2 routers at home- how to connect with VNC?

Question

I have two routers at home. First router is upstairs and is connected to the cable modem. 2nd router is downstairs and acts as "signal booster" for the 1st router. Devices connected to the upstairs router have IP addresses of the form 192.168.1.n Devices connected to the downstairs router have IP addresses of the form 192.168.2.n. I blindly followed instructions from a website to do this set up, just glad it works!

Upstairs I have a PC running Win 7 64 bit. Its assigned IP is 192.168.1.7. I have a VNC viewer running on this.

Downstairs I have a 2nd PC running Vista 32 Home edition bit that is connected to the 2nd router and has IP Address 192.168.2.114. VNC server is running on this. It's listening on 5900. There is no firewall.

When I try to connect to this downstairs PC from upstairs it fails with message "Failed to connect to server". I cannot ping to this either.

If I try to connect to this downstairs PC using VNC Viewer from another computer that's connected to the same downstairs router then it works like a charm.

So what's the work around if the viewer is on a different "network"? I don't have any problems doing remote desktop connection from the downstairs PC to the upstairs PC even if they are connected to different routers.

Router information- Upstairs- ASUS RTN13U, downstairs- DD-WRT v24 RC-5

Thanks!

P.S. I posted this on the Ultra VNC forum as well but that doesn't seem to have a lot of activity, so taking the liberty to multipost.

Answer 1

Presumably, though you don't specify how they are connected, the downstairs router is running in router mode. If it has the option, put it in "bridge mode" or "access point mode." If it does not have the option, and you are connecting via a wire to router 1, give the downstairs router a fixed address in the 192.168.1.X network that is not the address of anything else, and not in the address range handed out by the upstairs router's DHCP. You may need to alter the DHCP settings on the upstairs router. Turn the downstairs router's DHCP off, and make sure that its gateway address is set to the upstairs router. Then shift its wire from upstairs to a LAN port, leaving its WAN port empty. This is the brute force method of making it an access point.

Being able to access the upstairs from downstairs (but not the other direction) is typical for the downstairs being NAT-ed off the upstairs (which is NAT-ed off the internet.) You want the downstairs and upstairs to be the same network, which means you'll want the downstairs router not working as a router, but simply as an access point.

If you really WANT to have two separate networks, then you need to have the downstairs router "port-forward" 5900 to 192.168.2.114, and from upstairs you would connect to the downstairs router's upstairs network address (its WAN port address). The downstairs router would pass the traffic for 5900 to 192.168.2.114 and your connection should work. But that probably is the less-suitable fix to your issue, since it only works for a specific computer, and it sounds like you have two networks, but really want one.