3rd
Why routing is good on a home network
This is a follow up post to the one I made a few days ago about enabling RIP on my DSL router and Wireless AP.
You might ask, why in the hell I would enable a routing protocol on a home network. Good question. In this instance, it’s a good idea for the particular setup that I have. The DSL connection is using PPPoA, which IMHO sucks but it is what it is. So the Cisco DSL router has 2 interfaces active right now. The WAN interface which gets a dynamic IP assigned every few days and normally it changes. The Ethernet interface is static and is addressed as 10.x.x.x. It is connected to the Linksys AP which also has 2 interfaces. One of which is in the 10.x.x.x range connected to the Cisco and a 192.x.x.x addressing scheme used for wireless and ethernet connected devices behind it. This is known as double NAT (Network Address Translation).
Because the PPPoA address often changes, using RIP or OSPF or some other protocol is a better option than static routing given that with the WAN interface changing, I would have to manually reconfigure the routes every time I received a new address when the lease expired. RIP notices the change and within about 30 seconds will update the routing table without any manual intervention. Not having this route to the WAN interface on the Wireless AP is what was keeping me from accessing the internet but able to reach other LAN devices when I originally set it up.
