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I take care of two separate networks, one at our home and one at a relative's place a few miles away. Our house has a microwave connection to the local ISP, the other place has a DSL connection. Both networks work just fine; the network wifi names and passwords are different.

My question arises because the routers are identical (Netgear R6400) and from time to time I have my MacBook Air connected at one location, and at other times the other location. The computer connects easily and automatically to wifi at whatever network it's in, but I'd like to have Keychain memorize each router's administrative password, too. Each router's administrative password is different, and I'd like to keep them so.

It's easy to set up a Safari bookmark (with Keychain password) to log me in as administrator on my home network, but going to the relative's house to administer that network means the MacBook Air faces a different router with the same IP as the router at my home. This requires some dancing to retrieve (or have written down) the administrative password for the relative's router. For security reasons, I don't wish to enable remote administration, and I am content to do administration only when I'm within each network.

If the routers each had different admin login names, this'd be easy. But both names are "admin," and I see nothing in the routers' web interface that allows a name change.

Both routers came from the factory with the same LAN IP address: 192.168.1.1. Having different IP addresses for each router would would also allow easy and discrete login to both systems. On the router's administration page at my home, I see this:

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Can I just change the LAN IP Address on one of the routers, say to 192.200.1.1? With a separate Safari bookmark for each router, I'd be good to go.

Thanks!

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  • Not 192.200.1.1, but you could use 192.168.200.1... I would suggest Googling "private IP network" to help understand that private networks (LANs used in homes & businesses) have special IP address ranges assigned to them so they don't overlap public networks.
    – acejavelin
    Commented Jul 21, 2018 at 12:53

5 Answers 5

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Give your router a name and local domain (in setup) and use it's DNS name, not the IP to connect to it. You will need to set the DHCP config in the router to only supply itself as the DNS server. This will force all DNS queries to go to it first.

As long as the router names or the domain names are different, you can store passwords in key chain because each will be unique.

For example:

  • Same domain name .home

    • myrouter.home for your network
    • bobrouter.home, because, Bob's your uncle and it's his network

  • Different domains

    • router.myhome for your network
    • router.bobhome for Bob's network.

When you connect to either network, the DHCP lease will contain the DNS server info that points back to the router. Local queries will stay, well local, and anything else will be relayed to the ISP's DNS server.

You can find full details in the User Manual on how to do this (starts at page 110)

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  • Thanks, that makes sense. I see the name and domain entries in the router interface.
    – DavidRecallsMonica
    Commented Jul 20, 2018 at 23:27
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Can I just change the LAN IP Address on one of the routers

Yes, with a few caveats.

  1. Make sure you choose a private IP address for the router and an appropriate subnet mask. 192.200.1.1 is not a private address.
  2. Any devices connected to that router that get their IP address from the router automatically via DHCP will need to have their DHCP lease renewed in order to connect to the router. The simplest way of doing this is usually to reboot each device.
  3. Any devices connected to that router with manual IP settings will need to be configured with an IP address and appropriate subnet mask for the new subnet that the router is on in order to connect to it.
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  • Thanks, @Scottmeup. Your numbers 2 and 3 are easy to understand, but 1 is more opaque to me, generating questions. I'll read the W article you cite, and see where it leads me. Thanks again for your response.
    – DavidRecallsMonica
    Commented Jul 20, 2018 at 22:32
  • The section "Private IPv4 addresses" lists the ranges of private address spaces, and their appropriate subnet masks. A couple of addresses in each subnet are reserved and unusable (1st and last, eg. IPs 192.168.0.0 & 192.168.0.255 with subnet mask 255.255.255.0 would be unusable for hosts), anything else in the range should be fair game.
    – Scottmeup
    Commented Jul 20, 2018 at 22:41
  • That would work. I'll add that the subnet masks listed on the wikipedia page are for the largest available block in that range. They dictate how many addresses are available on the subnet. You could use a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, assuming you have no more than 253 devices connected to that router.
    – Scottmeup
    Commented Jul 20, 2018 at 23:12
  • Thanks again, @Scottmeup. This is small home stuff, maybe we'd have 10 devices max <g> so 255.255.255.0 for the subnet would be fine.
    – DavidRecallsMonica
    Commented Jul 20, 2018 at 23:29
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Basically, set one of the routers to the values shown below.

IP Address 192.168.2.1

IP Subnet Mask 255.255.255.0

Starting IP Address 192.168.2.2

Ending IP Address 192.168.2.254

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  • Worked easily, @David Anderson. Thanks again.
    – DavidRecallsMonica
    Commented Jul 25, 2018 at 21:15
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It appears to be configurable; so sure, you can do that. Well, 192.200.1.1 seems awkward, but that's subjective. If you'd like a more common convention, residential consumer LAN routers are typically either 192.168.0.1, 192.168.1.1, 10.0.0.1, or 10.1.1.1 by default.

Just keep the netmask at 255.255.255.0. Actually, if you'll never have more than 10 devices connected at any one time, you can probably pick any valid netmask up to 255.255.255.240; which will give you enough address space for a network of 13 additional hosts (14 including the router).

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  • You wouldn't advise avoiding the use of a publicly routable IP address on a home LAN?
    – Scottmeup
    Commented Jul 21, 2018 at 11:35
  • The problem isn't that 192.200.1.0/24 is publicly routable; the problem is that it belongs to someone else. (Brown Brothers Harriman & Company, to be specific.) While having your LAN squatting on someone's owned address space won't harm them, it is still incredibly poor practice.
    – grawity_u1686
    Commented Jul 21, 2018 at 13:52
  • @grawity Actually, I was under the impression that Network Address Translation solved that problem. I've never tried it; I may be mistaken.
    – voices
    Commented Jul 21, 2018 at 15:24
  • @tjt263: No, I wouldn't say "solved"... Sure if your explicit goal is to use someone else's address space in your LAN, then yes, NAT indeed lets you use any range you wish (yours or not) regardless of worldwide BGP routing. But it's still seriously dodgy as far as network configuration goes. If nothing else, doing so means you won't be able to reach the real addresses anymore -- a good example is CloudFlare's 1.1.1.1 DNS server, which was completely unreachable through a number of ISPs and routers.
    – grawity_u1686
    Commented Jul 21, 2018 at 16:23
  • @grawity yep, thats the assumption (range already owned, or possibly will be owned in the near future) that I would make on a publicly routable ip address that I didn't own.
    – Scottmeup
    Commented Jul 22, 2018 at 1:12
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I support two LANs in adjacent buildings. One has two routers with different WiFi SSIDs. I gave each a different IP, 192.168.x.1/2/3 and gave them different names in my /etc/hosts. Since the WiFi zones overlap, I had each router’s DHCP use a different range for IP assignment.

I also set each router to use DNS servers other than the slow ones from the ISP. And I set my laptop to bypass the routers for DNS. All works quite well.

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