Windows 7 - Network Connections: Configure 2 gateways with 2 WiFi adapters
nonstop301
51° 27' 24.87" N // 0° 11' 38.91" W Member
Hello everyone,
I would like to ask for some advice on how to configure windows 7 network connections properly in order to maintain two wifi connections each one connected to a different gateway (router).
Each time I try this with the two separate WiFi adapters, I always lose the initial WiFi connection (WiFi adapter 1 to gateway 1) when I try to connect to a different gateway with the second WiFi adapter (WiFi adapter 2 to gateway 2)
Each gateway has a different IP range and gateway 1 operates under 19x.16x.0.xxx and gateway 2 is configured to use 19x.16x.11.xxx. Despite the different ranges, I am only able to get connected to just one gateway at a time.
Any suggestions and help to resolve this would be greatly appreciated and I would like to thank you in advance for your comments.
All the best,
n301
Comments
Only a single gateway is used for all destinations that are not located on the subnet, even when you configure multiple default gateways. An example of this is when a computer is connected to both an intranet with multiple subnets and the Internet. With a default gateway configured for both adapters, you can either communicate with all computers on the Internet or all computers on the intranet, but not both.
The best way to get around this, in my experience, is to configure the default gateway for the adapter that's connected to the internet, and not configuring a default gateway for the other adapter. Just use static routes or dynamic routing to add the routes for the other disjointed network to the local IP routing table. If you're using RIP for IPv4, turn on RIP Listener so your computer can "listen" to the other routes brodcasting RIP messages and then add the routes to your routing table.
Hi Requit,
Thank you for your prompt reply and suggestions. I'll follow your advice and configure the adapter connected to the internet as the default gateway and then setup a static route for the other adapter connected to the internal network.
To that effect, I would like to ask you whether the static route has to have a different subnet mask from the default gateway or not.
I would certainly appreciate if you could also provide some steps on how to properly configure dynamic routing to add routes to the local IP routing table because it's something I have never attempted before.
Many thanks for your time and I would like to thank you in advance for your kind assistance.
I'm pretty sure the subnet mask needs to be the same, but I could be wrong. As for adding dynamic routes, open a command prompt and type: route -p add [destination] [mask ] [gateway] [metric ] [if ]. This here is a good reference for the various ways you can use the route command.
Hello again Requit,
Thank you once again for your assistance. I followed your suggestions and was able to configure the two wifi adapters successfully and when both are connected to their respective gateways, the concurrent connection to both is stable.
Following on with this sort of network setup, I would like to ask yourself or anyone else in the forum here whether there's a way to properly configure Internet sharing between the two adapters now.
The default gateway is the one that is also connected to the internet whereas the other gateway is just a local intranet.
I tried to enable internet sharing on the wireless connection which is connected to the internet and despite selecting to share it with the wireless local intranet connection, it seems to have no effect and the computer connected to the wireless connection on the intranet is not able to access the internet at all.
I would like to thank you in advance for your time and suggestions on how to do this properly and I look forward to any helpful hints or comments you can provide.
This link should give you the correct method for turning on Internet Connection Sharing in Win 7.