joining workgroup on a network with two routers

Question

Thanks to another unrelated question, I found a usable network diagram

            Internet
               |
            (dhcpc)
     ------------------------------
     |       Router A             |
     | default route via internet |
     ------------------------------
          (192.168.2.1) *dhcp server on this interface*
               |
    ----------------------------
    |              |           |
(wireless)      (wired)        |
                         (192.168.2.200)
                     -------------------------
                     |      Router B         |  
                     |  |
                     |  |
                     -------------------------
                          (192.168.3.1) *dhcp server on this interface)
                               |
                -------------------
                |                 |
            (wireless)         (wired)

Right now I only have Windows on my network. The problem is this:

Computer on Router B can access network share on Router A connected Systems. Can even ping etc. However Router A connected systems cannot reach Router B on the Lan Interface as in I cant ping any systems or the router on the 192.168.3.x range of IPs either. I think ICMP is disabled on Router B but still , shares should work. Before someone points out I was using Router B before to connect all and share between all my windows and a samba server just fine.

Router B is a LinkSys router and Router A is EnGenius Router. I am not familiar with EnGenius routers and I have done this years ago when I had a Dlink and WRT54G. I am sure I am missing something here.

I am going to try disabling DHCP on the Router B and see if I can get to use DHCP on A transparently. However Router B supports VPN and I was hoping to use that later. — Abhishek Dujari, Apr 10 '12 at 18:35

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 10 '12 at 19:03

I am not sure what Wesley edited, but anyway. I got it to work as per my comment. Here is the complete solution.

I am proposing to make all systems join the same broadcast of Router A ( I see no other easy way to do this). Since I dont want to be defining routes.

First in Router B I assigned a Static IP from Subnet of A. (Router B is in gateway mode not router mode) In A I configured DHCP to give Static IP to B on the subnet 2.x

Instead of hooking up Router A as WAN of Router B (this I wish i could get to work but I know it wont work now*) I hooked up Router A as another regular System on ROuter B on the LAN port. Kind of like switch.

This made all systems on Router B become subnet of Router A.

I remember now how I got it to work with WAN ports now earlier, or I think I did. I had a DMZ Firewall before Router A and both Routers were hooked up to this DMZ. patakh!

This ofcourse means I can't be using the VPN on router B but at least my windows shares are back.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 10 '12 at 18:47

How this works will depend on how powerful Router B is. Everything is working by design right now - routers are designed to not allow access through them by default.

What you'll have to do is modify the configuration on B to allow traffic through. If you have a home-grade router, then you may only be able to pass traffic to one host, which would go in its DMZ. If you have something more powerful, then you may be able to configure it to route traffic from the outside (192.168.2.0) to the inside (192.168.3.0).

joining workgroup on a network with two routers

2 Answers2