Accessing a different routers web management page

My setup is the following.

BT Smart Hub
| -----> TP-Link Router ----> Devices (mobiles, laptops, now tv box).
|
|-----> Netgear XR500 ----> Xbox One and Gaming Laptop.

Now on both routers I have DHCP enabled as the bandwidth control on the TP-Link I do believe will only work if this enabled and the same goes for the XR500.

I'm able to connect to the internet without any issues and the bandwidth control on both is working as it should be, but I'm wondering how I can access the other routers web management page on the router I'm not connected to (i.e if I'm connected to the TP-Link router, I'd like to access the Netgear web management page and vice versa).

I'm connected primarily through a Ethernet cable to the Netgear XR500 and can connect wireless to the TP-Link router to access both if need be, but I kind of want to avoid all this, is there a way to do it?

If you were to enable remote management of the routers it would be possible, but generally the usual advice is to not use remote management as it can expose a router to the wider Internet, but if as it seems you are running double NAT should be ok

Each of your routers will have a fixed IP address, so why can't you, from a PC/laptop/tablet/etc device on the LAN, put either address into a browser and access the webpage of that router?
Am I missing something?

If you directly connect to the BT hub then you would be able to connect to both of the downstream routers. You might be able to do what you want if either of the other two routers allows you to configure static routes.

It should be possible to enable remote management only from specific IP addresses/ranges. Netgear and TP Link routers I've used in the past have this option.

Both routers should have remote management enabled only from the BT Smart Hub's LAN IP range.

It should then be possible to manage either internal router through their WAN interfaces regardless of where the admin computer is connected internally.

I've been able to access the other router's web management page if the connections has been modem\router > router 1 > router 2.

But now the connection is modem\router > router 1 > Ethernet port 1, router 2 > Ethernet port 2.

As my laptops is primarily connected to router 1, if i wanted to change something on router 2, and typed in the ip address for the router I get

This site can�t be reached
xxx.xxx.xxx.xx took too long to respond.
Try:

Checking the connection
Checking the proxy and the firewall
Running Windows Network Diagnostics
ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT

So would need to either take the Ethernet cable out of router 1 and plug it into router 2 or connect to router 2 wirelessly.

What I'm looking to do is to make things a little easier to connect to router 2 from router 1 and vice verse.

That certainly was an idea but as I game a lot on the Xbox One, and with games like Call of Duty where speeds not the issue but jitter\bufferbloat, I want to measure what I'm getting on the laptop is going to be similar on the Xbox, as the Netgear router is the new XR500 which has anti bufferbloat sliders, I wouldn't be able to get the right settings if the laptop was connected to the smart hub

Will certainly have a look at remote management

All the help has been much appreciated

So if you connect your laptop to the XR500 can you not configure a static route on the XR500 which points to the IP address that the BT Hub has assigned to the TP-Link? You would need to enable remote management on the TP-Link.

Put the 3 routers on diff subnets or VLANs so they don't get confused, e.g.:

• BT SH on 192.168.1.* with its gateway at 192.168.1.254
• TP-Link on 192.168.2.* with its gateway at 192.168.2.1
• Netgear on 192.168.3.* with its gateway at 192.168.3.1

On the BT SH fix or reserve the IPs of:

• TP-Link to 192.168.1.2
• Netgear to 192.168.1.3

Then you can address the 3 routers from anywhere as:

• BT SH as 192.168.1.254
• TP-Link as 192.168.1.2 or 192.168.2.1
• Netgear as 192.168.1.3 or 192.168.3.1

Why don't you handle all your traffic through the Netgear and bin the TP-Link?

all devices -> Netgear -> HomeHub

In effect you'll be using the hub as a modem basically. The way the anti-bufferbloat algo works is that it's called 'fair queue / controlled delay' or fq_codel. I don't know what the sliders do, because the whole beauty and point of fq_codel is that it's zero-config: it just needs to bandwidth benchmarking.

At the moment, once you download something massive on your non-game devices, the Netgear can't do anything about bufferbloat for your game devices, because the fq_codel isn't operating on them. In effect you've got a tollgate on your game devices and an open highway on your other devices, so your pings will be increasing as if you only had the HomeHub. If it also handles the non-game devices then it's going to be far more effective for you.

Another thing that's happening is you're double-NATing. This shouldn't normally increase latency, but it's a router hop, and a router hop means CPU usage (within the router). Never underestimate the crapness of an ISP-supplied router. If you want, you can bin the Home Hub too by getting a DSL modem like a Draytek Vigor 130 connected between the Netgear and your phone jack.

Edited by zzing123 (Fri 04-May-18 21:19:21)