Can I plug a second wireless router into my main wireless router and run two SSIDs?

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richard42

2 posts

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#30809 22-Feb-2009 00:33

Hi there
My flatmate is again on track to use our entire months traffic allowance in the first week on P2P file sharing. This is annoying because it means I will get throttled back to dial up for my basic websurfing for the rest of the month. At the moment I have a single port DSL modem, shared through a Linksys WRT160N router. (wireless + four ethernet LAN ports)
I've bought a new replacement wireless router (Linksys WRT54GL wireless with four ethernet ports) which should be here in a few days. I will flash it with the Tomato firmware that provides great Quality of Service allowing me to throttle back his connection speed and throughput rate as appropriate, both by his MAC address, and by port. (ie throttle back his Limewire usage as I don't use any P2P to a lower maximum throughput).

Trouble is, to justify this I need to be able to show conclusively how much traffic he is using. Tomato offers a log, but I just found out it only splits the logs into ethernet and wireless. :( We both need to be wirelessly connected because a cable won't reach for either of us.
Can I connect the WRT54GL as the main router, then run the WRT160N as a "secondary" router, plugged into a LAN port on the main WRT54GL?
If so, I hope the WRT54GL should see any traffic on the "secondary" router as ethernet traffic which gets logged separately.

I am not concerned about wireless interference because I can run one router on channel 6 and the other on channel 11.

Will this work? Or can anyone suggest any other ideas or solutions to log our use separately?

Richard

cyril7

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#197407 23-Feb-2009 12:18

Hi, yes you can do that, just make sure you turn the DHCP server off in the 160, and it helps for admin purposes if the 160 and WRT are in the same address space, ie 192.168.1.X, but check that the address of the 160 is not in the WRTs DHCP pool otherwise it might clash, I normally make DHCP pools start in at say 192.168.1.20 so it gives you a few free addresses for this type of situation and servers and the like. You can give both devices the same SSID and that way clients will see them as the same, and yes using two channels like 6 and 11 will avoid interference issues.

Cyril

raytaylor

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#198122 26-Feb-2009 01:32

cyril7: Hi, yes you can do that, just make sure you turn the DHCP server off in the 160, and it helps for admin purposes if the 160 and WRT are in the same address space, ie 192.168.1.X, but check that the address of the 160 is not in the WRTs DHCP pool otherwise it might clash, I normally make DHCP pools start in at say 192.168.1.20 so it gives you a few free addresses for this type of situation and servers and the like. You can give both devices the same SSID and that way clients will see them as the same, and yes using two channels like 6 and 11 will avoid interference issues.

Cyril

I think in this situation you would want a seperate SSID and passkey for your flatmate in the second router. If the SSID's are the same, the laptops would connect to whichever is stronger and if only the passkeys were different, you would have problems connecting at all.

By having the SSID and passkeys different, you can program one laptop to connect to one access point, and the other laptop to the other AP. That way the second AP traffic will appear as ethernet data in the first AP's logs and you can properly seperate the traffic.

You can also find a freeware bandwdith monitoring / logging program so that your flatmate can track their own usage, rather than asking you constantly for log checks. You would just need to refer to the logs to double check accuracy.

If your flatmate uses P2p, you will want to avoid double natting. This means that in your second router / AP, you will want to disable DHCP and connect the two routers together using their Lan ports - dont plug anything into a port labeled Wan otherwise you will double nat. Double Natting slows down p2p traffic and wastes alot of your traffic too so while he will see lower speeds, the usage will be slightly higher ~10% because of the failed data that came in or got sent through your net connection but couldnt reach the auctual computer itself.

Ray Taylor

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