Home network using two routers

Johnny|lucidcomposure · 1 Aug 2009 at 12:10

Ok I am really struggling here to get this working flawlessly.

I have two Netgear routers.
1, Sky Netgear DG834GT
2, Netgear DG834v2

Now I have the sky one connected to the broadband, my dads computer and my computer (but I want that lead connected to this 2nd Netgear router so I can plug my pc and xbox into that)

I cant for the life of me get this running flawlessly and I dont know if I need to turn things off.

The IP of the Sky router is 192.168.0.1
The IP of the 2nd router has been manually changed to 192.168.0.7

Surely this is enough to work?
It started to but now its buggered up again. Whats conflicting or wrong?

Daegan · 1 Aug 2009 at 12:14

Turn off DHCP on the second router.

Johnny|lucidcomposure · 1 Aug 2009 at 12:38

Tried that however I think it might have something to do with the computer I am on. Isn't there some CMD command to clear the IP addresses or something. My mate who is into IT said do this once and I think it cured it but I cant get hold of him at the moment.

Alexrose1uk · 1 Aug 2009 at 12:50

Are you trying to connect them wirelessly or just use the second router as a switch?

Hairybudda · 1 Aug 2009 at 12:56

Fstop11 said:
Tried that however I think it might have something to do with the computer I am on. Isn't there some CMD command to clear the IP addresses or something. My mate who is into IT said do this once and I think it cured it but I cant get hold of him at the moment.

start->run->cmd.exe

ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
exit

that'll dump your current IP and request a new one, not sure how much it'll help with your networking issue though

Johnny|lucidcomposure · 1 Aug 2009 at 13:22

Just as a switch

Yeah thats the commands. I have tried them before and that fixed it.
Is the only thing on the 2nd router to be disabled be DHCP or whatever its called.

Alexrose1uk · 1 Aug 2009 at 13:44

Not quite.

Set the first router to 192.168.x.1, leave DHCP ON and set its DHCP range to 192.168.x.2-192.168.x.253.
On the second router, turn DHCP off, and manually set its IP to 192.168.x.254 (set its gateway to 192.168.x.1 if it allows but ignore this if it doesnt)

Part of the problem I think you had is your routers either weren't running on the same IP range, or were both trying to assume the position of .1

I use this setup occasionally between a few routers I've got, running off homeplugs to act as additional networking switches

Once this is done, enable and re-enable the network adaptors in the connected computers. This should allow them to reconnect and be reassigned correct details via DHCP.

Fegruson · 1 Aug 2009 at 18:58

DO you not need to set up the second router as an access point, so the IP address is issued by the other router and that is also the DG?

Alexrose1uk · 1 Aug 2009 at 19:28

Never needed to when I've tried, all going well, a lot of routers can also work as a switch; so stopping DHCP and moving them to thier own IP allocation normally allows them to pass on DHCP assignments from the actual router.

If you were trying to do this wirelessly, then that would be a different story.

Johnny|lucidcomposure · 2 Aug 2009 at 22:54

Alexrose1uk said:
Not quite.

Set the first router to 192.168.x.1, leave DHCP ON and set its DHCP range to 192.168.x.2-192.168.x.253.
On the second router, turn DHCP off, and manually set its IP to 192.168.x.254 (set its gateway to 192.168.x.1 if it allows but ignore this if it doesnt)

Part of the problem I think you had is your routers either weren't running on the same IP range, or were both trying to assume the position of .1

I use this setup occasionally between a few routers I've got, running off homeplugs to act as additional networking switches

Once this is done, enable and re-enable the network adaptors in the connected computers. This should allow them to reconnect and be reassigned correct details via DHCP.

That seems to be doing the trick wonderfully. Thank you very much for your good advice and to everyone else thank you