]

and here she is. its not pretty but i hope you can understand what i mean

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/routers/csbr/rvl200/administration/guide/RVL200_V10_UG_C_WEB.pdf

 

[UnaBonger]

I vote for one big happy subnet... Whats your reasoning for keeping them separated?

You could also try opening up your subnet mask a little to say - 255.255.0.0. I *think* that will let the 192.168.x.x subents talk to each other...

 

[LayMeister]

Maybe one subnet is the answer. The Unix machines all have static IP's, DNS Servers, and Default Route. I could change to IP of the business router to 192.168.0.2 and make this their default route. The home network can use dhcp from the router at 192.168.0.1 which will be the default route for the rest of the machines. I think this should work.

The other thing I was thinking about was that all of the business machines actually have a second nic and use a second subnet for NFS traffic. I was thinking about connecting my home network to this. It would isolate my home from business VPN traffic, but still give me access to all the machines.

Thanks everyone for your ideas.

Cheers,
Paul

I vote for one big happy subnet... Whats your reasoning for keeping them separated?

You could also try opening up your subnet mask a little to say - 255.255.0.0. I *think* that will let the 192.168.x.x subents talk to each other...

 

[LayMeister]

Just in case there is some interest, everything is work great on one subnet.

Cheers,
paul