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I hope someone can help me with issues I have with my home network. I have a Billion 7700N modem/router and currently I added a Western Digital N600 dual band router. By default (following setup DVD supplied by WD), Western Digital setup itself in LAN to WAN configuration and assigned itself an IP address with different subnet. Which I intend to keep if everything works alright.

So this is my setup:

Billion 7700N:

  • IP: 192.168.1.1
  • Gateway: 192.168.1.1
  • DCHP: on Access point: off
  • Connected to the ISP

Western Digital N600:

  • Client IP (assigned by Billion 7700N DHCP): 192.168.1.115
  • IP: 192.168.0.1
  • Gateway: 192.168.0.1
  • DHCP: on
  • Access point: on
  • I connect Western Digital’s WAN port to Billion 7700N LAN port.

Internet works fine for all devices either connected to Billion 7700N through ethernet or to Western Digital N600 through Ethernet/Wi-Fi. When I connected through Western Digital N600 I can see the other subnet (ping and access shared drive) but not the other way around. When I connected to Billion 7700N, I can’t even ping any machine connected to Western Digital N600. I can’t even ping 192.168.1.115 an IP address assigned to Western Digital N600.

I read some posts on the Net that by default that what I will get with this setup. But I am sure there must be away so that I can connect these two subnet both ways? I have added a static route on the Billion for 192.168.0.0/24 with gateway of 192.168.0.1 but it doesn’t help.


Thanks Paul for your response. There is compelling reasons on having 2 subnet. If anything here is why I want to keep it that way:

  • I can use all LAN ports on N600.
  • It’s good to learn how to make this setup works.

I have added static route to 7700N but I think I set the gateway to 192.169.0.1. I will check and make sure the gateway is 192.168.1.115 and see if I can make it working.

Would you please explain the relevance of disabling NAT on N600? Thanks again.

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  • Pelangi, please register your account over on Server Fault, then use the same login credentials here to get hold of your question again. This way you can edit it and leave comments, etc.
    – slhck
    Jun 6, 2013 at 5:42

2 Answers 2

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Unless there is a benefit you haven't described for having two subnets, I would suggest you only have one.

The steps for doing this are

  1. Connect a N600 LAN port to a 7700N LAN port.
  2. Disable DHCP on the N600.
  3. Enable DHCP on the 7700N.
  4. Manually give the N600 an IP in the 192.168.1.x range (outside the DHCP range).

This will then put all devices in 192.168.1.x range, and be far simpler.

If you want both subnets, then you will need to

  1. Connect the N600 WAN port—not a LAN port—to a 7700N LAN port.
  2. Enable DHCP on the 7700N (because the N600 is connected via the WAN port, this DHCP server won’t be seen by devices on the N600, so you won't get a conflict).
  3. Add a static route to the 7700N saying that the 192.168.0.x network is accessible via the gateway at 192.168.1.115.
  4. Disable NAT on the N600.

If NAT is enabled on the N600 then the devices that are on 192.168.0.x will appear to come from 192.168.1.115 to devices on the 192.168.1.x network. Their address will be NATed to the address of the router. This will prevent you being able to access anything on 192.168.0.x from 192.168.1.x.

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  • @pelangi Answer updated to include NAT info
    – Paul
    Jun 6, 2013 at 4:12
  • Thanks @Paul. Unfortunately there is no option to disable NAT on WD N600. Actually I am surprised that we a router won't allow us to disable NAT. Is it something that we can disable through telnet or any other low level access? Thanks.
    – pelangi
    Jun 6, 2013 at 11:08
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You're doing double NAT. Don't do double NAT. You don't actually want two separate subnets on each side of the WD N600, especially not with a NAT gateway in between, because a natural side-effect of NAT (technically a "NAPT" in this case) is that it acts like a bit of a Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) firewall, and doesn't allow flows/connections to be initiated from the "upstream"/"public" side of the NAT to the "downstream"/"private" side of the NAT.

Disable NAT and DHCP on the downstream device (your WD N600). Make it just act as a bridge, allowing clients to get their DHCP leases from the Billion 7700N.

If your WD N600 doesn't provide a way to disable NAT, then disable DHCP and stop using its WAN port. Just connect its LAN port to the Billion 7700N's LAN port. If it doesn't allow you to disable DHCP, set the DHCP IP address lease pool length to zero (or one, if it doesn't allow a zero-length pool).

This is probably a dup of a zillion other questions on this site, but I'm too lazy to look up the best question to dup it out to.

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  • This answer sounds like a seperate subnet never makes sense. In my case I am unable to configure a static route on the main router because it is the ISPs router. So I added a second router with a subnet and in that subnet I connect devices. I can then add a route on the second router that points to a wireguard client in that second subnet. That way I can connect those clients to a remote LAN over VPN via the route of the seond router. Unfortunately, as you said, its not possible to travel from the main LAN "down" to the subnet.
    – bomben
    Oct 29, 2022 at 20:34

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