Connecting two RV082 routers back to back

[phil]

I'm looking for instructions on how to setup and connect two RV082 routers together with a crossover cable between their WAN ports.

This is to connect two separate LANS together via an ethernet connection. For staging we are setting everything up with a crossover cable in our shop.  Ultimately the crossover cable will be replaced by a microwave link between the two LANS several miles apart.  There will be no internet connection.

[Tom Watts]

Hi Phil, is there a particular reason you would want to use RV082 routers for this? Since you don't need NAT function nor firewall (since no internet) I don't think it's the right equipment for the job nor a good price. You may consider a couple SF300-8 switches. They cost about $150 (almost 1/2 price of the router) and will have a much more robust performance and ability to manage traffic.

-Tom
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[phil]

Well, these routers were recommended by the radio system manufacturer and we happen to have them on hand.

[phil]

But anyway, tell me more.  If I use  the switches you suggest, how are they connected to each other?

Do you just treat the second switch as another network device?  And connect them together via the RJ45 ethernet ports on the front?  Would any setup be required?  (All my devices will have static IP addresses.)

[Tom Watts]

Hi Phil, the SX300 series switch can operate in layer 3. The configuration would be pretty straight forward. Basically convert the switch to l3, create 2 vlans on each switch then assign an IP address to each vlan id.

This would give the subnets the ability to route and communicate over the layer 2 radio link. The only drawback, the switch does not have a built-in dhcp server. So you would need an external dhcp server or at least a machine running a dhcp server (which is easy enough to supplement) if your lan clients don't use static IP configurations.

-Tom
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[phil]

Thanks for taking time to answer all these questions.

Every device IP connected will have a static IP address. 

Since the microwave link fucntions just like a standard cat 5 cable, it might be helpful to leave it out of the discussion and treat the switches as if they were sitting on the same bench.  So if they were, how would theybe  physically connected?  Through one of the RJ45 ports on the front?  If so, I would only have 7 available ports and would have to use a bigger switch.

Or can switches be ganged together?

[Tom Watts]

Yep, just through standard rj45.You can buy a 16 port, 24 port, 48 port switches very cheap. A 24 port SF300 is only like $300 may be. A 48 port is like $600 give or take... So it's very inexpensive.

Switches can be cascaded, daisy chained, whatever really. Once you get the layer 3 switch you can even buy cheap unmanaged switches so long as you understand they are only there to service connectivity.

You may want to run the idea across the provider and see what they think.

-Tom
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[phil]

Switches would have been a good alternative except we needed 8 ethernet ports, so 16 port swirtches would have been required.  So the cost is about the same in this situation for 8 port routers.

We have the system working properly now.

This is what we did:

On both routers in "Setup: Advanced Routing"  switch from "gateway" to  "router" , enable RIP and set RIP versions for transmit and receive to  RIPv1.

In "Firewall", disable Firewall

Then in "Setup: Network" make the following settings;

Router 1:

WAN1 IP to static       static      192.168.10.5           with subnet mask of                     255.255.255.252

LAN IP           to                     192.168.1.1                     with subnet mask of                     255.255.255.0

Router 2:

WAN1 IP to static      static     192.168.10.6           with subnet mask of                     255.255.255.252

LAN IP to                     192.168.2.1                     with subnet mask of                     255.255.255.0

With these settings, devices connected to router 1 may have static  addresses in range of 192.168.1.2 through 192.168.1.254 and should have  default gateway set to 192.168.1.1

Devices connected to router 2 may have static addresses in range of 192.168.2.2 through 192.168.2.254

and should have default gateway set to 192.168.2.1

Experts may have some comments to make about firewall settings an so forth but this setup does what we want it to do.