I searched for this question and didn't find a complete answer so here's my issue. (Any help greatly appreciated!)
I have 2 networks.
NETWORK 1:
EOC connection fro ISP going into a router (not the RV042) with a static WAN address from ISP. This router is hooked up to a switch that all the computers are connected to. All the computers on this network are using 192.168.1.x addresses. Most of these addresses are static, but the router is running DHCP in case we hook up temporary computers like laptops or client machines to this network.
NETWORK 2:
DSL connection going into a router (not the RV042) with a static block of IPs from ISP. (8 IPs, 5 usable for the WAN interface, 1 static IP is being used for WAN interface). This router has a VPN connection set up for remote access to the linux machines on this network. This router is running DHCP on the LAN interface for this network with addresses 172.16.1.x. All the computers on this network are tied together with another switch, completely seperate from the 192.168.1.x network switch.
PROBLEM:
We needed computers on the 192 network to be able to access computers on the 172 network. Someone decided to just run a cat 5 cable from the 192 switch to the 172 switch (not the routers, the switches). This "worked" - badly. Appearently there is a DHCP conflict (or something else going on) that was causing the router on the 172 network to try and assign addresses to the 192 network computers, and it was also "resetting" a connection about once an hour. This crashed our server on the 192 network. I disconnected that cat 5 cable between the two siwtches, and now each of the two networks are working properly, but they are now completely isolated from one another.
I need to create a bridge between the 2 networks so that machines on the 192 network can access machines on the 172 network while filtering out DHCP broadcasts from either network router to the other network. (I may need to filter out other protocols as well, but don't know yet.)
So, I see 3 potential ways of doing this but don't know if they will work:
1) Can I just set up multiple subnets on the LAN interface of the RV042 and just run 2 cat5 cables from each switch on the two networks to the LAN ports of the RV042?
1a) If I do set up multiple subnets on the LAN interface of the RV042, do I need to assign the two ports to different VLANs? (I don't see any way to set each port to a specific IP address.)
2) Can I set up the 2 WAN ports on the RV042, one static for each network, and will the RV042 route traffic from 1 WAN port to the second WAN port?
3) Is there some other way I should consider setting this up?
Finally, someone mentioned that once I get the RV042 set up correctly as a bridge, I will need to route 172 addresses on the 192 network to the 192 interface of the RV042 via the DHCP router on the 192 network, and conversely, I will need to route 192 addresses on the 172 network from the DHCP router to the 172 IP interface of the RV042. I think this will be easy enough to set up in each of the DHCP routers...
I know this is complicated, but I'm sure the solution is probably easy once I know wHat ports to plug the 2 cat5 cables into (on the RV 042), and what settings to put into each router.
Thanks again!
PS: there seem to be a LOT of people with a similar issue, so any solution will help out a lot of people beside me.
