FTTN 5268ac DMZ vs. Cascaded Router

[joshandheather]

I'm a new FTTN Sonic customer. I have the 5268ac, which we must use, but I want to keep using my Asus RT-AC3200 wireless router. I am plugging my ASUS router's WAN port into one of the LAN ports on the 5268ac and disabling the 5268ac's wireless. I am realizing that there are a couple of ways to do this.

My initial testing shows that when I set up the AC3200 as a DMZ, the AC3200 WAN IP address is passed through from the 5268ac. When I set up my AC3200 as a cascaded router, it assigns a private ip address to the AC3200 WAN port as it would any other client. I kept the default private network on the 5268ac as 192.168.1.0 and my AC3200 was set to use 192.168.2.0 for its LAN side.

My question is; Is it better to configure the 5268ac to see my other router as a cascaded router or setup my AC3200 as a DMZ device? What does setting it as a cascaded router actually do? Lastly, did I capture the only possibilities?

Thank you in advance for any feedback.

[ninjawizard]

Option 1

DMZ. Put your Asus in the 5268ac's DMZ. Your Asus router would be getting the DHCP WAN Address from the 5268ac. I would set this to static (192.168.1.2). Then let the Asus router do DHCP and NAT and by doing so you would only need to configure the port forwarding through the AC3200 device. That way you avoid a Double NAT issue. If you do have the Asus Router do DHCP and have its own subnet (192.168.2.0) you would also be separating the networks where as any Device connected to the 5268ac (192.168.1.0) would not be able to see devices on your Asus Network. So if you have a Chromecast connected to your Asus Router's WiFi and your PC is connected to the 5268ac's network via Ethernet it wont be able to stream to the chromecast since they are on separate networks.

Option 2

Connect the ethernet cable from the 5268ac's LAN port to the Asus Router's LAN Port. Disable DHCP/NAT on Asus Router. This way your Asus Router essentially acts as a Wireless Access Point. It would be a client on the 192.168.1.x Network and any End devices connected to it would be getting DHCP from the 5268ac and be using that router as the Gateway. This way all your devices connected to both Routers are on the same network (file sharing etc.)

These are probably your 2 best and most commonly used ways to set up 2 Routers together. Essentially a Router segments Networks / Breaks Broadcast Domains.

[ninjawizard]

Also if your Asus has the capability it should be able to be able to put itself into Access Point Mode as one of its Wireless or Network Functions. That way you can avoid doing option 2 since the Asus firmware can do this for you. Check to see if you have this setting before trying to Disable DHCP/NAT on

So connect the ethernet from the 5268ac's LAN port to the Asus Router's WAN Port. Look in Advanced Settings / Administration / Operation Mode. It could be in a different settings I would refer online or do some searching if your unable to find it there. There should be several different modes such as Router Mode , Access Point , Bridge, etc. You'd want to set it as an Access point. Afterwards it should be done. If you don't set a static for the Asus router it will be getting it's address through DHCP.