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I am currently subscribed to 2 ISP lines, a cable (100mbps) and fibre (1gbps) connection. I also have 3 routers to cover my entire home, Dir-868L and 2x Dir-605L. My ideal state is, i can have specific devices like my desktop and some of my mobile devices to go onto the fibre gateway. I've tried using DHCP allocation on DIR-868L and DIR-605L to always allocate my desktop to 192.168.0.101, but it doesn't work when DIR-605L dhcp responds first.
My set-up is currently:
Cable (WAN) -> modem -> dir-605L router A (wifi & Lan) -> dir-605L router B(Wifi & to fibre router dir-868L via PoE)
Fibre (WAN) -> ONT -> dir-868L router C(wifi & Lan & connected to 2nd dir-605L via PoE)
Router A has DHCP enabled and ip pool is 192.168.0.1 - 192.168.0.99 Router B has DHCP disabled Router C has DHCP enabled and ip pools is 192.168.0.100 - 192.168.0.254
I've used https://creately.com/ to create this simple diagram.
I wanted to use DLNA but dir-605 doesn't allow static route to communicate cross subnets, dir-868L is supported by dd-wrt, but dir-605L isn't. Thus i am using 1 subnet instead.
Now i have a problem, both DHCP servers are racing to allocate IP and if i'm connected to 1 ISP e.g. fibre, i might actually get an IP from cable which is a lower bandwidth.
I've read that i can use VLANs but if i flash my Dir-868L to configure VLAN tagging, do i require the other 2 routers to be able to support it? Or should i buy a switch? Or should i re-do the network to simplify everything?
Lee Gary
Posted 2016-05-03T02:31:06.630
Reputation: 111
You should be able to disable the DHCP server on all but one of the routers. – Ron Maupin – 2016-05-03T02:34:17.853
The title sounds like a film I once saw... – Burgi – 2016-05-03T02:36:15.050
if i disable 1 of the DHCP server, all traffic only goes via 1 of the WAN link? – Lee Gary – 2016-05-03T02:42:53.750
1You don't say in your question what behavior you actually want, only that you don't want to get a gateway randomly based on which DHCP server responds quickly. Please [edit] your question and include the desired outcome. – Paul – 2016-05-03T02:44:25.333
Why do you have two ISPs. Is cable a backup in case fiber drops out? Either way, how do you want to control which gateway/ ISP a given device uses. Traffic shaping to multiple gateways is not supported by most consumer grade routers / switches without third party firmware. The simple answer is to disable DHCP on all but one router as said in the other comment - a VLAN will not get you anything that you seem to be looking for – Argonauts – 2016-05-03T02:45:23.347
It's a bundled package from my ISP, it's the same ISP providing 2 internet connections. I wanted to isolate some of the network traffic like smart-tv to always go on cable and my desktop to go onto fibre, so that my gaming/video streaming doesn't compete each other. My previous house was using 1 internet link and when my family stream videos, my gaming is affected :( – Lee Gary – 2016-05-03T02:48:16.950
@LeeGary, you really shouldn't have that problem with a 1 Gbps connection. The real way to do what I think you want to do is to get a router that handles multiple WAN connections. There are other option more complex, too. – Ron Maupin – 2016-05-03T02:54:15.250
In that case you need to just have one DHCP server , all routers on the same subnet, and manually configure IP addresses, default gateway and dns server settings on the devices you want to go on the cable connection so that they match the address of the router with its wan port connected to cable , a unique IP address in the subnet, and the default gateway again - respectively. If you do that it won't matter which router they are directly connected to, they will get routed to cable. – Argonauts – 2016-05-03T02:54:39.587
1If that last comment sounds like what you want, but the implementation described isn't clear just let me know and ill clarify it as an answer instead of comment. Just trying to figure out your goal. – Argonauts – 2016-05-03T03:20:31.087
I will try it out to see if works, but does having a L2 switch or using pfsense actually makes anything more flexible? – Lee Gary – 2016-05-03T03:28:08.703
It works out for me, so now DHCP only enabled on cable router and on specific devices that i want to connect to the fibre, i set the DHCP manually, i've also expanded the dhcp pool on the cable router to .2 to .254 (although i dont need so many) and for anyone using a mac (go to network settings -> on the top of the network preference, there's a location, you can save network settings as location profiles), once done, click on the apple -> location -> select which internet gateway you want – Lee Gary – 2016-05-03T04:00:48.990