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How do I configure a second wireless router?

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by warpman999

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I have the following question, we have a router which is providing static IP addressing. We have a wireless router that we would like to install to the LAN and be able to provide DHCP IPs to the wireless devices. We have been able to setup the wireless router with 192.168.0.1 but we can not view the rest of the computers on the network. The main router is using IP address: 192.168.1.1. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

10 replies

by david.wallis

your on a different subnet...

you should put the other router on 192.168.1.2

and the other on

192.168.1.1

reserve these ips on the dhcp server so they arent given out to a pc and your away :)

by robo_dev

My understanding is that their topology is

WAN-router-LANport===WANport-wlan router
192.168.1.1 192.168.0.1

in this case the WAN port of the WLAN router is performing NAT and firewall functions.

So wired clients cannot see wireless clients because they are on the wrong side of the firewall of the wlan router, and their local router has no route to the LAN on the other side of the wlan router firewall (if it did, it would not be much of a firewall, would it??)

Further, unless the WLAN router can perform DHCP relay and DNS forwarding (which most cannot), then WLAN clients cannot get to the internet, because their real default gateway and real DNS servers are several hops away.

And finally, there would need to be static routes on devices on both sides of the network, since most soho wlan or wired routers are not designed for lan-to-lan routing.

Giving the Other router a 1.2 would only give you access to it's admin interface, but only from wireless clients.

by deity_chooch

Couldn't you simply put the wireless router into bridged mode so that all connected computers get forwarded to the first router to receive their IP addresses?

by robo_dev

Turn off DHCP in the wireless router, assign it a static IP address in the 192.168.1.x range, and attach it via one of it's LAN ports to your existing router. Make sure DHCP is enabled in your existing router.

this will effectively convert your wireless router into an access point, and your wirelsss clients will get dhcp addresses from your wired router.

There are several reasons your existing setup will not work, and if you want to know more about it, just ask.

by warpman999

Thanks so much for the information guys. I think robo_dev is right. Unfortunatelly I got another problem. I explain to the box that we needed to enable DHCP on the main router and he said NO. Even after me explaining that we can set up an IP Addresses Pool range for static IPs. He just doesn't want to do it that way. So I hae been making some changes and changed the LAN IP address as X.X.1.254 with subnet 255.255.255.0. So, this works fine but only and only if I connect the computers thru a fisical cable. It doesn't want to work with the wireless laptops. Any ideas what I need to change?

by tintoman

And yes all hail robo_dev he was absolutely right, as for your "box" that's a boss is it?
Anyway first of all your first router is not issuing static ip addresses, a static address is configured on the machine it relates to and is not issued.
But you can still do what you want with your wireless router, plug it in to a LAN port on your first router, or a switch or something, enable DHCP server on the wireless router create a limited address range that it allowed to issue and make sure the network address is the same as your existing network, that is to say the first sections of the IP address are identical.
And make sure your wireless laptops are all configured for automatic ip addressing

by robo_dev

You still need to hook up your Wireless router through it's LAN port, because it's a most likely a nat router and a firewall, so it won't play well on your network.

Try this TEST:

1) turn off DHCP in the wireless router
2) connect the wireless router to a LAN port to your network
3)configure a wireless machine with all the static IP address info from your PC.

4) unplug your PC from the network,

5) turn on the wirelss pc, and it will work.

When connected via lan port, a wireless router is a mac layer bridge. (this is also known as an access point).

Find out what static addresses your admin is using, and configure a range of addresses that do not conflict. (eg if he's using 10.1.20.5 to 100, create a DHCP scope of 10.2.20.200 to 225)

in the local dhcp configuration of your wlan router, ALL all the settings you have on any local pc are the same: default gateway, dns, subnet mask. Just assign a range of IP addresses that do not conflict with your static addresses.

Note that there are two places to set DHCP stuff...the WAN (internet side) and the LAN (local) side. You want to configure the LAN (local) side's DHCP settings.

What you're creating is what's known as a rogue dhcp server.

by robo_dev

to disable dhcp and connect via a lan port.

"bridged mode" in wlan terms means a wireless bridge between networks, just to de-confuse the issue

by warpman999

Got it working! Since all the laptops that we are using here in the office are running windows xp pro we configure the alternate IP configuration tab with a static IP and that got them working with the internet and it go them to see the rest of the PCs on the LAN. A big thank you to all of you guys! Thanks to all of you who contribute.

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