Question

Multiple subnets on one physical network

Subnets, Routing and switching, Subnet mask, Routing table protocols, Network design, Wireless networks, Access points, Routers, Switches

I am setting up a fairly large wireless network. We have a fibre connection to the internet for a small community wireless project to give high speed to the 10-20 houses in the area.

The router device is a windows PC running with two NIC cards, it is hardened down to very minimal services, with almost all the ports being blocked. I opted for this over a hardware firewall so that I could do some bandwidth management and traffic shaping on the connection without having to spend a fortune on the hardware.

Plugged into NIC A is our internet connection

Plugged into NIC B is our main AP radio.

The router PC is also the DNS server, and DHCP server for everything, and all of this works just fine.

Here is the problem. All the devices on the wireless (client computers, and the router PC) are on the ip range / subnet of 192.168.187.XXX / 255.255.255.0

To hide the 6 AP radios, and main client radios, they are configured on a different subnet of 192.168.0.XXX

This makes no difference to the clients, as the radios just pass thru the information to the main router PC, and they get DHCP assigned IPs, they can connect to the internet, etc.

However, I want to be able to go into the interface for the radios from one system to monitor and maintain the radios.

Is there a way to add a route command to that machine to point all traffic for 192.168.0.XXX to stay internal and not go outside the physical network?

I have tried adding "route add 192.168.0.0 192.168.187.1" and several variations on this but I cannot seem to establish connectivity.

If I just change the IP address in windows to 192.168.0.XXX I can communicate with the radios just fine.

I know if I add another network card to the router PC and assign it the 192.168.0.XXX IP address I can connect that to the network with a switch, and that would work, BUT that means another NIC (no big deal) and a switch/hub to split the internal connection up (right now there is now switch, the router pc plugs directly into the main AP radio unit, and everything is wireless from that point)

There MUST be a software based way to tell windows to route info for a different subnet to stay internal, but I cannot figure it out.

Any help would be MUCH appreciated!!

If you just want to communicate with the radios, the easiest way would be to add another ip address to the network adapter that is going to your AP.

You can put any number of addresses on one adapter, simulating multiple network cards sharing the same wire.

To do this, you'll have to ensure the LAN side adapter's ip address is set statically, not with DHCP. Though, as you're serving DHCP off of this card, you probably have this set statically already. If I understand your setup, this will be the gateway address of your LAN.


To add another ip to the LAN facing card...

1. Go to the network properties of your adapter
2. Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) -> Properties
3. Click on 'Advanced'
4. Click on 'Add'
5. Enter an IP address and subnet mask on the radios network.

Now you can connect to the radios from the router machine.

Depending on how you have routing set up, (I'm a little fuzzy on windows routing services), you may or may not need to configure something to allow other clients on the wireless to access the radios.

If the radios can be accessed through the wireless, you could also just set your wireless computer with 2 static addresses, one on both networks, as well.

Hope this helps!