Consumer routers: Can WAN side IP addr. be non-routable?

[stevech]

Consumer routers: Can WAN side IP addr. be non-routable?

Such as WAN side is 192.168.0.x and LAN side is 192.168.1.x.
Or even 192.168.1.x on both WAN and LAN?

Reasoning: When my beloved (not) TWC internet services is down once again, I can plug the ethernet cable from a Sierra Wireless cellular router into the TWC router's WAN port. Then I don't have to deal with the switches in my LAN, my normal router's DHCP reservations, etc.

I wonder if NATing from non-routable to/from non-routable is valid/supported.

 

[System Error Message]

if the WAN side and LAN side are different networks than it will be routable and from what you're saying you want to use another internet service which means you will have double NAT. When both IP addresses are the same they will still be routable but in a weird way such that packets can go both ways so if you ping you will get a reply and a timeout/host unreachable in different replies.

Instead of dealing with double NAT you should consider dual WAN with both load balancing and failover,

basically just plug them together and enjoy internet through double NAT and it will work as long as your TWC LAN uses a different ip network to your Seirra wireless LAN. Not exactly a good solution though you could go with configurable but it depends on the kind of things you want and how much skill and knowledge you have in configuring routers.

 

[stevech]

I have a Cradle point router with a USB port for a cellular modem and it has fail-over, fail-back. But I no longer have a 4G cellular modem; only the Sierra Wireless cellular router (it has one LAN port). As to a dual ethernet WAN router... usually these are non-WiFi and rather costly.

I suppose the best is to change the Sierra Wireless to say 192.168.0.x and leave TWC as 192.168.1.1. Manually connect the Sierra to the WAN port of WiFi router when TWC's WAN goes down.

When TWC goes down (too often) for upstream-only, we lose phone, Internet and set top box's switched digital video (SDV) channels. Of course, much of what we watch and DVR is on SDV!

thanks

 

[System Error Message]

This may interest you.
http://routerboard.com/RB750Gr2 for $60 and it is configurable running the same routerOS as everything mikrotik sells. Doesnt come with the board by itself but i dont think you're planning to use metaRouter functionality so 64MB is quite enough. In terms of connections it will handle the NAT limit easily and will also do dual WAN easily with VLANs and all that stuff. mikrotik routerOS can be used with google fibre properly by applying priority for that odd bit needed. Its wired only i think. If you have the skill you could go for it and it is rated to use 4W and has POE in. you can get cheaper if you dont need gigabit ethernet ports.

If you have an extra PC that has 3 NICs pfsense or a UTM would be a candidate.

RouterOS demo is at demo.mt.lv and they're also looking at introducing a virtualised version of their OS for testing which you can actually configure.

 

[stevech]

Mikrotik ... I used them on a project once and I blacklisted them for knowingly selling us very buggy routers.
Maybe this was a flyer, or maybe they finally have enough revenue to do QA.

 

[System Error Message]

Mikrotik ... I used them on a project once and I blacklisted them for knowingly selling us very buggy routers.
Maybe this was a flyer, or maybe they finally have enough revenue to do QA.

Ive used them in a lot of different situations and they've done alright except for their access list for their web proxy. Make sure to use stable firmware not RC or beta and it will be very stable. But yes support is very poor or non existant just like any consumer router company. Mikrotik and Ubiquiti are basically the enterprise routers without the support.

If you think routerOS is very buggy it might be possible to install openWRT on it.