Advice on how to set up two Wireless Routers to a single ISP Modem

LeatherNeck

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Jan 16, 2001
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I have a friend with a family who is living with his mother and they share a single WiFI router.

He wants to set up OpenDNS for his family so he can set up a profile to block certain content from his kids (e.g. Youtube) but, if he set that up on the main router/modem in the home then his mother would be affected.

I've been trying to figure out a way to set up a second WiFi router to connect to the first WiFi router but have it act not in Bridge mode but as a router. The primary WiFi router would be SSSID: Mom and computers/devices could connect to it but it would use the ISP assigned DNS server.

The second router would be SSID: Family and all who connected to it would be using OpenDNS as the static DNS.

Could the second router be plugged into the first router and have it's IP assigned by the first but still act as a router and have it's DNS set to a static DNS (OpenDNS)?
 

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
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Sep 28, 2005
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what you want is a vlan...
There are proper ways to set one up and the mickey mouse simple way.

In your case, the proper way maybe massively overkill, because it seems like you just want to block access to a few clients on the network from outside IP's like a parental lock.

If you want to read up more on the proper way, because maybe your like me, and just do things excessively.
https://www.techjunkie.com/how-to-set-up-a-vlan/


The easier (mickey mouse way) way would be as you said to get 2 routers, and under DHCP server set the subnet for each one.

So basically:

Modem (192.168.1.0) -> Router (Master 192.168.1.1) -> all the PC's you want unrestricted under 192.168.1.x subnet set by DHCP

Router (Master) -> Router (Guest 192.168.2.1) Make sure you plug in Router M any port 1-5 to Wan Port on Router G. By doing this you will make Router G think Router M is a Modem.
Assign DHCP Server to hand out IP's in subnet 192.168.2.x

Then people who connect to the guest router will be blocked under parental rules for the guest router, and people who connect to the master one will be unrestricted.

Make sure you assign the DHCP on the routers before you connect them live to your network, because you may run into IP Conflicts.... example.... if both routers have a default IP of 192.168.0.1 then you will not be able to access one of them.

Another slight inconvience with this method, is that you need to be on the subset network to access the router.
For example, you would need to be on 192.168.2.x network to get on the router web gui for that network. You can not access 192.168.1.1 on a 192.168.2.x ip and vice versa.
 
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