In my humble abode, the RT-AC66U is the core of my home network, providing DHCP and Wireless to a plethora of devices. However, I am also running a small home lab which I need to be able to access from my home desktop. Hence the need for static routes.
Specifically, my home lab hosts the following networks; 10.1.0.0/24, 10.2.0.0/24, 10.3.0.0/24. The IP address of my ASUS RT-AC66U is the default one of 192.168.0.1. My desktop is on the 192.168.0.0/24 network.
In order for me to access my lab from my desktop (and from the rest of my home network), I need to tell my ASUS how to route traffic destined for my 10. networks.
In order to accomplish this, we first need to navigate to LAN on the left pane, and then selecting the Route tab.
As shown in the screenshot above, we first need to select the “YES” radio button to “Enable Static Routes”. Next we enter a network ip (or static ip — if that’s what we are up to) into the “Network/Host IP “field. Then we enter our netmask into the field that is not surprisingly labeled “Netmask”. In my case my netmask is 255.255.255.0.
Now we move on to the field labeled “Gateway”. Here we need to enter what the next network hop for that a packet that is needs to route to our lab network. In my environment, this is 192.168.0.11, which is another router.
Then select “LAN” from the drop down as all our traffic will route to the internal LAN only, and not out to the internet or WAN. Now click the plus sign to add your new route.
Now when a packet destined for one of my lab networks outlined above hits my ASUS router, it will be forwarded to 192.168.0.11, which is my lab router.
Note that you can also add static routes via the busybox command line, however I am not going to go into that today. Its simple enough to add them in the WebUI.