Dual Router VPN setup

[lazerbrains]

I have an Apple Airport Extreme and a Linksys WRT 1900 ACS. I have been running the Apple AE for years, I am looking at adding he Linksys to the network as a dedicated VPN network. I have added a switch and the new router. It looks like this:

ISP Modem --> Switch --> Port 1 goes to Apple AE
--> Port 2 goes to Linksys

The apple router is acting as DHCP and NAT and it's LAN IP is 10.0.1.1 and the new Linksys is 192.168.1.1. I can login to the Linksys router, but I cannot get on the internet. I am not sure how I should have this second router setup.

1) Should it be acting as it's own DCHP server, or should I turn that off?
2) Does it matter that it is on a totally different IP range?
3) Would I be better off daisy chaining the routers together instead of going through the switch?

Any insight on what I should try to get this online would be helpful.

 

[bill001g]

If the device you call a "modem" really is a modem then you can not hook 2 routers to it. Most ISP only give you a single IP address so only 1 of your 2 routers would get a IP address.

Still lets say you did hook it up that way where do you intend to plug your PC in. How do you plan to get it connected to both routers.

Although there are couple ways to do this the simple way is to use only a single router. Your run modem---vpn router---switch----multiple PC. You can configure the vpn to only send certain PC though the vpn, you can also allow it to by pass for certain web sites. Netflix for example refuses to run on vpn so you would want that traffic to bypass even though it is not as simple as saying "netflix bypasses vpn"

If you want to keep the apple router you can run modem--apple--vpn---devices. This would allow devices that do not need the vpn to be connected to the apple.

There are other methods but they get very messy on the client end when the client has to know there are 2 routers.

 

[lazerbrains]

Thanks for the input. The second way you recommended is pretty close to what I have except the switch is between the modem and the two routers splitting that incoming internet signal. One piece of information I left out in my initial post is that this setup was working with the Linksys Factory firmware on the the Linksys router. I had two wireless networks up and running at the same time. Once I upgraded the firmware on the router to DD-WRT, then the internet stopped working. I can still login to the router over wifi, but I cannot access the internet. That is why I thought it might be a subnet or DNS problem. But I just don't know enough about having two networks running off the same modem to know how to set them up correctly.