Using Ethernet for NAS and WiFi for internet

Question

I recently moved and have an unusual setup. I live in a rural area and am being forced to connect to the internet through a WiFi hotspot as I get a much better connection from my mobile phone. I would like to continue to access my NAS which is connected to my router on a separate wired network (currently without an internet connection).

When connected to both the wired network and the WiFi hotspot, I either lose access to the internet, the NAS files or both simultaneously, despite all connections showing as active.

I was using Windows 7 initially, then Linux Mint to see if that faired any better (which it didn't).

Can anyone point me in the right direction. All I want to do is access my my media files from the NAS while connecting to a separate WiFi network for internet, so far my efforts have been fruitless. This answer suggests it should be possible, but there was no guidance!

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

your question lacks some details but I will put some asumtions in place to answer.

I assume your wired network is using a internet gateway type router that is handing out ip addresses to all devices on the network even though you don't have the internet port connected to a internet source.

with that assumption in place you are likely having the wifi hotspot & wired network settings overlap causing it to be confused.

wired network needs to have a different ip range from wireless AND you can not have the default gateway set on wired.

if you ip ranges overlap between the wifi and wired change your wired ip range and leave the wifi as it is. for example wifi should use 192.168.1.x/24 and wired should use 192.168.10.x/24. Most routers will allow you to specify no gateway and dns from that device for dhcp. If you manually set every thing just leave the dns and gateway empty for the wired connection.