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I have two routers, one that also acts as a modem (coax cable,ISP provided,primary router, 192.168.0.1) and one (secondary router,192.168.1.1) that has a USB port to run an SMB service. My problem is that despite reading through a lot of useful answers here and trying this for hours now, my machine connected to the router 192.168.0.1 is unable to ping 192.168.1.1 and thus is unable to access SMB. I read in one of the answers here that I should set up the primary router (192.168.0.1) with a subnet mask 255.255.0.0 and disable NAT forwarding in the secondary router. However, there is no subnet setting in this ISP provided router/modem.

Routers and the client PC are connected through UTP cables.

Can somebody help me please? I have created a basic diagram of the setup:

diagram

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  • Are you intentionally creating a second subnet with the second router? What’s its purpose? Just “playing NAS”?
    – Daniel B
    Commented Jan 29, 2022 at 22:31
  • Good question. There are two reasons for the second router: 1. the USB port / SMB service 2. it has way better wifi coverage than the ISP provided router.
    – Ötvös Csöpi
    Commented Jan 29, 2022 at 22:55

1 Answer 1

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The reason you cannot access 192.168.1.1 from 192.168.0.0/24 is the same “the internet” cannot just access your home network: As far as the second router is concerned, you’re on the WAN (“internet”) network and thus the NAT firewall prevents you from getting in.

Disabling NAT is often impossible on consumer routers. Changing router 1’s subnet is not the correct solution anyway. Port forwarding most likely also will not work, because you want to connect to the router 2 itself.

Instead, I recommend turning the router into an access point (+ NAS). You do not mention the make and model. It may support this mode natively. If it does, just change its mode.

If not, you can do it like this:

  1. Disconnect it from router 1
  2. Change its IP address to 192.168.0.2
  3. Disable its DHCP server
  4. Connect it to router 1 using a LAN port (this means the Ethernet cable will be plugged into LAN ports on both routers)

You will then have a single network with all devices, including router 2’s SMB service. Router 2 will continue to provide Wi-Fi coverage.

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  • Thank you, this did the trick
    – Ötvös Csöpi
    Commented Jan 31, 2022 at 11:45

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