Easy to link 2 routers up together for better coverage??

Phil2008

Phil2008

Phil2008

Soldato
Joined
17 Dec 2004
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How would I do this with 2 wireless routers?

I have a d-link connected up to my pc with a network cable that at 1 end of the house, but now my sisters living at home, and her laptop, has a job to find the nework and keep it connected at the other end of the house. Ive tried one of these http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=416 and getting it as high as poss, but still the signal is very week. so I was thinking if I set another router up in the middle of the house, then it should be covered everywhere, but how would I go about doing this?
 
Disable DHCP on the 2nd router, set it to the same IP range (but a different IP obviously) and enable wireless on the 2nd router. Plug a network cable into the LAN (not WAN) sockets of both routers.

Users can now connect to the 2nd router and piggy-back onto the network without any issues.
 
Phil2008 said:
Anyway to link them up without using a network cable??
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They'd both need to support wireless bridging to do that. Even then i'm not sure they could act both as a bridge and as an access point. Certainly not SOHO off the shelf ones.

there are other ways to boost wifi range such as high gain or directional antennae.
 
Aekeron said:
Disable DHCP on the 2nd router, set it to the same IP range (but a different IP obviously) and enable wireless on the 2nd router. Plug a network cable into the LAN (not WAN) sockets of both routers.

Users can now connect to the 2nd router and piggy-back onto the network without any issues.
Click to expand...
I needed to do the same thing to add a wireless access point to my wired network. It worked like a charm, thank you.

I can't seem to access the wireless router any more via the web page though. Is this normal? It's not a major issue as I'd already set up the wireless part of the network, but I wonder if I will need to plug back into the WAN port and reset the wireless router to access it and change setting in future.
 
When I tried to access the wireless router (ping or webpage) it timed out. I could access the wired router no problem using the wireless link however.

After I posted this it appeared that the wireless router reset itself, because opening up 192.168.1.1 would alternatively open the wired (netgear) and wireless (linksys) page. Trying to reset the wireless (linksys) IP to something other than the default keeps failing (though I haven't tried doing it yet with the wired router switched off). I've since changed the wired router IP to 192.168.2.1 though I now can't access the wireless router on 192.168.1.1?

I've not changed the subnet at all.

I've not changed the firmware on the linksys to Tomato either yet.
 
Darkman said:
opening up 192.168.1.1 would alternatively open the wired (netgear) and wireless (linksys) page.
Click to expand...

So they were both set to the same IP?

I've since changed the wired router IP to 192.168.2.1 though I now can't access the wireless router on 192.168.1.1?
Click to expand...

Because the two of them are now in different subnets. Everything needs to be in either 192.168.2.x or 192.168.1.x, but you can't mix and match without setting up routing between the two.
 
Sorry for the confusion. I will try to clarify what I did.

I set the wired netgear router to 192.168.2.1 so I could configure the wireless linksys one on the default 192.168.1.1 (the wired router was plugged into the WAN port of the wireless one at this point)

I then changed the wireless router to 192.168.1.10, disabled DHCP and moved the cable from the wired router out of the WAN port and into a LAN port as per Aekeron's post above. I changed the wired router back to the default 192.168.1.1 (at this point I could access the wired router settings but not the wireless one)

The wireless had obviously not changed from 192.168.1.1 leading to the problems highlighted.

No matter what I did I couldn't get the wireless router (linksys WRT54GL) to accept the changes, so in the end I hit the master reset button and started again. That seems to have fixed the problem and I've changed it to 192.168.1.10 and left the wired netgear on the default 192.168.1.1 and all seems to be working fine at last.

Would I notice any improvement by changing to the Tomato firmware, as I only want the wireless router to be used as a wireless access point at the moment?

Thank you both for your help.
 
the first router could that be set to wireless as well as the second router,

or can onyl the second router be wireless

reason behind thinking this if they are both set to the same ssid, same channel and same security settings you can double the wifi coverage

or does the first router have to be wired only

cheers

nigel
 
IF you have two routers on the same SSID + same channel etc you'll find there will be a "crap spot" (technical term!) where due to signal strengths being similar the WLAN card will keep dropping and reconnecting as it chops and changes between the access points. I did once have a card get confused and tell me there were two wifi networks on the same SSID with the same MAC address which i put down to interference.
 
tolien said:
They could both run wireless, but you'd probably run into issues with them interfering with each other.
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Could it be done so both had separate SSIDs and were running on different channels?

I am thinking of using my Belkin Pre N to piggy back off the WAG160N to get me a better signal to the bedrooms at the front of the house. Will give this a go :)
 
hi i have done this so that i have a wireless router attached through ethernet to the main router so i get covergae in a hard to reach location. my question is how is port forwarding affected by having to routers? do i only have to open the port in the main router, or do i have to open a port in both routers?

thanks
 
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