Can't connect to internet but can connect to network.

[Matthew1133]

Hello all,

Thank in advance.

Currently I have about 200 clients. Some are experiencing problems connecting to the internet but show they are connected to the network. I have a address pool of 192.168.1.5 - 192.168.2.200 setup for distribution from my server. (Subnet: 255.255.252.0) What I discovered is that if the clients are assigned a address of 192.168.1.XXX they can connect to the internet without issue. But if they get assigned a address of 192.168.2.XXX they can't connect. What am I missing?

 

[popatim]

xxx.xxx.1.xxx is what missing and it makes a big difference. If you want the .2 people to access the internet thru the .1 router then you need to bridge the two networks.

 

[Matthew1133]

I shouldn't need to bridge the network since the address pool is coming from the dhcp server. The issue is when the server runs out of 192.168.1.xxx addresses it goes to 192.168.2.xxx. When this happens the computers that get the address 192.168.2.xxx looses internet connection but that is all. They can still talk to all network resources and communicate with all other machines on the network. Just when they try to access the net they get the message that they are not connected. You solution sounds like if I was trying to combine 2 separate networks.

 

[kaleem104]

You are most likely using a subnet of of 255.255.255.0, if you use this in conjunction with 192.168.1.1 default gateway you will have a total of 254 useable addresses that can use this address as a gateway and still connect to the outside network (internet). If you want to have closer to 500 people on the network you need to use a larger pool of network addresses, you will need a different subnet that accommodates that. For example:

If your default gateway is 192.168.1.1 addresses between 192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.254 will work. TO accomplish what you are trying to do you need:

192.168.1.1 as gateway
255.255.254.0 (please note the third set of numbers is changed from 255 to 254) this change allows you to use double the range in address pool. In doing so: your useable network address range will change from 192.168.1.2 to 192.168.2.254

This will essentially bridge your the two set of addresses you are using together. This seems easy and straight forward, but be WARNED there is a challenge here. That is to ensure your DHCP server hands out the new subnet as part of the DHCP assigned addresses. Otherwise if it keeps handing out 255.255.255.0 only the first half of your addresses will work and second half will be back to square one.


But if you have a total of 200 clients on that network than just keep them all in the 192.168.1.x pool, it will make your life much less stressful. You only need to have a large pool using more complicated settings if you have more than 254 clients on the network that need to be on the same subnet.