Two ISPs, one network

Hardware Hub Networking
1

Hi everyone,

my first post on new forums. Since split, I consider LevelOneTechs the techier of two channels, I am hoping, I will find help here.

I'm working on interconnecting my two home networks into single piece, I would like to access all devices from all places.
My situation is basically following:

peterpepo_net_2017_v01.jpg1036x545 22.9 KB

Please note, the diagram is simplified, in reality there are more devices on each of networks atm, but should be sufficient to illustrate.

Starting from upper left.

The first ISP - ROUTER1, VDSL connected directly into modem/router provided by the company. Having this device in the network is mandatory, mainly because:

  1. VDSL Modem (parameters are unknown, isp refuses to cooperate, I have to keep this crap)
  2. IPTV box - again, some black magic is happening behind the curtain, the whole connection has 300GB cap, iptv doesn't count into the limit though

This device is completely locked up. All I can do, is turn wifi on/off, forward ports. DHCP forced on, routing mode on, etc.. I have configured the dhcp to provide ips in rage of 192.168.1.x

IPTV box

  • speaks for itself

PC1

  • connected either via cable or wifi

Second ROUTER2:

  • wan connected to 5ghz microwave receiver on the roof
  • connection isn't capped, but slow
  • dhcp set for 192.168.2.x

Nas

  • directly connected to router2

PC2

  • directly connected to router2

Now the problems, I experience today

  1. VDSL connection is capped, but fast. Microwave is unlimited, but slow. For this reason, I tend to roam with my devices between the networks - in case of high priority, I switch to vdsl, for movies, torrenting (linux isos, of course) I move to microwave.
  2. While this might be a solution, I can't roam between networks with "hardwired" computers, connected via cat5 (Other than manually reconnecting cable).
  3. When I move my computer to ROUTER1, I cannot access NAS, Printer, shares on ROUTER2 network.
  4. Router2 has MUCH and i mean MUCH stronger wifi connection

What I would like to have, my goals

  1. Connect all the devices (except IPTV for reasons stated above) to ROUTER2
  2. This way all the devices can communicate with each other, use printers, nases
  3. Decide, pick ISP / default gateway which I want to use to connect to internet
  4. User ROUTER2 as primary dhcp for my network. Router 1 is crap - I want to use that one as AP only. Therefore I'm against turning dhcp on Router2 off and relying on Router1.
  5. If we could figure out, how to connect IPTV to router2, that would be ideal. At the moment, I have two cables from routers to my room. One for iptv, second to router2 to pcs, which I consider plain stupidity. (this isn't mandatory)
  6. Dhcp dealing various gateways for various clients (for example: PC1 is most time connected to vdsl. Nas is most of the time connected to uncapped but slow microwave. If I could do it without static ips, would be ideal (this isn't mandatory)

What I don't want / don't need

  1. Load balancing
  2. Automatic failover

What I've tried previously:

  • Third router (described) below
  • Wan connected to Router1 LAN
  • Lan connected to Router2 LAN
  • Static routing
  • I've been switching gateways manually
  • This all came at cost, of double nat
  • Today I experienced powerloss, which reset settings of the router, I need to do all from scratch and ideally better

The devices depicted, I consider pretty much locked.
On router1 I cannot adjust almost anything.
Router2 runs stock firmware, which I don't tend to update, fiddle with. Although I can adjust dhcp, bridge slightly, not anything advanced.

In addition to this, I have one Asus WL500gP running DD-Wrt, what is my canditate to play and hack around for anything advanced.

Please feel free to ask, in case something is not clear.

Thanks :)

2

No load balancing, no automatic fail-over, no manual switching.

I'm not sure what is left to choice from.

3

Load balancing nor automatic failover required.

Manual switching (software-wise) is probably, what's left and I aim for.
Handling this by dhcp server would be even better, e.g to Computer1 give IP and gateway G1, to Computer2 give IP and gateway G2.

I haven't excluded manual way :)

4

What I would do: get a L2 switch (Linux or managed switch).

Put both ISP DHCP ranged in the same range, and give them a differnt IP in the range.
Activate DHCP snooping (or just drop all DHCP related traffic on the ports connected to the ISP's).
Setup new DHCP server, depending on the PC, pass along a different gateway.

To switch: ip route del default; ip route add default via (<- pseudocode)

EDIT: DHCP snooping: blocking DHCP servers except from certain ports.

5

The only thing I've heard about this is there is an enterprise company that made a box to do specifically this but it ended up costing at least 1 grand and working like shit.

But that was about 5 years ago so they either scrapped it or made it even better but you may be able to find something with a few Google searches.

6

Update on topic friends.

I've managed to set my ROUTER3 running ddwrt to Router mode, eliminating double NAT.
I've put WAN to 192.168.2.0 subnet and LAN to 192.168.1.0 subnet.
I've set static routes on Router1 and Router2 so they can find different subnet through Router3.

peterpepo_net_2017_v02.jpg1036x545 26.3 KB

Pinging from different subnets to devices in each other, works, i can access shares etc, however both my routers Router1 and Router2 refuse to NAT traffic coming from different subnet.

Seems, I'm stuck now.
Due to being stuck to modem/router combo from DSL provider. I won't avoid double nat, unless I get rid of subnets.

7

What I would do is set up a third router with dual wan connected to each of the other two routers. You don't need nat on the third router as long as you can configure static routes on the other two.

Then on the third router configure the firewall to send different traffic to different gateways. You can do this either based on source/destination ip or port so you may be able to automate it mostly. You could even automate load balancing to switch gateways depending on how much traffic each has passed etc.

I know this can be done pretty easily on pfsense but you should be able to do it on something like openwrt as well.

8

to me I would set up a pfsence firewall /router and set up some firewall rules to route the traffic through your network, Yes it is complicated and yes pfsence will do load balancing and redundcy fail over. Just a thought.