VPN problems when daisy chaining two wireless routers

[awaraarawa]

Greetings!

I have recently daisy chained a Netgear router to a TP-Link router to extend wireless signal from one end of my house to the other end. Ever since I have been experiencing problems with establishing a VPN connection. I am pretty sure the daisy chaining of the second router is the cause of my VPN problems. Here are the details of my setup:

Here's my basic network setup:

Time Warner Internet Connection --> Motorola SB5100 Cable Modem --> TP-Link Gigabit wireless dual band router (WDR3600 N600)

WAN Connection:
Dynamic IP; ISP provided DNS

LAN Wireless Connection:
2.4 Ghz
SSID: ABCD
Channel 11
Security WPA/WPA2
Mode: 11bgn mixed

5Ghz
SSID: ABCD
Channel 161
Security WPA/WPA2
Mode: 11an mixed

DHCP:
Router/Gateway Address: 192.168.0.4
DHCP IP Address Range: 192.168.0.11 - 192.168.0.35
Subnet Mask: 255:255:255:0

This works well except when I get to the other end of my house, the signal gets weak and I tend to drop connections. So, I daisy chained a Netgear Wireless Dual Band Router to this setup to extend the wireless signal and the updated setup looks like this:

Time Warner Internet Connection --> Motorola SB5100 Cable Modem --> TP-Link Gigabit wireless dual band router (WDR3600 N600) --> NetGear RangeMax Dual Band wireless router (WNDR 3300)

Router 2 (NetGear WNDR 3300) is connected to Router 1 (TP-Link WNDR 3600) via a LAN port to LAN port Ethernet cable connection through a powered TrendNet Gigabit switch (TEG-S5g) .

All of the previous WAN/LAN/Wireless settings are the same. The NetGear router has the following configuration:

Internet IP: Get dynamically from ISP (the ISP I guess is going to be Router 1?)
DNS: Get automatically from ISP

SSID (11N): ABCD (same SSID as Router 1)
SSID (11G): ABCD (same SSID as Router 1)
11N Channel: 44 / 5.220 GHz
11G Channel: Auto
Security: WPA-PSK [TKIP] + WPA2-PSK [AES]
Mode: Upto 270Mbps at 5GHz and 54Mbps at 2.4GHz

LAN Setup:
Router Address: 192.168.0.8
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
DCHP: Turned off

Everything works well with this setup. All devices get connected without a problem. No issues with weak signals or dropped connections. The only problem I have experienced is VPN connections.

When I try to establish a VPN connection to my office using my work laptop (Windows 7), it connects normally on first attempt. However, after a few minutes (3 - 5 minutes), the connection drops with an Event ID (from Windows Event viewer) of 20226 and following information (from Windows Event viewer):

CoId={856F1AA9-CFAB-483D-80A0-F79CBBAAEF2C}: The user XXXX\YYYY dialed a connection named Remote Access which has terminated. The reason code returned on termination is 829.

A subsequent attempt to establish the VPN connection is never successful. If I power down the Netgear router, my VPN connection can be established immediately
on first attempt. This is why I think it is the daisy chaining that is causing my VPN problems. I would appreciate any inputs/suggestions/guidance you can share to get this resolved. Until I fix it, I just turn off the NetGear router whenever I need to establish the VPN connection.

 

[drunkducki]

Did you assign a default gateway for the netgear to 192.168.0.4?

 

[awaraarawa]

If I have set the router to obtain its Internet IP address dynamically from the ISP, would it not receive the gateway information from Router 1 which is 192.168.0.4? See graphic from NetGear manual at the following link:

http://documentation.netgear.com/wndr3300/enu/202-10301-01/images/menuBasicSettings_noLogin.jpg

The other option would be to use a static IP address which means I would configure it with an address of 192.168.0.8 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 and gateway address of 192.168.0.4. Please advise if I need to do this.

UPDATE: Have tried it with the static option. No change in result. My VPN still got dropped.