Use two wireless routers on one network

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
I

ilikepenguins

Honorable
Jun 11, 2013
20
0
10,510
I have three Netgear wireless routers (WNDR3400, WGR614v4, WGR614v7) and one cable modem. Currently, the modem is conneted to the WNDR3400 and working fine. I want to connect one or both of the other routers to the network with ethernet cable in order to connect two desktop computers located 30+ feet away from the WNDR3400. The other two routers do not need to broadcast, but if they can, w/o diminishing performance, that's great.

I have read several forum posts & blogs on the topic that suggest just changing the extra router's ip address and turning off DHCP. Some say set the extra router's ip address to something outside the DHCP range of the first router and some say set it to something within the range. They also say set the SSID, Security type & password to that of the first router. I have tried and tried, but nothing seems to allow me to access the internet from the second router...not by lan not by wifi.

There are two places to change the ip address, one is a LAN setting and one is a Basic Setting under Setup; I'm not sure which one I'm supposed to change.

WNDR3400 Settings:
Internet IP Address:
IP Address: 173.22.147.76
IP Subnet Mask: 255.255.240.0
Mac: set to default

LAN Setup:
IP Address: 192.168.1.1
IP Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Starting IP Address: 192.168.1.3 (Second router is currently 192.168.1.2)
Ending IP Address: 192.168.1.150 (I left some room for the second router)

I know I should just buy a switch but these two routers are just begging me to use them.

Thank you in advance to anyone who may consider my quandary :)
 
Solution
B
Key is to plug into the LAN port on the second router. The only reason you need a IP at all on the second router is so you can administer it. You could set it to a totally different range configure it by directly connecting it to a pc and then after you are done hook it to your main network. Of course you do it that way and you cannot make changes to the router without going and re cabling and changing ip on your pc all the time.

In any case you want to disable the DHCP on the second router this is critical to not mess stuff up. You want to use a different radio channel that your main router to avoid interference. The SSID can be the same or different hard to say which is better. If it is the same the PC will always choose...
Sort by date Sort by votes
B

bill001g

Titan
Aug 9, 2012
28,319
2,754
125,640
Key is to plug into the LAN port on the second router. The only reason you need a IP at all on the second router is so you can administer it. You could set it to a totally different range configure it by directly connecting it to a pc and then after you are done hook it to your main network. Of course you do it that way and you cannot make changes to the router without going and re cabling and changing ip on your pc all the time.

In any case you want to disable the DHCP on the second router this is critical to not mess stuff up. You want to use a different radio channel that your main router to avoid interference. The SSID can be the same or different hard to say which is better. If it is the same the PC will always choose the strongest and you only have to have a single setup in the machines. If you use different SSID you can select which router you connect to which sometimes helps when windows automated stuff does not meet your needs. The down side with YOU being able to control the selection is you must configure more stuff.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
I

ilikepenguins

Honorable
Jun 11, 2013
20
0
10,510
@Bill001g

Thanks for confirming the simplicity of the operation. Since, according to your post, I was not making any obvious mistakes, I tried again with a different ethernet cable and everything went as planned!

I used my extra routers to test the setup with as I'm port forwarding a PS3 and DMZing another PS3 and didn't want to mess up the config on the WNDR3400.

By default, the WGR614v4's IP address is 192.168.0.1 and the WGR614v7's is 192.168.1.1 so I didn't need to change any IPs. I just setup the wireless SSID's and passwords the same and set one to channel 11 and one to channel 5 and turned off the DHCP on the second router. Now I can access the interwebs both wirelessly or by LAN!

Now I just need to find another 30ft ethernet cable.

By the way, I may have had to log in to the second router by LAN with the computer I set it up with in order to click "Apply" on the Basic Settings page in order to make the ISPs automatic settings stick.

Thanks, again, for the confirmation, it seems so simple now.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom