Can I connect my IP camera to two different networks at once?
Can I connect my IP camera to two different networks at once?
I have two separate houses next to each other with an ethernet cable running underground between them. Each house has its own internet connection, but all my cameras are set up for just one house. Is there a way I can use this existing cable to get access to the cameras on both networks? Thanks!
Going to be messy without a real router... those gadgets you buy in consumer stores aren't actually routers. The main problem? You have two different internet connections, and each of those "routers" sends out IP addresses through DHCP (the system that automatically assigns them). If you just plug the networks together straight up, devices will get assigned to the wrong internet router at random. Plus, unless you change subnets so they aren't the same network, both routers will have the exact same public IP address. Just changing the subnet fixes this one problem but doesn't solve the DHCP issue. Now you could assign every device a fixed IP and a specific gateway address so everything knows exactly where to go. It works, but it's really hard to keep up with. What you actually need is a real router sitting between the two networks that lets traffic move from one to the other while keeping the DHCP broadcast messages on their own little local network.
What does the term "actual router" actually mean here? Can you share some details or links for me? I already figured out that plugging two internet routers into one device is a terrible idea and might not even work. Thanks again!
The gadgets you own right now are actually called gateways. They take one local network connection and change it to a public internet address through NAT (Network Address Translation). A router can really send traffic between different networks, like moving data from one place to another. You could use a laptop with two network cards running on Linux to handle this. There are also some cheap boxes out there that work as routers too. This is just one example. It looks like a normal switch but it's a very complicated box to set up. It handles many hard-to-use features that only internet service providers know how to do. Even though it does the basic stuff, figuring it all out takes way more effort than you'd think. https://www.amazon.com/Mikrotik-RB750Gr3...B01MSUMVUB