Home network with multiple routers?

Laney88

Laney88

Laney88

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Joined
31 Aug 2009
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832
Location
Manchester
Hey guys, I don't know much about networking and have only set up a basic home network before so I need some advice.

Basically in our house we currently have 8 PC's a laptop or 2 and a couple of smartphones connected wired and wirelessly via 3 different routers a Dlink one and two netgear ones.

Now at the minute none of the PC's are able to share anything they are just connecting to which ever router is closest and using said router for connecting to the internet. However a few weeks back I set up the two PC's in my room to connect together by creating a homegroup in windows 7 and these two PC's are wired straight into the same router in my room. But now I want to set up my computer as the main pc for the network with my second PC as a server then have any other PC's connect to the homegroup wirelessly but using any router in the house.

Firstly I don't know if this is even possible but here is my paint effort of I think how I would like it to all work. Rectangles = PC's, Circles = Routers, and the star thingy being the modem. Red lines would be wired but I don't care what is wireless as long as my pc and server are wired.

homenetwork.jpg
(sorry for the rubbish and small piccy :P )

And then I was reading through Baddass' guide and read about bridging software which I guess is why the devices connected to other routers than the one in my room can't join/find my rooms network/homegroup? So maybe I just need some bridging software?

I basically would like to have each router wired together, one router on each floor with the PC's connected wirelessly to the router on their floor and laptops/smartphones wirelessly connecting again to any router and also be able to have all PC's/laptops on one homegroup. I could just skip the middle floor router if that makes life easier :P.

Any input will be greatly appreciated and I'm open to better solutions as I'm sure there is probably a few :P.
 
can you not just buy a switch hub and put all into it and plug that into the router that has wifi and connects to the net that way you can connect all pc's together
i have a pc in the garage connected to the main router into the phone line and a lan cabnle then routed upstairs to a little 8 port hub which cost around a fiver on ebay and i have all my office pcs connected to and they can link to the pc in the garage ok

where is the main phone point
 
You might have a point :P but I'd like to have atleast 2 routers for decent signal up and downstairs. Also if I don't have to spend money on a switch I don't mind doing it the hard way :)

therutz said:
where is the main phone point
Click to expand...

The main phone point is in the downstairs with the modem.
 
there is a way you have to disable something in two of the routers i am just trying to find oyut what it is then one router acts as the main connection and the others act as a standard HUB
 
Right in two routers turn OFF DHCP servers and they will then become just hubs so should only use the one router for main connection etc.....
 
Downstairs should be your main router. Run a cable from this into a lan port on the second router, from the second router run another cable into the lan port on the last router, make sure you do not put them into the WAN ports.

A>lan>b>Lan>C. On b and c change the wifi sid to something different (ie top, middle, bottom and change the channel to something different for each floor).

Also disable DHCP on routers B and C.

If you connect the ethernet cables into the WAN port you'll be trying to NAT each subnet and traversing the firewall. I would however forget this setup as it's a waste of routers / ports and opt for a switch and additional wifi access points.
 
YOu should be able to keep the SSID's the same using the same passwords and allow the devices to roam to whatever the strongest signal is. I assume ESS works with home-grade wireless gear.
 
We do exactly this in our house, 1 router, 2 extra AP's.

1) You need to set up your main router (one with ADSL Connection) to have DHCP enables between 192.168.XX.10 to 192.168.XX.200 (or however many you need) ensure that it has a LAN IP of 192.168.XX.1

2) Set up your SSID and Password and set the router to channel 6

3) Factory reset router 2

4) Connect your laptop/PC to router 2's LAN port

5) Change the SSID and Password to match router 1.

6) Change the channel to 1

7) Change the LAN IP address to 192.168.XX.2

8) Disable DHCP in router 2 (You will loose connect at this point)

9) Plug a cable from router 1's lan port to router 2's lan port and then connect wirelessly or wired to either router. You should be able to browse to 192.168.XX.1 and 192.168.XX.2 to access each routers web GUI.

10) Repeat the steps for router 3 but with channel 11 and LAN IP of 192.168.XX.3
 
Right thanks for all the advice fellas I'll look into these methods then and maybe get a switch at some point down the line.

So disabling DHCP on the 2nd and 3rd routers will just allow wired or wireless access to the 1st routers internet/network through routers 2 and 3 as normal right?
 
Laney88 said:
Right thanks for all the advice fellas I'll look into these methods then and maybe get a switch at some point down the line.

So disabling DHCP on the 2nd and 3rd routers will just allow wired or wireless access to the 1st routers internet/network through routers 2 and 3 as normal right?
Click to expand...

Yeah

Just leave it on on the main router as that will be the internet connection

If you are sharing a lot of stuff between PC's then you will need a gigabit switch hub but doing it the way suggested will be way good enough for streaming films and music
 
Ran into a small problem I wanted to change the network password for each router but can only access the first routers web GUI. I can only find the default gateway IP for the first router and maybe should have wrote down the IP address' that I changed the other routers to but alas I failed -.- so can I find the out somehow or will I have to reset all the routers and try again? :S

Thanks in advance
 
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