New router; what IP

If you configure a router as an access point (i.e. disable DHCP and connect it to the network via a LAN port) then there's no routing required. You've basically just added a small switch and a WAP to the same network as the 'master' router.

The two mistakes people seem to make are:-

  • Fail to set a suitable management IP in the correct subnet. It'll work, but will appear to be inaccessible for management purposes. Sometimes people just get lucky and both routers default to the same subnet and don't clash.
  • Use a cable router and connect via the WAN port rather than one of the LAN ports. It's becoming more common for cable routers to have dedicated WAP modes which do allow the use of the WAN port, but you need to check.
Searching for 'wireless router as access point' using your favourite search engine should provide all the information anyone could need.
 
For ethernet clients it would act like a switch/hub but it was supposedly not capable of acting as an AP for wireless clients not connecting to the internet via its ADSL WAN port - possible the documentation was outdated compared to later firmware updates though.
 
There's no reason that the documentation would have mentioned it all. In general using an ADSL wireless router as a WAP isn't what the manufacture intended.

There's no real distinction between the wired LAN ports and the wireless, they're generally both on the same LAN. If you had both wired and wireless clients connected to a wireless ADSL router you'd expect them to be able to see each other whether there was anything plugged into the WAN port or not.
 
Was an old dlink 624 I think, been awhile, was well known at the time it had problems working as a WAP but just worked for me.

EDIT: Googled it, apparently on older fw you had to enter nonsense values into the gateway, etc IPs to make it work as a WAP but later versions fixed it.
 
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