Two Router for File Server

[azterik]

Ok, so I recently set up my old desktop to be a file/video server. It is working perfectly and am able to stream movies through shared connection to my laptop wonderfully (including 720p HD movies, which is all my laptop can handle.)

Since I have roommates and would not like to bog down the lan/wireless router with the sometimes 95% 100 Mbit lan utilization, I have outfitted another router which connects the server and the laptop wirelessly or via direct ethernet connection. Then that router is connected the primary router to allow internet access via lan connection (not WAN of course.) DHCP on the secondary router is disabled.

My thinking is that that the high utilization between these two computers will only stay on this router and not bog down the other router so my roommates are happy!!

Is my thinking flawed? Does DHCP have to be enabled for it to communicate with itself? Do I need to configure it differently? Is there any way I can check the speed of each router? Any help would be appreciated thank you very much!!

Also another problem, after i changed ip addresses for the second router so they didn't interfere i can no longer access it, is this a normal problem?

 

[sturm]

Traffic between your computers will stay on your router and won't interfere with the rest of the network. That's the nice thing about switches compared to hubs. Switches only send packets to the MACs that need it. Hubs send it to everyone.

You should still be able to access the router config page. Can you ping the address?
Are you sure the address you gave it is not already used on the network? I would use xxx.xxx.xxx.250 - 253 as those would be the last IPs handed out by the DHCP server.