Seperating OpenWrt into gateway and everything else

[nachum37]

The router in our network is disconnected most of the time from the L2 switch due to security requirements.

Unfortunately, an essential software does not work well when the network is disconnected from the router, possibly because it relies on L3 broadcast for NetBIOS over TCP.

As a workaround, I would like to configure the existing OpenWrt to only access the internet and add for everything else a new OpenWrt device that will always stay connected to the network even when offline.

How to do it without adding a third NAT?

[egc]

Disable Masquerading on the WAN zone of the new router 2 and set a static route on existing router 1 to route the subnet of router 2 e.g. 192.168.2.0/24 via the WAN IP of the new router 2 e.g. 192.168.1.X

[nachum37]

Thanks.

Is it possible to connect these routers LAN to LAN in the same subnet?

There are a lot of devices with a static IP on the 192.168.1.0/24 already.

[egc]

@nachum37

Is it possible to connect these routers LAN to LAN in the same subnet?

Sure but then you might have the same problem.

That kind of setup is called a Bridged AP over ethernet: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/wifiextenders/bridgedap

[nachum37]

Which problem?

For now, it looks like this. Did I miss something?