Two LANs sharing one printer

You have to be careful when creating a LAN to LAN bridge. Because once you do, it becomes possible that users on one network *might* end up on the other network. It’s entirely by chance which DHCP server responds first. And inevitably some of your clients will end up crossing over to the other network and using its subnet, its gateway, etc.

What you need is a gateway, one that provides access to the network w/ the printer for the benefit of the network w/o the printer. Now all your clients remain on their respective networks and only use the gateway for accessing the printer.

You could use another router on the 192.168.254.x subnet.

<-- 192.168.0.x –>(wan)[router](lan)<-- 192.168.254.x -->

So the router grabs a WAN IP address from the 192.168.0.x network’s DHCP server. And you assign a static IP on the LAN side in the 192.168.254.x subnet. Let’s say that’s 192.168.254.254.

Finally, you need to tell the clients of the 192.168.254.x subnet how to find the 192.168.0.x subnet.

route -p add 192.168.0.0 mask 255.255.255.0 192.168.254.254

You can either add this to each client of the 192.168.254.x subnet, or if that subnet’s router support the addition of static routes, add it there so you don’t have to manage individual clients.

Of course, you could use a PC for the gateway instead of a router should you find that more convenient. That PC would need a second network adapter and use ICS to create the actual gateway between the networks.

Whichever way you choose, that’s how you have to do it. Use a gateway, not just connect the two networks LAN to LAN. The latter will only create lots of unwanted problems.

Just to be complete, another approach would be to make the printer available over the Internet and port forward through the 192.168.0.x subnet’s router from the WAN side (iow, use the gateway you already have). But my assumption has been you’d prefer to avoid this and keep it all internal. But if you’re willing, it’s certainly possible to make the printer available remotely like any other network device.

Wow! Eibgrad, that's EXTREMELY thorough and helpful. THANK YOU.

I had already considered the last-resort of setting up internet-printing. The down-side of this is that the Home Network, where the printer lives, does not have a static public IP address, so I'd have to try to set up Dynamic-DNS, and I'm not sure the D-Link router supports it.

I have several spare routers, so I will give your suggestion a try. On that basis...

Do I need to set up a static route for the entire 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0 range, or can I route only the single IP of the printer (192.168.0.8/255.255.255.254 ?

And, will I need to configure a reverse static route (will the printer likely require it)?

Thanks again. I look forward to reciprocating by giving advice on other Sub-Forums where my competencies may assist.

If you'd rather create a route solely to the printer, you certainly can:

route -p add 192.168.0.8 mask 255.255.255.255 192.168.254.254

I just find it easier to cover the entire network in case I want access to other resources later (just less changes to deal with), but do whatever you prefer.

You don't need a reverse route unless the printer needs to *initiate* network requests to the 192.168.254.x subnet (not obvious to me why that would be necessary).

For requests that come in from the 192.168.254.x subnet, the printer will only see the IP address of the gateway itself (let's say that's 192.168.0.10) and return messages to that IP address. The gateway will then map that back to the internal IP address of the original client on the 192.168.254.x subnet. IOW, it just works, no need for additional routing.

Neat!

Thanks eibgrad. I'll give it a go during the next couple of days, and report back here.

Best regards,

P.S. Almost forgot, be sure to turn OFF the DHCP server on that additional router! Otherwise it could end up being accidentally used by clients of the 192.168.254.x subnet.

Good point.

You'll be pleased to hear that (almost) the first thing I do when I receive a new router, is to turn off the DHCP serving!

Btw (as if you needed more options, right), you could configure the new router in the reverse, that is, have the WAN face the 192.168.254.x subnet:

<-- 192.168.0.x –>(lan)[router](wan)<-- 192.168.254.x -->

You'd want to make the WAN IP static on the 192.168.254 subnet, so let's say that's 192.168.254.254. You can then use port forwarding behind the WAN to reach the printer. In effect, the port forward becomes your routing mechanism.

The reason I bring it up is because it sounded like you had problems adding static routes to your router. But by facing the WAN to the 192.168.254.x subnet, you avoid having to add static routes at all. Clients of the 192.168.254.x subnet simply address the printer using the 192.168.254.254 IP address. The port forwarding takes care of the rest.

Of course, there are security implications to each configuration. Although since this is all internal, I suspect that's not really an issue.

Anyway, just another possibility. Only you can decide which makes the most sense for your circumstances.