Ok so the main wireless router in the house in downstairs and can't be moved. At the moment I have a long ethernet cable running up through the house to the pc which is fine. However I now have an xbox too sitting right next to the pc and the wireless signal isn't really of good enough strength. I've got an old router knocking around so is it possible to connect this to the first one and then plug in the computer and xbox into the second router? Something like this: phone line=>1st router=>2nd router=>pc + xbox
Or plug your 360 into the computer and bridge your two wired connections. Otherwise yes, disable DHCP on the 2nd router and it should work fine.
And if you wanna get rid of that long ethernet cable, you could get some powerline ethernet bricks to use your house's electrical wiring to connect your two routers up.
Tried those.. not very great... maybe it depends on the power 'quality' that you have in the house?! If you don't need wireless, you can buy a switch instead of a router. It's cheaper and those the trick. Getting a router and doing what adam said, is essentially making a router into a switch. If you prefer, you can buy your equipment on a local store, so that you can easily return them if it fails to achieve your goal.
Thanks for all your responses guys. What I've done is just plugged the two routers together and plugged both the pc and xbox into the second router which seems to be working. Only have one Ethernet port on the pc so bridging is out. Another question though will this second router now have it's own IP address? If so how do I find it out? It would be good if I could utilise the wireless on the second router for more coverage in the house. Although I'm not too fussed if it's too tricky or whatever....
Dunno, different countries, different wiring standards maybe?? I find them comparable to Wireless G in throughput, more than enough for internet and gaming, and I've lived in three houses where I used them, the oldest around 14 years old. Yeah it will have. Best way to find it is to plug your PC into it, and it only, and let it get an IP address. Whatever your default gateway is, will be your router. Go to that IP in your browser etc etc. If its the same IP as your current router, you'll need to give it a new IP. .254 or .2 in the range will work. Remember to disable DHCP!
Sorry for the double post but I'm having some problems here..... If I plug just the second router into the comp and nothing else and go to 192.168.1.1 in a browser I get the web page unavailable page. Running windows 7's troubleshooter gets me ""Local Area Connection" doesn't have a valid IP configuration". Been googling for a while and not found a solution yet. Any ideas?
Because if you've turned off DHCP, your PC now doesn't have an IP so you'll need to set a static one manually.
Cheers guys did a factory reboot which sorted that out. Changes the IP address and disabled DHCP. Looks like I'm all up and running! You guys rock!
in reality, you dont need to turn off dhcp, unless you have other machines connected to the first router that you need to access from machines on second router or vice versa it does of course give you a double nat, which could introduce problems with some applications. although that said, i have successfully run this setup in the past
Actually, yes you do. Two routers giving out DHCP on the same LAN, will not work, as it will conflict. Although, having taken your quote here slightly out of context you're thinking that the WAN port will be used on the second device, but it won't be. The LAN ports are going to be linked together
thats what i meant, lol and actually, you can have 2 dhcp servers, providing you use rip ;-), although this does need setting up properly to work.
That one is news to me, I must admit. You can have 2 dhcp servers on the same LAN providing you use a different subnet for each, of course.
As a continuation to this, is it possible to use a 2nd router to extend my wireless coverage? Currently, my router is in the living room at the front of the house, and I have converted a bedroom to a pc room upstairs at the back of the house. I have an ethernet cable running up into the loft, and back down into the bedroom, into a switch. The wifi signal though is pretty weak upstairs. Could I link the router into the switch, to create a repeater station?
Yeah. On your second router, set up the SSID and password the same, set the channel different, at least 3, and preferably 6, channels apart. Won't hugely matter for two APs, but generally, the same channel shouldn't overlap another. It should roam between them as you move around the house.
If it helps there's an image showing the channels so you can avoid overlapping. http://jpoa.info/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/80211-frequency-channel-map.jpg
