Creating Two Networks Which Share an Internet Connection
Recently, I decided to create a second network in my home for testing computer systems. I wanted to keep these systems from being able to access my main network. After doing some research I decided to make use of another router, and a different subnet mask to accomplish this. My previous setup already has a second router plugged into our Google Fiber box. Many people find the Fiber box to be extremely limiting, and our Fiber box also has a wifi radio, which does not quite reach to the back of our apartment. I added a Linksys 1200AC router to help overcome this. Off of this router I have been running a network on the 10.18.57 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. I have its DNS servers pointed to the OpenDNS server IPs.
I have all of the phones, tablets, and our main computer on this network.
Recently, I wanted to make a second network for my own use. I also did not want to buy any new hardware for this project. I wanted some of my devices open to the internet. I happen to have a couple of old Linksys WRT54G routers. One of them has ddwrt, while the other has Tomato firmware. I had wanted to use the ddwrt router, but it did not work this time, so I ended up using the Tomato Firmware router.
The steps were:
- Plug a network cable into the Google Fiber Box, and the new router
- Plug a cable into the router and a computer to access its admin panel
- Setup the new network on the router
I have DHCP turned on on the Google Fiber box. It currently has two devices attached to it. They receive their IP Addresses via DHCP, with static leases. I setup the WRT54G router to use a network of 10.18.55, and a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0. I noticed that it made both a LAN with the settings I setup, and a bridged network. I also have the Tomato router using DHCP to give out IP Addresses.
I opened the ports I was interested on the Google Fiber box, and on the Tomato router.
When I checked the devices on the new network were able to reach the internet, and I could SSH into the computer from the internet, but devices could not talk across the local networks, which is what I wanted.
What my network looks like now is this:
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|Google Fiber Box|
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|
/ \
/ \
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|1200AC| |Tomato|
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| |
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|Secure| |Test |
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The two networks are running really well.