portfowarding with nested routers

I'm going to do my best to explain this, my home network basically is

cable modem----router1 / computer a
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||\ router 2/
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||\ computer b
Vertical lines are for spacing because spaces don’t seem to work on the forums.


I know how to portforward with each of them individually, but when I set them up like that I can’t get computer b to have ports forwarded for games. I believe the reason for it is my internal IP for computer b with both routers like that is 192.168.2.xxx, it is the same when I just use router 2 , but with just router 1 its 192.168.1.xxx. Router 1 can only forward to computer with internal IP 192.168.1.xxx, and router 2 can only forward to computer with 192.168.2.xxx.

Router 1’s IP is 192.168.1.1 and it lets me change it, but when I do I can’t access the router at all(says page cannot be found for both new and old IPs) anything , and I have to hard reset it. If it matters router2’s IP is 192.168.2.1
router 1 is
router 2 is


Is there any ideas on how to get this to work? Please dont tell me to use only 1 router , there is a reason for this setup.

I tried to make this post so it's not so confusing , sorry if I did a bad job.

Well its unfortunate that you are using 2, whatever the reason it makes this into a good sized headache, but whatever.

Ok so let me try and get this straight:

You have router 1 that is connected to the internet, should we assume that it's WAN ip address is something given by the cable modem? hopefuly it isnt a 192.x.x.x number.

As for fowarding. Whatever intnernet ports you want forwarded to computer b you will forward from router 1, to router 2 and have router 2 forward those to computer b. Are you trying to make a connection between computer a and b or from the internet to b?

Also what is the IP you are trying to change rotuer 1's IP to? If you set it to an IP that is not in your subnet then you wont be able to access it. So if you are at computer a whose IP might be 192.168.1.25? and router 1's IP is .1 you cannot set it to anything other than 192.168.1.xxx unless you renew the ip address on computer a to pickup a proper address from the router's dhcp so you can access it again.

As for your IP scheme internally you should make sure that on each side of the networking devices every IP subnet is unique. So for example from cable modem to router 1 it will be 10.0.0.1 (or whatever it is) And for the LAN side of router 1, and computer a it will be 192.168.1.xxx. And the LAN side for router 2 and computer b it will be 192.168.2.xxx then you should not have any conflicts.

One other thing to note is that if you are trying to use the same ports for both computers (i.e. playing the same games on both PCs) then it wont work since you cannot forward the same port to two different IPs.

Did this help any?

cani please ask your reason for two routers?

its just the easiest way is to say use one router as normal and the second as a switch

pik4chu, yes that did help. However router1 will only let me forward to 192.168.1.xxx, and router 2 is 192.168.2.xxx(different subnet? Not sure on all the network terminology). That is what I am trying to figure out how to do.

I was trying to change router 1's IP from 192.168.1.xxx to 192.168.2.xxx, so that’s why I couldn’t change it.

I'm not sure what differentiates a WAN from a LAN other then the size. There are 5 computers hooked up to ours, originally we had 4.Because my parents wanted them on opposite sides of our house , we got the modem in the basement then wired though the walls to our 4 computers. Then my mom got a laptop that she wanted it wireless so we got a wireless router and hooked it up at one of the computers. Because my power supply died I get to use this thing for 2-3 weeks while the psu is rmaed , the graphics card is a NVIDIA 440 128mb ram I think so I’m going to be limited to warcraft 3, thus I want to be able to host. My social life(or lack there of) means nothing else to do

3 of the computers are in one corner, and the wireless router won’t reach from them with decent signal quality to the other side of the house, because of a bad router and a big house, and my mom wants to keep hero laptop in the living room which is near computer b

Left is external IP, middle is devicename, right is internal IP
1.2.3.4 - router1 - 192.168.1.1
192.168.1.2 - router2 - 192.168.2.1
192.168.2.2 - PC with port forward

Set the network up lik thise and portforward the port on router1 to 192.168.1.2 and on router 2 to 192.168.2.2 and it will work. Why you'd wanna do this is a different story. Double NAT is evil.

the hard bit to get your head round is that router 1 sees router 2 as just another network link. Router 2 will therefore have an external IP of 192.168.1.x and an internal IP of 192.168.2.1
As stated before you need to set up the port forwarding so that the packets are passed down the line, bit like pass the parcel.

Internet -> router_1 external -> router_1 internal/router_2 external -> router_2 internal/computer b