Wireless prodogies...

[AirMoore]

I have a simple question for some of you guys who deal with wireless networking on a regular basis:


Background:
I live at college as many of you know, and the wireless around here simply sucks, so my apartment mate and I want to get our own wireless router for this year... so I was thinking about picking one up. (I generally use Linksys, as I have had great success with them in the past... so a cheap one of those just to get by and have my own security password).


Question: (Lengthy so stick with me).
The deal is though: After I go back home, I was curious would it be possible to use this router at my house along with the other one we already have?

-In other words: My house is extremely long with a fair amount of walls so by the time you reach the far end of the house you are between 1-2bars (of 5) with 'poor' signal strength and most every device, and sometimes wireless print jobs get lost in the office etc.


-SO would it be possible to run our regular router as it is now, then get a cat-5 "splitter" from 1-to-2 outlet and plug that into the modem, and then with the two ends... plug one into the existing router for one half of my house, then for the other router (this new one i plan on buying), run a 100ish foot cat-5 cable along the baseboards and put the this router with an entirely separate network and password in that section of the house?

-I understand that the bandwidth will be split up between the two etc, so essentially there will be a bottle-neck, but would there be any issue with running the splitter and 2 routers off of 1 modem (any sort of interference?).

-PS: I know there are range extenders and such for wireless networks, but I am asking this since I will be buying a router anyways for college... and it would be nice to have all the office stuff (read: important) on its own network.

Thanks in advance!

[radarhunter]

Yes, you can do that.

Here's the deal, you'll be hooking one router up to another, and it can be done easily. You won't need an splitter to go from the modem to the routers though....

You would just plug the WAN port on your router(from college) to one of the LAN ports on the existing router you have(at home).

It should work fine. It is doing something though called double NAT'ing though, and that can cause your internet to MAYBE be a touch slower, and some applications may have trouble getting out, but for the most part you should be fine.


If double NAT'ing becomes an issue for you, just send me a PM and I can help you alleviate that. Oh, and your router will be on it's own network. You can be directly connected to the modem, but you have to call your provider and get that setup, and they usually charge a little more for that, but it can be done, and I can also help you figure that out if need be.


It will look like this

[Modem(at home)]---->[router(at home)]----->[your router(from college)]

[AirMoore]

Sounds good to me... I was curious if you could also daisy-chain them like that.

They are both Wireless access points as well? Acting just like regular routers in those circumstances, just all off of the same network?


I will be planning on doing this likely for winter-break (as at college I will be using the router here).


-Anyone else with any ideas or inputs would be great. Thanks again!

[radarhunter]

Yes, both will act as wireless access points AND routers. But they will have different SSIDs(the name of the wireless network, or I guess you could make the same??).

[powerpickle]

No problem,I have this in my home now. All you need is an ethernet cable to plug into one of the lan ports on the back of the modem and connected to your router. Your router will be your own network. Don't worry about a loss of speed. Your network and your parents network on one broadband line wont have enough machines to suck up all of the bandwidth. You could piggyback 5 more that way without any problems. Once a page loads the bandwidth usage stops. I can stream netflix on 3 laptops and a PS3 at the same time without a hitch.

[switch626]

You can avoid the double NATing problem by buying a router that can also be configured as an access point instead of a router. This also places everything on the same network (which only actually matters if you are doing things like sharing files of printers on your network). Since your new router would likely need to be configured differently at home than it would at school, you can just about always back up your settings through the web interface. This way you can restore the school settings to the router when you return to school.

Your easiest course of action however is what radarhunter suggested. I would go this way first and see if any issues crop up. If all you are doing is surfing the web, you should be just fine, and requires zero changes.

Note: When you do set up the new router at school, do not allow the default LAN address of 192.168.0.? or 192.168.1.? to be used. This can cause a problem when you plug the WAN port into the LAN port on the other router. What will happen is that the network address will be the same on both sides of your router, so it won't know where to send packets. Use something more like (or exactly):

LAN IP: 172.21.16.1
Mask: 255.255.255.0
DHCP Range 172.21.16.1 - 172.21.16.220 (can be anything up to 254, but I like to leave a few extra addresses for printers and such)

This range is for private use like the 192.168.?.? range, but is very seldom used. I don't know of any device out there that uses this as it's default settings, so it should be safe to use.

Regarding the capacity of the modem when sharing the Internet connection, this usually isn't much of an issue either. I have seen networks where over 30 people are sharing a connection similar to a single, good DSL router without any problems. With 2 or 3 computers, you will never notice a difference.

[AirMoore]

Thanks for the replies guys!


I went out and and got the router for college. Secured, and working flawlessly at the college.

Switch626: I'll probably take you up on that offer around winter break time because i will be bringing it home i think ( and i know for gaming double NAT won't fly).

[ELVATO]

Bleh, I just have two Linksys routers. One is hooked up to the modem in my room. This is the "internet" router, which everything that requires internet access connects to. The other is in my living room, set up as an access point. The 360 hooks up to it through an Ethernet cable, though I suppose I could technically connect to it wirelessly. It has it's own separate password and SSID.

[ExoticRadar]

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