Connect 2 routers but maintain separate internet?

F4 0

I have 2 routers that share a WAN connection. One router is general LAN, the other is VPN.

For illustration, LAN is 10. and VPN is 198.

If you connect to 198, you get a 198 address, and only use the 198 router's internet. On 198, you see limited network resources into 10.

If you connect to 10, you have no visibility into 198.

I need help with:

Do I connect the 2 routers?

Or

Let independent network NICs be crossover points, meaning 1 PC has 2 NICs, one connected to 10, the other 198?

Or a hybrid?

This is new territory for me, please chime in. The key for me is to always have a PC that has 2 NICs always use the VPN.

I could probably config it at the PC level, but that means people have to remember to do it. Maybe at the router? A specific port configured for this?

SteveITS

@f4-0 If you had one pfSense you could use policy routing, if I followed you correctly.

https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/multiwan/index.html

F4 0

@steveits

I may be interested in knowing more. My ATT router has a 5G port that is unused, but only 1 of the 2 routers has 5G capability, the pfSense. The other router is a MikroTik, but none of it's eth ports have 5G.

For clarity, my pfSense router has a 5G wan input, and 2 10G SFP+ ports as potential outputs.

I wanted perfect separation at the WAN connection, but I could use the 5G ethernet port on the ATT machine and go to the pfRouter, then split the connection to a second router via SFP+ and then to a switch for VPN access via the 2nd SFP+.

This would give me 5G all the way to each router, than separate LANs from there.