Bridging a seperate subnet's shared directories with the parent network

[dragon2309]

As the title says, how do you, or is ther any way to, bridge or join together the shared documents on a subnet with the ones currently on the main network...

Basically, what ive got going is a laptop acting as an internet gateway, wirelessly connects to the parent network and wired distributes that connection to two 24 port switches. Plugged into these switches are about 5 test computers, as they are on the switches it creates a new subnet for them, using the switches IP as the default gateway etc...

The PC's on the main network can share files fine and the PC's on the seperate subnet can share files fine, but only between themselves, what i need to be able to do is share files, folders, printers etc... between the subnet and the main network.

Anyone any ideas?

dragon2309

 

[tlarkin]

well there are several ways to go about this, and I am not your network administrator nor have I been to your site, so I will just push you in the right direction instead of giving direct advice.

Basically you can set up a few things...You can bridge them with a device, you can route the two together with a router, or you could proxy them in, or have them all authenticate into the same domain, and let the domain controller take care of it.

A few notes, bridging does not block multicasting or any broadcast for that matter, so network traffic could be a huge issue, ie bad performance. A proxy would be ideal since you are basically telling the router to listen for broadcasts from that subnet and then connects them accordingly so it is never constantly broadcasting. You can set up filters for the proxy as well to make network traffic more effecient.

Now you are going to need to build a box or get a high end switch/router to accomplish this. I googled a few links to get you started.

http://www.moonblinkwifi.com/routervsbridge.cfm

http://tcpmag.com/qanda/article.asp?EditorialsID=300

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/iaabu/localdir/ld20rns/ldicgd/ld3_ch3.htm