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So here is my situation. We recently got another internet connection setup here at home, which means we have two now. Each internet connection has its own router (both routers have a built in modem, if that matters). Now, on our existing local network, we have a NAS that we use for backups and such.

I am using Windows 7 or 8 on all of our PC's. The router that is used for the first of the internet connections is running DD-WRT. The router that is used for the new internet connection is a ZyXel P-2601HN-F1.

The NAS is just a PC that I built running Windows Server. The new router is not connected to the old one at the moment, so the PC's connected to the old router cannot be accessed if you are connected to the new one. What I am trying to do is to connect the two together, so that I would be able to access the PC's regardless of which router I am connected to.

The problem I am facing now, is that when you are connected to the new internet connection via the new router, you of cause don't have access to the computers and the NAS on the other network since they aren't connected in any way. How would I go about connecting the two networks so that you can access the NAS and computers no matter what router you are connected to? Would it be as simple as disabling DHCP on one of the routers and connecting the other one to it?

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  • Please refer what OS you are using, router models, NAS models. Could you please clarify the first part of the second paragraph? Aug 22, 2013 at 23:41
  • I am using Windows 7 or 8 on all of our PC's. The router that is used for the first of the internet connections is running DD-WRT. The router that is used for the new internet connection is a ZyXel P-2601HN-F1. The NAS is just a PC that I built running Windows Server. The new router is not connected to the old one at the moment, so the PC's connected to the old router cannot be accessed if you are connected to the new one. What I am trying to do is to connect the two together, so that I would be able to access the PC's regardless of which router I am connected to.
    – Lazze
    Aug 22, 2013 at 23:53
  • What is the intention of the second internet connection? Why did you get it?
    – Paul
    Aug 23, 2013 at 0:01
  • I live in an area where the speeds are limited. Luckily, there is two DSL lines going into the house, so we can get two internet connections. One of them is going to be used for the NAS in the house, since I do quite a lot of uploading and downloading from there. Therefore, having a dedicated connection to it is very beneficial since we have limited bandwidth to work with.
    – Lazze
    Aug 23, 2013 at 0:13

4 Answers 4

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Yes, disable DHCP on one of the routers, and give it a static IP address in the range that the other router uses.

Then connect the LAN ports of the two routers together.

This means that you now only have one internal network, and two ways to get to the internet. You can only have one default route, so only one of these routers can be used for "general" traffic at a time. So your options are to

  1. Manually switch the default gateway of some devices to use the other router as default gateway
  2. Set up static routes so some destinations are routed through the other router

Given that you are intending to dedicate one of the DSL lines to the NAS for downloads, this is straightforward. Give the NAS a static IP address, and make its default gateway the router on the dedicated line.

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  • I will try this as soon as I get home, then report back with my results.
    – Lazze
    Aug 23, 2013 at 0:15
  • 1
    Your solution worked perfectly, thank you! I will accept your answer, I do have another question though. Now that the two routers work together, would it be possible to configure one of them to handle the port forwarding? Right now, I have to do the port forwarding on either router depending on which gateway I use.
    – Lazze
    Aug 23, 2013 at 9:56
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    @Lazze Port forwarding is something that happens to incoming traffic - so this is depending on the public IP address that the traffic is coming to, which must be either one or the other of the routers. So yes, it has to be configured on the router that has the public address the traffic is going to.
    – Paul
    Aug 23, 2013 at 13:42
  • That's what I assumed, thanks for clearing it up!
    – Lazze
    Aug 23, 2013 at 14:14
  • I noticed my iCloud hand-off, Wifi Calling got a little goofy. If you run like this and statically set to get to the other gateway what should you use for DNS?
    – Mark
    Mar 1, 2021 at 16:47
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I have a similar setup with two DSL lines coming to the home. One DSL connection has unlimited whilst the othr has a 1Tb limit but is a cable connection and faster. DNS is running on both router/modems, each with different gateway IP and automatically assigns two diffent ranges of IPs for local connections. All wired-connected computers have their LAN adapters TCP/TPv4 connections configured with the two gateways and metrics manually assinged (10 being lowest/priority). Most computers also have wifi so I've setup them up to go to the faster, cable DSL gateway with metrics=10 and the other gateway with metrics=11. This is in case one or the other gateway needs rebooting/reconfig or is not available. All shared disk or device (printer, etc.) have static addresseses but only on one gateway. All are working fine except when my wife tries to print something on her wifi connected device and can't because the static IP is on the other gateway, so I just ask her to switch SSID. That works fine too (for now).

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get your NAS put three lan cards in it and plug both routers in to the Nas ,for the third lan card plug a cable in and then plug that cable to your switch, the 2 cards with routers need to be configured as bridge mode in windows ,,, the third needs internet sharing enabled :)

the nas will use one connection for surfing ,when a higher demand speed is needed it will use the other connecting for downloads, or simply have one on ,

im also sure there is software out there that will make full use of both connections, it also has internet website cach built in so websites load faster

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  • You are not giving a better solution than the accepted answer
    – yass
    Jun 5, 2017 at 19:37
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i was facing the same situation, i set a Gateway 192.168.1.1 on the old router and 192.168.1.2 on the new router then connected one of each router's LAN port to a switch and connected all ends devices to the same switch and now they are communicating perfectly. am ruining one DHCP from the old router and and assigned static IP with a gateway of 192.168.1.2 on the devices that i want them to use the new router.

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