DHCP server on two different interfaces

Foks

I have three openwrt routers installed in one home. One is a router with two vlans one for ourselves (5 Mhz) and second for IOT and guests (2.4 Ghz). Two of the AP's are dumbed down to smart switch with bridging the two radio to two different vlans. All the radio are 802.11r enabled and are working fine.

I have many static leases for laptop, syncthing, NAS etc on the main subnet. I was wondering if I should also assign static leases to all the IOT and that way we will know which one is which (just in case). This will put my static address in one GUI, and one file and while it would be fine for the software, my eyes will struggle to figure out which is which. And, I am totally fine doing that as I don't spend bulk of my day staring at those leases!! But I wonder if I could change one of the unmanaged interface on the doub AP to static and dole out leases. And on the main router change that interface for ignore for dhcp and make that interface unmanaged there. There will be only one DHCP server for each vlan but on two different devices.

My question is : (1) Will this work , and (2) is there any pitfall in doing this?

My appreciate any response.

Thanks
Anil

Sure, if you disable the DHCP server on the main router and enable it on another, yes it will work. But you have to make sure it is configured properly -- by default, the DHCP server will point to itself as the same host as a DNS and gateway.

Yes... as stated above, the DHCP server needs to be properly configured or it will cause major issues.
But, more importantly.... why? There is really no reason to do this. It will only make your network administration more complex with zero gain.

Is this a question for me?

This. It is far simpler to provide services to each subnet on your network from one device, and let the dumb AP's/switches be dumb AP's/switches. Keep it simple: assign any guest/IOT static IP's on your main router device, just as you are now doing for your other network interface.

1 Like

Thank you so much to all of you for thoughtful advise. I will abandon my adventurous thoughts. I learned from this and also discovered another software (gns3) to test out network hypothesis without actually building it. Way cool. Thanks again.

Anil

This topic was automatically closed 10 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.