connect to two networks simultaneously

conorgriff

OK guys, here's the beef. I have a laptop with one wireless card and one ethernet port. I want to be able to use the laptop to connect to two routers simultaneously. Can anyone tell me if this is possible, I am connected as it is but all traffic seems to be going through the wired interface.

Maybe it's just config within windows which is required.

If anyone is wondering as to the reason for this, one router is a VPN into work and the other is my broadband connection out to the net.

ntlbell

do you want to use two seperate broadband connections?

or just to be able to connect locally via two routers?

conorgriff

ntlbell wrote: »

do you want to use two seperate broadband connections?

or just to be able to connect locally via two routers?

I'm connected already to two routers which share an internet connection. One is a VPN into work, the other is straight out to the net. I just want to be able to dictate which router is used by firefox for example. So my browsing doesn't go via the VPN firewall etc.

conorgriff

Here's a crude diagram of my setup

My modem is in bridge mode to facilitate the VPN for work. The wired interface connects directly into the modem/router and this is required so I can connect.

My wireless router connects to the modem via an ethernet cable and allows clients access to the internet.

In isolation, the wireless connection works for the laptop but once the VPN is active, all traffic tries to go through the wired link.

I'm guessing this is due to metrics, is there anything at all which will allow me to use one route for certain traffic and another route for other traffic?

Zab

But in that diagram both of the paths lead to the same thing, so you shouldn't care. Although, obviously the wired connection should be preferred which means everything will go wired.

If you're actually talking about the VPN you mentioned earlier then that's routing. If the VPN assigns you an interface on the same network that you want to access in work then leaving out the default gateway in work will make sure none of the traffic destined for the internet goes through the VPN. Otherwise check out the route command.

conorgriff

sorry Zab, I just updated my post. Have another look please

Zab

I'm still not sure that I understand. You want traffic to go though the wireless as opposed to wired? Just because your VPN is active and all the traffic is going through the wired interface doesn't mean all the traffic is going through the VPN. Check the stats on the VPN interface and compare to the wired interface.

conorgriff

Zab wrote: »

I'm still not sure that I understand. You want traffic to go though the wireless as opposed to wired? Just because your VPN is active and all the traffic is going through the wired interface doesn't mean all the traffic is going through the VPN. Check the stats on the VPN interface and compare to the wired interface.

OK, I'm on BT broadband. Normally my modem would be in router mode. To get my VPN to work, my router needs to be changed to bridge mode.

When the router is in bridge mode, the only PC which seems to be able to connect to the net is the one using the VPN and as far as i can see, all traffic from that client goes out through the VPN.

To work around the issue of only 1 client having internet access I bought a 2nd router and I have that in router mode.

So, now i have my modem/router connected to my phone line directly in bridge mode. My new wireless router connected to the modem in router mode and all my client PCs connected to the wireless router.

When I need to use the laptop for work I connect it directly with a cable to the adsl modem/router. But what I want to achieve is to somehow direct http traffic through the wireless router because this means it does not go via the VPN.


Any clearer?

Zab

But does the wireless network not stop routing to the internet when you set the dsl router to bridge mode? As in, other computers can't access the internet?

conorgriff

no, it works

Triangle

Conor,
If the VPN is going from your computer to your office then all traffic should be routed through that connection.
It sounds like you need the router to be the end point of the VPN. if this is the case then you could set up routes on your gateway detailing where different traffic should go.

Trig

Snaga

conorgriff wrote: »

OK guys, here's the beef. I have a laptop with one wireless card and one ethernet port. I want to be able to use the laptop to connect to two routers simultaneously. Can anyone tell me if this is possible, I am connected as it is but all traffic seems to be going through the wired interface.

Maybe it's just config within windows which is required.

If anyone is wondering as to the reason for this, one router is a VPN into work and the other is my broadband connection out to the net.

Without getting into the specifics of your application, a device can only have one active default route at any one time - but you can of course choose to route different traffic out either interface with a bit of configuration.

So if you have a wired and wireless interface, windows chooses the wired as the active one by default.

To send traffic out the wireless interface you simply need to add a more specific static route for the destination traffic you wish to traffic out that interface.

So I have 2 routers which have given me an ip address and default gateway via DHCP...

router 192.168.1.1 on eth1
router 192.168.2.1 on wifi1

My default route is pointing to 192.168.1.1 but I want traffic to my work servers in the range 10.0.0.0/8 to go out over my wireless interface.

In this case - add a permanent (-p) static route using the windows command line pointing traffic to these servers out the wifi interface...

route add 10.0.0.0 mask 255.0.0.0 192.168.2.1 -p

Now all traffic to 10.*.*.* will go out my wireless interface, but everything else will go out my ethernet interface.

Zab

Oh wait, trig might be on to something there. You can configure some VPN systems (the system in work) to disallow the client to connect to anything other than the VPN network. I've come across this with cisco VPNs a number of times. I didn't find a way around it at the time, other than having the administrator on the other side change the config. I don't know which other systems support this feature.

Make sure there isn't a network address clash between your wifi router and work and try pinging your wifi router directly.

_CreeD_

No Snaga is correct, it's just routing. Since he is using a hardware connection dedicated to the VPN split tunneling does not come in to, the device is already terminating the VPN for him and encrypting anything that goes it's way, he just needs to add statics to send work traffic to it and leave the internet Router as the default gateway (also it's a good idea to enter the TCP/IP Advanced properties and untick Automatic Metric, set the one for the VPN higher (say 20, and the main internet connection to 10), not absolutely necessary if you get your static routing right but I always like to do this to prioritize the links anyway, if you did leave 2 default gateways configured the NIC with the lowest metric wins - you can only do this if you use static IPs though)

preilly79

Previous posters have said everything I think you need to get it up and running, so what I would do in this case is set the metric of the wireless connection to a lesser cost than the wired connection so it's treated as the default route for all traffic. I'd then add a static route defining the remote network on the other side of your VPN along with the gateway address and interface to use.

That should work.

Do you actually want to be connected to both the wired and wireless network at the same time or are you doing this to split the routing? Does the VPN endpoint device happen to have a WLAN port?