# Access a shared folder in a different subnet which is reachable through a bridge?



## mrxcol (Sep 9, 2011)

We have two offices connected through a network bridge. They both have different subnetworks. We want to be able to share files, folders and printer between them because one office needs to print in the other one for example. 

We're currently not able to see any other resources from the other side which if i remember ok from my network classes is one of the features of a bridge (like filtering some broadcast) so a dhcp request, for example, can't pass to the other side to prevent too much traffic unnecessary in the channel. 

I would like to know ? do somebody knows which are the services/protocols filtered by a network bridge ? can they be configured by our provider ? the bridge is a mpls although i think this is transparent.

How can i try to make it work ? i assume that, although i realize it could be counterproductive but in this case it's needed, some organizations might have it: they have offices all around the country each with a different subnet and you're able to see the whole network.

Please, beside setting up a wins server , any other idea ?


----------



## JimFlagg (Aug 23, 2011)

Bridges are only layer 2 devices. They will not allow two different subnets to talk to one another. For that you need a layer 3 device like a router.

I would simply setup all of your computers on the same subnet. Go into one DHCP server and configure its range to (1-127) and the other DHCP server (128-254). This way the computers are on the same subnet, you have two different DHCP servers and they can all talk to each other.

This divides the number of hosts in half though. How many devices do you have?



> so a dhcp request, for example, can't pass to the other side to prevent too much traffic unnecessary in the channel.


A router or a firewall will do this.

The problem is your DHCP request are still going to get through your bridge. I think you are going to need a router in addition to your bridge.

Good Luck.


----------



## JimFlagg (Aug 23, 2011)

Here this should help...

How to Connect Computers That Are on 2 Different Subnets | eHow.com


----------



## mrxcol (Sep 9, 2011)

Well maybe i didn't provide more detailed info:

We have a provider which gives us two devices (i don't know exactly which ones because i'm not in the premises) but afaik these are just some mpls edge devices. In fact i just got to know they're mpls because of a traceroute i made 

The path was already configured by the provider we just get one ethernet port each side with an address in the local subnet. Each network is in a different subnet because we had it like that before due to some old vpn stuff (very quickly: we had openvpn in one server in one side to allow pc's from one network to connect to the other but iptables forced us to either do a major kernel/iptables upgrade (which was beyond our linux knowledge) or put different subnets)

They're not not too much devices (like 6 pc's one side and 9-12 in the other). We could switch them to a single subnet. Anyway i would have to ask my friend because afaik management is ... 'complicated' which you explain them why you have to revert back to the old config and that they have to send a person to the other city to do the process, etc. ...

So let me continue: we don't really care about having a sing dhcp. We could live with both, it doesn't matter. But we need to have a pc in one network to be able to access a shared folder and print in a printer in the other network. That's all. 

I mentioned the dhcp stuff because afaik that file/folder/printer sharing info is passed through netbios and this one is through broadcast (am i right?). But also, afaik our 'mpls bridge' blocks that traffic to prevent the traffic.

We have a static route in each side so we have the regular connectivity between pc's. I can ssh to a server in any side, ping, etc. But no shared folders.

Maybe the term 'bridge'is not correct. A bridge is transparent isn't it ?

Thanks for any info. Notice that i tried accessing \\ip-address\shared_folder and it doesn't pass. Can i ask the provider to 'allow' netbios to pass or that is impossible ?

Fyi:


192.168.170.0 --- 192.168.170.6 (mpls edge) ----provider network ---- (mpls edge) 192.168.169.6 - 192.168.169.0


----------

