Connecting 2 Wireless routers plus advice

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hazza87

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#62316 3-Jun-2010 17:02

I currently have a D-Link ADSL 2+ Modem Router connected to a D-Link 802.11g Wireless Router for wireless internet sharing etc, Parents have recently renovated a sleepout at a lower level to the house and at the opposite end to the wireless router.

Have got a cat 5e cable going down to the new room and would like to get another wireless router for both wired and wireless connections in the new room.

How do i connect and configure them so i can use the wired and wireless ports on both wireless routers? it would be nice if they shared the same ssid for seamless roaming of wireless devices between the 2 locations.

I am thinking of getting a wireless N router for the new room (may aswell virtually the same price these days).

Also seeing as in the new room there will be at least 2 PC's which will be used for LAN gaming with another 2 PC's upstairs will the single cable from upstairs to downstairs cause lag when using 100Mbs wired routers. Will i need to buy a gigabit router for downstairs and also replace the router upstairs with a gigabit ethernet model aswell?

michaelmurfy

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#337964 3-Jun-2010 18:17

Heya:

You shouldn't need to replace the routers, if there is not much data going over the 100mbit line that's connecting the networks you shouldn't need to replace anything. In my experience I used to have a "star" network basically with 5 switches all operating off 1 100mbit switch in a large house - There was only a few times performance was slow due to my flatmates.

To bridge the 2 wireless routers you can use WDS - What this does is bridge the 2 SSID's together allowing the wireless "roaming" you require. On most routers there's a option to enable WDS and add the other Access Point's wireless MAC address, putting the same details in each router (such as SSID, Passkey etc) will be shared and will show as 1 SSID.

If your router doesn't have this feature I recommend getting something that either DD-WRT or Tomato can install on, check out the wiki's for both firmware distribution about what model to buy. The most noted wireless router for open source firmware is the Linksys WRT-54GL which is a router with a huge community following.

Good luck, I have linked you to everything above just to make it easy

Michael Murphy | https://murfy.nz
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beachgeek

64 posts

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#337995 3-Jun-2010 19:16

I have exactly the setup you are talking about. I am busy tonight but will send you my setup tommorow.

hazza87

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#337998 3-Jun-2010 19:22

Thanks beachgeek,

michaelmurphy: Reading about WDS it sounds as though it is for wirelessly connecting 2 routers to form 1 ssid, this would not be fast enough for lan gaming as i have experienced before wireless just doesnt cut it.
As a quick test i have connected a 5 port 10/100Mbs switch to the new room jackpoint and tried running 2 wired computers in the new room off it and one upstairs for a lan game, it seemed to stutter quite alot (may have been somebody else downloading something large at the same time)

michaelmurfy

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#338035 3-Jun-2010 20:24

hazza87: Thanks beachgeek,

michaelmurphy: Reading about WDS it sounds as though it is for wirelessly connecting 2 routers to form 1 ssid, this would not be fast enough for lan gaming as i have experienced before wireless just doesnt cut it.
As a quick test i have connected a 5 port 10/100Mbs switch to the new room jackpoint and tried running 2 wired computers in the new room off it and one upstairs for a lan game, it seemed to stutter quite alot (may have been somebody else downloading something large at the same time)

WDS goes through Ethernet, 100mbit is more than enough for gaming - Unless if you are transferring a large file from 1 computer to another you will not notice any decrease in speed or gaming latency.

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hazza87

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#338040 3-Jun-2010 20:35

The link you sent from wikipedia and other google searches seem pretty clear that WDS is a method or wirelessly interconnecting 2 routers, it makes no mention of doing it wired aswell.

Ragnor

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#338118 3-Jun-2010 23:16

This should do it

- Puts everything on the same network range
- Removes problematic double nat
- Uses the modem to give out ip addresses via dhcp and do the routing/nat
- If you use the same ssid but different channels they shouldn't interfere and you shouldn't need to change anything on your portable devices (I think)

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michaelmurfy

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#338123 3-Jun-2010 23:24

hazza87: The link you sent from wikipedia and other google searches seem pretty clear that WDS is a method or wirelessly interconnecting 2 routers, it makes no mention of doing it wired aswell.

I used it at my old flat with 3 wireless routers, it worked fast and well, but def worked over ethernet (think if you are out of range of 1 router how would you transfer stuff "wirelessly" to the 2nd router?)

hazza87

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#340170 10-Jun-2010 13:06

Ok i have set it up as follows:
Network Diagram

As everything is connected to one of the 2 wireless routers i have left the modem out of the subnet and left it with dhcp enabled to provide the ip address for the old router. This setup is working exactly as i had wanted with all wired and wireless computers able to communicate properly and also get internet access. Pretty happy with the new Wireless router (TP Link TL-WR1043ND) for $120 with wireless N and gigabit switching.

Amazing how the number of internet enabled devices grows probably would have only been about 3 things on this network 2-3 years ago.

Thanks to Ragnor for the great diagram.

eXDee

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#340210 10-Jun-2010 14:20

Just a word of warning, if port forwarding is ever required you're going to run into problems. Assuming you're going from the D-Link Modem > WAN Port of the D-Link Router, this is going to result in double NAT.

If you want to avoid this, you can make the D-Link modem Half-Bridge and make it act as a modem only, or use Ragnors diagram and connect into the LAN ports rather than the WAN ports.

Ragnor

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#340224 10-Jun-2010 14:42

Yeah in the current setup you have the modem doing NAT (net address translation) and the 1st router also doing NAT again.

This will work fine for basic web browsing!

However often it causes problems with things like gaming (especially hosting a match), bit torrent and messenger/skype etc

There are two good options:

1: As Exdee mentions, set the modem to use half bridging (aka ip extension) and the dlink router to obtain the WAN ip address automatically from the modem.

2: Setup all devices on the same network range and use the modem for DHCP and NAT as per my diagram above/earlier.

hazza87

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#341596 14-Jun-2010 17:04

Ok i am now getting around to fixing this problem, How do you put the Dlink modem/router into half bridge mode? it is model DSL-504T.

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richms

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#341643 14-Jun-2010 18:19

Turn off uPNP on the other routers too, or things will try to map ports on them and fail to actually get any data.

Richard rich.ms