Putting two routers together
Putting two routers together
Hi there! I am having a huge problem setting up my home network because of an extra router. My ISP (SKY UK) says I have to use their router for internet access, but I want to add a WiFi 6 router for better performance. The two routers work fine together normally, BUT the extra router I have (TP-Link Archer AX5400) has cool features I really want to use, like sharing a USB drive over FTP and a VPN server, but I need to access these things through the internet. The problem is that I can't make the Archer get internet connection. I tried connecting the secondary router in both LAN-LAN and LAN-WAN setups with my ISP router, but it still isn't working well. In the LAN-WAN setting, the Archer isn't getting a public IP address; instead, only my ISP router's internal IP is available for internet access. Then, in the LAN-LAN setting, I can't even tell that the Archer is connected to the internet at all. How do I fix this? It feels like there should be something obvious here haha!! After everything works fine, I want to connect all my clients directly to the Archer and use my ISP router just for internet access, acting exactly like a modem. Would really appreciate some help!
In the LAN-WAN connection, the Archer only gets the router's private address inside your network. To get a real public internet address, you need to use your Sky router as a modem or bridge instead of just connecting it directly. If you don't do that, you can't change this setting. Can your own routers work in AP mode?
You probably won't be able to fix this if your ISP requires their box. Can you put the sky device in bridge mode instead? The other option is using the DMZ setting, which likely works with your Sky box. This will send all traffic from your public IP to your private IP on the new router. Most remote access stuff should work now, but some things like VPN might not if they use IPSEC. You usually don't see businesses using that anymore, so it's probably fine for you.
The nested setup should work okay. Just shut off the wifi on your internet modem and only plug your Archer into it. Connect your router like this: LAN port of modem goes to WAN port of Archer. Your second router might be blocking private IPs, which could block the connection to the "WAN" side. It's probably a clash between your network address ranges (CIDR). Fix the CIDR on your Archer by setting it to 192.168.2.1/24. If you already have static IP settings, instead fix those on your modem side.
Thanks for reply guys, really appreciate it. Trying to better my networking knowledge here haha. Right so I had to put this aside due to family issues so finally able to look at it again. I've basically give up on it because I can't seem to find a way to make it work because of my ISP router being so locked down. There is no AP mode, bridge mode or anything like that. It does have the facility to set a DMZ server but even that won't save for some reason. I've also setup a home server, looking at using it for some personal cloud storage and AdGuard DNS etc but now I'll have to keep that on the ISP router in order to access it remotely etc This is a nightmare all because of the ISP supplied routers....