Networking with Wired and Wireless one router

[jwillis562]

I have 4 pc's in my home. 2 are connected to my netgear modem-router via ethernet cable and the other 2 are connecting to the modem-router via wireless. What is the best way to network all of them together?

 

[mrfatbox]

if they are all conected then what is the problem?

cable them all would be best (am not a big WiFi fan)

what do you want to network them all for file sharing, gaming or just internet

 

[jwillis562]

Thanks for responding! My primary motivation is to monitor my teenager's activity, secondly I would like both my boys to have access to the printer.

 

[totalknowledge]

Why are you using two routers instead of just the wireless one?

 

[jwillis562]

who said I had two routers?

 

[totalknowledge]

who said I had two routers?

I miss read your subject line, which then prejudiced me when I read your initial post.


If you have Windows 7, just join them to the same homegroup. There isn't any more to it than that.

 

[jlandi]

Thanks for responding! My primary motivation is to monitor my teenager's activity, secondly I would like both my boys to have access to the printer.

I would say what you want is a way to view your network activity, something like a network proxy or a tool to locally lock down websites on the boys' computers.

The way I usually go is to use OpenDNS (http://www.opendns.com/). It is just a quick entry into your main router and 'poof' all your comps are using it and you can get detailed reports of websites. It also allows you to block sites from people accessing them.

Hope this helps a little with one of the two issues.

 

[jwillis562]

Thank You!!

 

[Routersforhumans]

Since you have a Wi-Fi Router then you may network all of them wirelessly. This is indeed a great way, users walking around with their laptops, tablets and accessing internet. And as far as monitoring is concerned, you may use the functionality of "Parental control" "Mac Address filtering" options, which would make sure that devices connected to the network would work as per your instructions.

And you may also let your printer join the network(if the printer has the wireless capability). If not, wired printers can also be used as network printers but one condition, your router should have a USB port.