Configuring default gateway returned by dhcp server

Question

I have a machine which connects via ethernet to a private LAN, and wireless to a network which provides internet connectivity. The private LAN uses a wireless router to perform DHCP.

The problem is that the wireless and NIC adapters have different default gateways. The default gateway for the private LAN has a lower adapter metric, and is thus chosen by the routing algorithm. I am thus unable to browse the internet when connected to both adapters.

The following link has a solution for manually setting the adapter metric to a high number. How to tell Windows 7 to ignore a default gateway

I was hoping to find a different solution.

Does any one know of a router that allows you to configure its DHCP server to return an empty default gateway? I cannot find such an option for my linksys wrt300n.

Configuring a static ip address with no default gateway does work, however I would like to use DHCP if possible.

Does anyone know of a different way to specify a default gateway for a windows 7 machine with multiple network adapters without mucking with the adapter metric?

Thanks

Answer 1

I'm not aware of any DHCP option to define a specific default route in the DHCP RFCs.

Setting the route metric is the most general way to handle this kind of thing. If multiple routes exist to a given destination network, the metric is used to decide which route is to be taken. I believe you can change the binding order for the NICs in your machine to force the public LAN NIC to automatically get the lowest metric default route.

Edit: on second thought, try swapping the cables. That should move the lowest binding NIC from the private LAN to the public LAN, and if I'm right, the default route from the new public LAN NIC will be the lowest metric.