Home Networking - Two Routers - Two WAN - Multiple PCs - and Wireless Devices

Home Networking - Two Routers - Two WAN - Multiple PCs - and Wireless Devices

The title is a mouthful, but today at Everything Binary, we are going to talk about home networking in a very unique and special environment.  When I was thrown with this problem, I googled everywhere for a solution, and even called the telco to see if they knew of a solution, but none to be found anywhere.  No one could offer a solution

What does a regular home network look like ?

Simply google and you can find a typical image like this :

The router is simply set as default router settings, and would DHCP  NAT ip addresses to all your home devices.  I think most people somewhat understand this model, and if not, can easily find resources on the internet that would explain this in detail.

A step beyond the above diagram, is the fact that your house maybe bigger, or have obstacles that block wifi signals to farther distances. So one would need to "extend" the coverage area.  This is usually done with a Wifi repeater, or a wired-bridge or wireless-bridge.  Some people have a spare wireless router, so they configure the router to become an Access Point (this is done by turning off the DHCP feature off the router) - again, details are all over the place on the internet on this subject).
A diagram for such a setup :

The powerline adapters are just showing examples where cabling of ethernet cables to those points are difficult, so you use a powerline solution to bridge the gap (at the expense of some performance).

The NEW problem 

As ISPs deploy newer and faster speed solutions of over 500mbps, Fibre Optic lines are deployed. But ISPs still have older Cable technology sitting there, so they bundle both solutions to you, promising that two networks are better than one, because you can have larger internet wifi coverage of your house. 

So, is the claim true ? The answer is Yes and also No. If you have two internet WAN ports coming into your house, say one Cable line offering you 300mbps and a Fibre line offering you 1Gbps.  How would your house network look like?

It will look somewhat like two of the first diagram.and since there are two routers place physically at two distant locations, your wifi coverage would be "extended"

But what is the problem? The problem is you have two networks.  Machines or devices on one network cannot talk to other devices on the other network.  Consider if you have a printer one network A, and you are now in network B and you cant access the printer easily.  Similarly, if you have a media center, housing all your videos, photos and music - they will all only appear on one network and not visible to the other network.

The Solution to the problem

Now, this is where is article will become interesting - and different from all other articles on the internet (so I hope).

We need to bridge the two networks so that they believe that they are on ONE network even though there are two WAN ports (or connections to the internet).  I'll use the same diagram but modify it so that it shows two internet networks coming into the house

The diagram does not explain the configuration, 

 Let me start by talking about how to setup Network A side :

You have a Router (in Blue), which gets an IP from the DSL modem, does DHCP and assigns ip address to the devices.  We make sure that this router will only assign ranges from 192.168.0.10 through to 192.168.0.99.  We then make sure we reserve 192.1.68.0.10 and 192.168.0.11 in the router's setting  for the PCs or desktop that never moves. This will make sure the DHCP will never assign these numbers to any other devices.  On these PCs, you will configure static IPs for them so they will never change.  The reason why you do not do the same for the laptop, is you may move the laptop to another part of your house where Network B resides, and you want that laptop to still work seamlessly.

Now for Network B side :

You will setup the router's IP to start at 192.168.0.100 - this also means to configure the router, you need to use this IP address.  You then make sure this DHCP only dishes out IP ranges 192.68.0.101 through to 192.68.0.199.  If you have PCs or stationary unmovable devices here, you would do the static IP like for network A.

The powerline connecction to the two routers goes to the LAN ports. If they can be linked with ethernet cable, even better.

For your wireless network, setup the same SSID names on both routers, and your mobile devices will connect seamlessly across A or B network.  One caveat is that sometimes you have no control which Internet the mobile device will actually use even if you connect to network B router, you may acquire an IP assigned by Network A's router and hence utilize the internet connection of Network A instead of network B.  This has some performance impact, especially if you are using powerline connection between the two routers.


Essentially, the above method will make two networks (driven by two internet connections), into one network with the 192.168.0.xxx

Wa-la.... a solution to utilize two internet service and merge them to one network so that your devices at home work together as ONE network.

Hope this is everything you need if you have the more than one internet service into your home and need a solution to make one network. Here are Everything Binary, I hope you have FOUND something useful.


PS.  For residents in Singapore, using Starhub's Dual-Broadband service, or even Viewqwest's 2Gbps service, and you want to merge your dual service into one network, you can consider giving this a try.