Topic: Setting up wireless

[ober]

OK, so my in-laws have their condo wired for ethernet, but that only does me so much good when I go to visit.  I have my old WRT54G router sitting here doing nothing and I'd rather set it up in their house instead of selling it since I won't get much anyways.

So I guess my question is how.  Currently their cable comes out of the wall in the office and there's a patch cable that goes from the modem into a wall jack and out to a wired router (which I'm not sure where that is).  Then they have wall jacks throughout the house that you can tap into with a patch cable.

I guess my question is, can I put a patch cable between one of those wall jacks and the input of my wireless router and have it broadcast a signal?  I guess I'm just unsure of putting 2 routers in series like that.  In my head it works perfectly, but I'm just not sure.

Anyone?

[Mike]

IIRC you'll need a crossover cable in order to connect the two routers, unless one or both of the routers are able to do the switch internally.  But yes you can have multiple routers connected like that.  It might take some configuration in the routers to make it work however.

[Steve]

Yes. Its basically how my network is.

Modem --- WRT54Gs wireless for my dad. Ethernet to ---- WRT54Gs wireless for me

Flash your router like i had TGM do with hyperwrt or thibor so u get more control. Plug it into that patch cable. Open the router config, go to "Basic Setup".

Set the router to capture(setupcontent,dhcp). Name the router (ie apartment) and set MTU to capture(share,auto).

Scroll down to local ip. Make it something that will be different than the router already installed. my main router is .1 and my second is .100. Next is DHCP, disable it. Than go down and disable spanning tree.

Next go to basic settings for the wireless. Choose mode type WDS-AP. Next is network mode, choose capture(wlansetup,mixed). Choose a name for the network. Choose a channel. Now i have two wireless networks on one property (increased range basically) so i use 6 on one router and 11 on the other. You can basically use whatever you want in your case. I have SSID enabled and bridge disabled, you can really make these whatever you want.

With that setup you can have both routers running. I have ethernet and wireless on my dads, and just wireless on mine. Alot of those settings can be different, but it was hard to get them working in my case because of the two wireless signals, and this combo worked for me. I'll take some screenshots in a few for ya cuz i can be hard to follow sometimes.

[Steve]

Heres some SS's. Using only one wireless router, in your case, you may not need the firmware i dont know. I needed it and after i had it on one i flashed ALL of them its just so nice.

[Steve]

OH one more thing. The ethernet cable connecting the router and the jack, run it into the #1 slot on the WRT, not the WAN. That had me stuck for hours because i wasnt paying attention.

[ober]

So I shouldn't stick the patch cable in the port marked "internet"?  That doesn't make much sense... but ok.

I also don't know what the other router is, I just know what mine is.

[Steve]

your router knows that the signal coming in is from another router, and it responds differently. If you hook that router into your WAN (internet) port its attempting to do the wrong thing. You may be able to make it work, but the correct way would be to put the patch cable into the number 1 lan slot for use as a switch.