Problem using Netgear DG814s to connect a common LAN between two houses

I have a shared LAN setup and common workgroup with the guy next door (ie
Cat 5 cable connecting the two houses) which, until recently, linked two
hubs - one in each house. This setup has been working fine for over a year,
with the PCs in both houses forming a common workgroup.

We've now (finally) had our exchange upgraded to ADSL and have replaced the
hubs with Netgear DG814 modem routers - the trouble is that neither of us
can see the other's systems any longer. Each house has its own DG814,
connected to different ISPs (mine is a 512k connection & the other a 1M).

We started by running them both as part of the same address range and
subnet - with this setup we can ping each others DG814 but not any of the
PCs attached to it in the other house. When we do this, ARP -a shows that
the MAC address has been found for the relevant adapters, but ping just
gives 'no response' (NAT firewall interfering & preventing the response ?)

We then tried creating a separate subnet for each house, on the assumption
that communications could then be resolved through the routing tables in the
two connected DG814s. When we do this, however, any pings for the other
subnet just get sent to our respective ISPs. We've tried setting both RIP-1
and RIP-2 on, but the results are the same - each DG814 continues to think
that it needs to route the traffic for that subnet to the ISP.


The questions I'm looking for help on, are

a) Can we use the DG814s to connect the LAN between our houses at all, given
that they include built in router and firewall function which might prevent
communications ? (ie a hub would work, a switch would work, but not a DG814)
b) If we can use them, how do we configure them (and the network) to make
this possible ?

Thanks for any advice,

Ian Greenslade

Ian Greenslade <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
<snip>
> The questions I'm looking for help on, are
>
> a) Can we use the DG814s to connect the LAN between our houses at all, given
> that they include built in router and firewall function which might prevent
> communications ? (ie a hub would work, a switch would work, but not a DG814)
> b) If we can use them, how do we configure them (and the network) to make
> this possible ?
>
Did you try just setting static routes for each of the machines on the
other segment?