Networks Second Router Idea

[Armthehobos]

So here is my scenario.

My room is currently in the basement, at the back of the house. Down here I have a laptop. The laptop connects to the wireless adapter, which is in my brother's room. My brothers room is on the second floor, at the front of the house. So with the distance like this, my wireless connection is, more or less, poop.

I do, however, have an extra router around here somewhere. An extra cable wire is down here as well, so I'm thinking of doing one of these two:

A) Connecting router to cable and connecting the laptop directly to the router
or
B) Connecting router to cable and getting a seperate wireless adapter to connect to router.

Would this work? If so, what kind of setting would I have to change? Things to enable/disable? Which one would be better for a laptop (probably B)? Any and all help would be just fantastic. Pre-emptive thanks for reading and for any help given.

Emote related, its me trying to do anything on the internet with my laptop, including trying to submit this thread.

[rak500]

When you say wireless adapter, do you mean router?

First off, is it a cable or modem router, as in, does it have a RJ11 connector (ADSL modem router) at the back or only RJ45 connectors (Cable router).

Having the router's brand and model would help...

Have a look at your spare router, try to login to the settings page (it usually is in the format 192.168.x.x) on your web browser, if that doesn't work , try to have a look at your LAN/WLAN connection details when connected directly to the spare router and try the gateway IP adress in your internet browser.

If you're lucky, your router might feature WDS (wireless distribution system) which would relay your brtoher's wireless through the router. Technically, you wouldn't have to run any cable provided you place the router in a place where your spare router can connect to your brother's and you can connect to it.
If you're not lucky, you could run a cable from your brother's room to a more adequate place for the spare router, as in where you'll get better connection, disable DHCP server on the spare router and try to get your ip address from your brother's router. If that doesn't work try to assign an IP manually in the same range as your brother's IP.

It's a bit complicated and I probably missed some things. Dear Bit-tech community, please correct me if I missed anything!

Cheers.

[lp rob1]

Originally Posted by rak500

If you're not lucky, you could run a cable from your brother's room to a more adequate place for the spare router, as in where you'll get better connection, disable DHCP server on the spare router and try to get your ip address from your brother's router. If that doesn't work try to assign an IP manually in the same range as your brother's IP.

Also need to change the IP of the spare router to a non-conflicting address - they both probably have the address 192.168.x.1, which then creates dropouts on every ARP request. And after disabling DHCP, you are literally left with a switch, albeit one with wireless capabilities. There is some trick to getting one SSID to work across multiple routers... Just remember that if the spare router does have an RJ45 (Ethernet) port instead of a coaxial (cable) or RJ11 (phone line/ADSL), then do not use it. That particular port will have NAT applied to it, which will ruin your setup!

[rak500]

Originally Posted by lp rob1

And after disabling DHCP, you are literally left with a switch, albeit one with wireless capabilities.

That's what I am doing at the moment. I wasn't clear in my previous message, I was thinking that the spare router had DHCP disabled while having its own SSID set, so that it would basically work as a bridge rather than a router.

[bsp]

If you're going to game, this could push your lag up a bit...

Whilst you may not be able to do all of this stuff, I suggest having a read of the following and in particular the repeater bridge.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Linking_Routers

it can provide you with a few useful ideas and also some of the base knowledge needed for various set-ups.

My current set up involves 3 routers + 1 modem.

The modem manages all the DHCP, DNS etc. but isn't running DD-WRT. My other ones are, but this might soon change.

WDS was problematic for me personally.

[BLC]

My first preference would be to see if your second router supports WDS; if not, see if it's compatible with DD-WRT or the likes... I did the same at home, but my second router does not support DD-WRT; therefore I had to use this idea:

Originally Posted by lp rob1

Also need to change the IP of the spare router to a non-conflicting address - they both probably have the address 192.168.x.1, which then creates dropouts on every ARP request. And after disabling DHCP, you are literally left with a switch, albeit one with wireless capabilities. There is some trick to getting one SSID to work across multiple routers... Just remember that if the spare router does have an RJ45 (Ethernet) port instead of a coaxial (cable) or RJ11 (phone line/ADSL), then do not use it. That particular port will have NAT applied to it, which will ruin your setup!

Originally Posted by rak500

That's what I am doing at the moment. I wasn't clear in my previous message, I was thinking that the spare router had DHCP disabled while having its own SSID set, so that it would basically work as a bridge rather than a router.

My main router is configured with a DHCP IP range of 192.168.1.5 to 192.168.1.50, and its own IP address is 192.168.1.1. The second router then had DHCP switched off and I manually set the IP to 192.168.1.2. I then changed the SSID on the second router to something different (albeit with the same key) and set the WiFi channel to be at least 5 channels above/below the channel used by the main router. Then it's just a case of slinging two cables between them. As mentioned above, if your second router has an RJ45 port for a modem then do not use that port!

This solution works fine for me, and was actually recommended on the Netgear support pages for my spare router.